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Oct. 31, 2023 - The StoneZONE - Roger Stone
01:00:15
Roger Stone Talks About His Friend Of 45 Years, Roger Stone
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- Hello, I'm Colleen Wilson.
Thanks for joining me today.
Well, you know, over my years in television, I have interviewed many famous people, had occasion to meet many rock stars and been around town with them a little bit as I get to know them.
And I can tell you that my guest today is a rock star.
I was recently at a restaurant with him and walking into that restaurant was like walking in with a rock star.
Everybody wanted his autograph.
Everybody wanted to buy him a drink.
And eventually all the waiters in the restaurant lined up and wanted a picture with him.
That's what it's like when you go to dinner with Roger Stone, who's my guest today.
Roger, thanks for being here today.
Colleen, that's very nice.
I'm delighted to be with you.
Well, I mean, it was just an iconic experience, but I have observed and watched you on television for many years.
You're someone who Isn't just around when history's made.
I would say you've had a direct impact, not just on the history of the U.S., but because of the way the U.S.
sits in the world and the world power that it is.
And we would like to see it remain.
You've had a lot to do with the making of that because of your relationship with presidents over the years.
Some people will just know you from your relationship with President Trump.
But in fact, you're a best selling author and you've been involved in politics and at the right hand of every Republican president.
Yeah, I'm actually a veteran of 13 national presidential campaigns.
If you forced me to choose my favorite president, it would be very, very difficult.
It's been my privilege to work for some truly great men, whether we're talking about Richard Nixon, who was my mentor and who got me started in politics, or three campaigns for governor, later president, Ronald Reagan, also a great man.
Senator Bob Dole, who didn't become president but would have been a truly great president, one of the greatest men of the 20th century.
And of course, Donald Trump, who's unique in every way.
I mean, as you know, prior to Donald Trump, every president had been a senator or a governor or a congressman or a general.
Donald Trump is really our first business person to become president.
And that changes everything.
All the old rules are out the window, and Donald Trump has now set the course for America.
Any person can aspire to be president.
They would need the toughness and the resolve and the capability and the vision of a Donald Trump, obviously.
But Trump is different than all of them.
In other words, Trump is—he's not managed, he's not handled, he's not packaged, he's not scripted.
He's very much his own man.
Some of those others, while they were truly great, You never know who was writing the talking points.
You never know who was responsible for the speech writing or the phrase making.
With Donald Trump, what you see is what you get.
So I'm just fortunate to have been there.
I'm very fortunate to have been part of really the greatest single upset in American political history, and hopefully will be involved in the second greatest political upset in American history, which will take place next year.
If you had to describe one thing about President Donald Trump that makes him the man for the moment, to really clean up—I think there's a bit of a mess in the U.S.
right now—to clean that up, what do you think that single greatest quality of his is?
Uh, you may find this surprising, but it's his toughness.
In other words, look, I worked for Richard Nixon.
I worked for Senator Bob Dole.
Both very, very tough guys.
People misunderstand.
Because he's so likable, and in many ways he's so easygoing, people...
You may misunderstand how tough Donald Trump is.
Tough-minded.
He's extremely stubborn.
I don't mean that in a negative sense.
I mean that in the positive sense, meaning when Trump sets out to achieve a goal or when Trump has a deep-seated belief, You're not going to shake him from that, no matter how you might try, based on some pragmatic reason.
It's what made him a great president.
I'd have to say his second greatest quality would be self-confidence.
He has enormous confidence in himself.
So if you go through and look at what he's going through right now, which is really A great paradox.
His strength among the American people has never been greater.
His standing in the polls has never been higher.
The intensity of his support, the loyalty of his voters, has never been more intense.
And that is driven by this tsunami of lawfare against him.
In other words, every time they frame him in some new, you know, completely phony, politically motivated legal case, he doesn't get weaker, he gets stronger because the people see through it.
I was with him about a month ago for four days.
We were traveling together and I was taken about by his mood.
Facing you know a hundred plus years in prison Might be different, but he was upbeat He was determined He was he was resolute He was an excellent humor He's a little angry, but I think he has every right to be angry because no other former president has been treated this way But he made sure to get in his golf game.
I mean he is completely he's very very relaxed He's very confident.
I've seen him anger, but he's slow to anger.
And sometimes he uses anger for effect.
I mean, he's a truly great man in so many ways.
When did you first see in him the qualities that you felt would make him a president?
Like, did you have a premonition this man will be the president one day?
In 1988 was the first time I suggested to him that he should run for president.
I met him in 1980 when I was working for Governor Ronald Reagan and I was assigned New York State, which was in those days considered very hostile territory for us.
Reagan was, of course, a conservative.
He was not the toast of Wall Street.
He was not the toast of big business.
Those people were for George Bush.
And I got an appointment with Donald Trump and I really had to maneuver to get in to see him, but I ultimately got in to see him.
Trust you, Roger.
How could that have happened?
I got in to see him, and he was very open-minded.
First of all, his assistant, who would later become a great friend of mine, Norma Federer, said, you're only going to have five minutes.
He's very busy.
He's only going to give you five minutes.
So, Mr. Stone, my advice is, state your case, get in, get out.
I was with him for about an hour and 45 minutes when he just peppered me with questions about the political terrain.
First thing he said to me was, well, I wondered when you would show up.
I said, pardon me?
He said, well, they've all been here to see me.
John Connolly, Howard Baker, George Bush, John Anderson, even Jimmy Carter, they've all been here.
So I wondered when somebody representing Ronald Reagan would show up.
And here you are.
And I said, yes, sir.
Well, let me be honest with you.
All those other guys are losers.
I have the candidate who can win, but we need your help.
And then he let me, for the next hour, outline, you know, why I thought Reagan could win, why I thought it was his time.
In those days, it was thought that Reagan was too old.
Reagan was clearly not too old.
Served two very successful terms as president.
Then he began peppering me with very specific questions.
What about Ohio?
What about Florida?
What about California?
What about the Iowa caucuses?
I mean, people who thought that he was disinterested in politics didn't really understand him.
He was extremely well-read.
He knew as much about politics as he knew about sports, and he knew a lot about sports.
And in the end, he said to me, Your man's going to win.
And I said, why do you say that?
He said, I'll tell you why.
Because we live in the television age, and he has the look.
All those other guys, they don't have the look.
I said, well, what do you mean?
He said, well, Howard Baker.
I had no idea he was so short and fat.
George Bush.
The guy had a handshake like a fish.
John Connolly.
He said I had to count my fingers after I shook his hand.
Well, Jimmy Carter, he said, forget about it.
He said, Reagan has the look.
And then he said, interestingly, he says, I have the look, but then I'm not interested in running for president.
That's the first time it dawned on me that he could be not only a great candidate for president, but also a great president in his own right.
When he said, but I'm not interested in being president, do you think already then, though, he was interested in being president?
I think he was more interested at that juncture in his ideas.
In other words, I think this was still an idea in formation.
I know he was unhappy with the direction of the country.
He was tired of seeing America lose.
He didn't understand when you had these sensitive trade negotiations why other countries sent their best and brightest, and we were sending social workers.
We weren't sending our smartest political mind, our toughest negotiators.
Trump had come up in the world of Manhattan real estate.
There's nothing more cutthroat.
There's nothing tougher.
It'd be easier to negotiate with a Manhattan landlord than it would be with the Chinese.
And he knows that.
So I think he wanted to see our NATO partners pay their fair share.
He wanted us to build a national defense structure second to none.
As a deterrent to war, not to go around the country, or pardon me I should say, around the world looking for endless war and more.
He wanted to see courts that upheld the law and protected the victims rather than the criminals.
So I think he had strong feelings about all these things, but he also at that juncture Had many real estate mountains to climb.
He's still not reached, you know, the apex of his real estate career.
For example, he had not yet developed all of these phenomenal, you know, golf resort properties.
That was to come later.
So I think he always thought that he had the capability.
If you go to the 1988 Republican National Convention, Where I went to him and I said, you know, you have all these invitations pending.
You've been invited to every one of these black tie events and all of the party high donor events and a private reception for Vice President Bush and so on.
He said, yeah, I don't want to go.
Just regret them all.
I said, sure, these are really prized.
No, no, I'm really not interested.
So I regretted all of them.
Then two days before the convention, he called and said, you know, I've changed my mind about going to New Orleans for the convention.
I said, well, I've got to now see, I'm sure I can get you into all the events, but I've got to find you a hotel suite, and I've got to find you a limousine, and I've got to see if there's local security.
He said, well, I don't need anything fancy.
Just get me a room at the Holiday Inn.
Really?
Yes.
And I said, you're going to be satisfied with a room in the Holiday Inn?
He said, well, If it has a bed and a shower and it's clean, sure, why not?
I'm not going to spend any time in the room anyway.
I want to meet people.
I want to see what the convention is like.
So we ended up getting a small suite at the Holiday Inn, which at that point, everything was sold out.
And I was able to find him a limousine driver.
And I remember when we picked him up, at the New Orleans airport, he went to the limousine driver and he said, "Sir, let me ask you a question." He said, "Yes, Mr. Trump, what's the best cheeseburger in town?" He said, "Oh, that's a place over in the -- you know, it's kind of not in the best best area of town.
Trump said, that's where I want to go.
He said, no, I'm sure you want to go someplace fancier.
No, no, no, no.
Are you telling me it's the best cheeseburger in town?
The guy said, absolutely.
It's not even close.
Take me there.
That's where we went for lunch on our way to the hotel.
I think that's certainly part of his appeal.
There's many things about the president that are appealing, but the fact that he does seem to be able to relate so well to the average person, and yet he personifies the American dream.
I mean, when I look at him, that's kind of what I think of as America, this man that came up and built all these iconic properties.
I remember watching him on the Oprah Winfrey show with my mom When she asked him the question, you know, would you ever go into politics?
Would you ever want to run for president?
And he looked at her and he kind of said, well, you know, maybe one day.
He acted like he was not that interested.
I thought right then that he was interested.
And I turned to my mother and I said, I want that man to be president one day.
And I mean, I already knew who he was and liked him so much and admired him.
He's just got that thing, but he's got the thing that appeals to so many people.
Do you think that any other president has had it that much?
And I do understand what you said about Ronald Reagan, because I liked him, too.
But Trump has something where he seems to be able to be who he is, but relate to all these different Yeah, I think he's a billionaire but one who never lost his roots, you know, in Queens.
So he relates to average people and he's comfortable with average people.
In fact, I think he's more comfortable with regular people than he is with the fancy people.
So if you gave Trump a choice of having lunch with the top 10 Fortune 500 CEOs or with a group of plumbers, I think he'd rather have lunch with the plumbers because He can relate to their everyday lives.
He doesn't respect people who inherited money.
He respects people who made money.
And it must irk him when they say things like, well, he got this help from his father.
I don't know.
And I really don't care if he got some, because I know lots of kids that inherited money from their fathers and they blew it all.
You can't just inherit it.
You have to manage it.
So whether he did or didn't or whatever is beside the point.
The man is a great businessman.
I cannot take that away from him.
I would say three things.
First of all, Yeah, his father was a self-made millionaire.
Donald took millions and turned them into billions, first of all.
Secondarily, he learned a great deal from his father.
His father was a very frugal, brilliant businessman.
But this was Queens.
Trump became the king of Manhattan.
That's a huge difference.
Big step.
If you go to that 1980 convention, there's Chris Wallace, who was then, I guess, with CBS, is interviewing Trump on the convention floor.
And he says to him, Mr. Trump, I'm a little surprised to see you here.
Trump said, why?
I'm interested in politics.
I'm interested in the country.
He said, well, what about you?
Would you ever run for president?
He said, no, I wouldn't.
But if I ever did, I'd win.
I know, I saw that.
That confidence.
And that's why people say, well, he's got a big ego.
You have to have an ego in this business.
But in terms of, you know, what he's going through now, I guess that was foreshadowed in the sense that you went through a lot yourself when they came at you over the Russia, Russia situation, you know, accused you of witness tampering.
You were convicted of those things, pardoned by the president.
It was shades of things to come.
I never believed it could really get to this.
I'm a Canadian, so I'm observing this in Canada.
What's going on?
It looks like a road show.
The target, of course, was never me.
No.
The target was always him.
That's right.
So, in my case, they accused me of lying under oath, involuntary testimony before Congress, to cover up Russian collusion, which now even they can see never actually happened.
So it's not even possible.
They create a crime, this process crime, but then they turn it around and use it to pressure me to testify against Trump.
That's what they really wanted.
Yeah, that was very apparent.
It was kind of like, we'll let you go, but you have to testify against Trump.
First of all, there's nothing to testify against.
There's nothing to say.
They wanted me to invent some Russian collusion that didn't exist, and I was unwilling to do that.
My good friend General Flynn, they put him through the exact same thing.
But the target was never really Flynn.
The target was never really Stone.
The target has always been Trump.
It's because he is an existential threat They're all the same in the end.
Exactly.
And that is also true here.
party duopoly that runs the country.
So the sad truth is, and you see it in Canada as well, they may call it the Conservative Party, but they're not all that conservative, are they?
They're all the same in the end.
Exactly.
And that is also true here.
So despite the fact that I have a great sentimental attachment to the party of Lincoln, the party of Goldwater.
the party of Eisenhower, the party of Reagan, the party of Trump, the truth is, not at the grassroots level, but at the leadership level, the parties are identical.
They are all in it for the same thing.
Money, power, re-election.
Money, power, re-election.
And Trump upsets that whole apple cart because he's uncontrollable, because he is not on their agenda.
He's really on an America First agenda.
So everything he does, and I think this will be even more so in a second term, is seen through the prism of, is it good for America?
And we've never had a president in recent times who used that criteria and who wasn't encumbered by the political system.
So Trump, just to give you a perfect example, when he ran for president, he said, "This Iranian arms deal makes no sense." We're going to give billions to the Iranians based on a promise that they won't develop nuclear weapons.
And there's no reason why we should trust them.
And therefore, if I'm elected, I'm going to cancel this deal.
And then he got elected.
And then the State Department bureaucrats and the other inside the government said, well, that was great campaign rhetoric, sir, but you understand we were too far down the road.
We really can't do that.
Well, of course, you know, we're canceling that deal.
Or the Paris Climate Accords.
This is a deal under which the United States would pay $386 million, and the Chinese, who are the biggest polluters on the planet, they would pay nothing.
And Trump said on the campaign trail, well, I'm going to cancel that deal.
As soon as he got in office, the same bureaucrats come to him and say, well, that was great campaign rhetoric, sir, but you understand we can't really do that.
So Trump showed his independence to the—call them whatever you want—the military-industrial complex, the deep state, the permanent government.
They don't like it.
They don't like it at all.
I think it scares them.
Because he's like a businessman.
He approaches it in a pragmatic business way.
This makes no sense.
I'm not going to do this.
It's not good for the country.
But that's not the way the system tends to work.
Well, he scares them all the more now because he is fully awakened.
In other words, and I defend him for this, he came to Washington.
With high ideals and a very specific platform, but with no political experience.
And therefore, he had, I think, an unfortunate tendency to take some people at face value.
And he thought, well, there's Republicans and there's Democrats.
The Republicans are with me.
The Democrats are against me.
And that didn't turn out to be true.
Some of the Republicans were for him.
At the grassroots, he was beloved.
But among the Republican leaders, First of all, there was deep jealousy.
People like Mitt Romney, people like John McCain, men who had themselves aspired to the presidency, had planned for it their whole lives, had measured every word in preparation for it, had changed their positions if necessary, anything to become president.
And along comes Donald Trump, And he makes it look so effortless.
He just walks right into it.
They could never get over that.
So they were committed to his destruction from the very beginning, particularly McCain, who we now know was pushing the whole Russian collusion hoax with the FBI, despite the fact that he knew it was a fraud.
They all knew it was a fraud.
And you know, for so many people out there watching this who maybe supported those people in the past, it was so disappointing to see that.
You know, because that's one thing about the Democrats, they seem to hang together, but the Republicans, sometimes they try to eat their own.
I think our biggest problem today are not the left-wing socialist Marxist Democrats.
Our problem today are the gutless, feckless, weak-kneed, lily-livered, spineless, Country club establishment Republicans who sit in their country clubs and swill white wine, but they have no interest in fighting the Democrats.
They have no interest in standing up for the American people.
Roger, I think you need to be more clear and more direct on what you really mean by that.
It takes you a while to reach the point that you understand that there is one controlling unit party.
You know, it hurts you sentimentally, because as I said, I'm a former young Republican National Chairman.
I have great affection for the Republican Party as an institution, but it is, because of its current leaders, It's very far from its origins and its moorings.
The good news is that every Republican president has remade the party in their own image.
And this party today, at the grassroots level, at the voter level, at the people level, this is Donald Trump's party as never before.
No question.
And we're going to prove that shortly.
You know, it's clear that—like, it's hard to think of President Trump without you being right there, but there have been things that have happened in your life with him, and I wonder if it kind of gives you pause to think about—when I was reading in your books—by the way, Roger is, of course, a New York Times bestselling author of a couple of books, terrific books—but you talk in the making of The President.
About the day that you called him and told him you were coming to see him and he was already booked to go with his executives on his helicopter to Atlantic City when he was running his hotel casinos.
He ended up not going.
Tell us the rest of the story and then I want to see how that impacted you.
Yeah, to put it in context, I was working in Washington, D.C., representing him on some relatively boring but important currency transaction regulations at the Treasury Department that would have affected his casino empire.
And we were very late in this regulatory-making process, and he really only had another 24 hours to comment on the proposed rules.
And I said to him, look, your lawyers have fooled around with this for weeks, but only you know what you really think.
I need to go over this with you and get your comments, and I've got to get them in by the end of the day.
And he said, well, I can't do it today.
I'm committed to go to Atlantic City.
And I said, look, I could get on the shuttle.
These are the pre-TSA days.
I could get on the shuttle.
I could be in your office in an hour and a half.
All I need is about 40 minutes of your time tops.
We have to go through the regulations line by line.
You just tell me what you want to do.
And he said, all right, well, I'll tell you what we'll do.
I'm going to send the helicopter down to Atlantic City with my executives so they can begin the meetings.
I'll have the chopper come back and get me after you and I are finished and take me down to Atlantic City.
But you have to leave right away.
I said, I'll leave immediately.
So I ran out to the airport, jumped on what was then the Eastern shuttle, got to New York, took a cab directly to his office, and we were in the meeting, not even five minutes into the meeting, when his assistant Norma Federer came in and said, Mr. Trump, I have terrible news.
He said, what's that?
She said, well, the helicopter on which Steve Hyde and all of our executives crashed in the Pinelands, and we believe everybody aboard has been killed.
And I could hear in the hallways, I could hear women wailing, co-workers for those who had died.
I could hear women crying.
And Trump was very cool.
He said, are we absolutely sure?
And at that point, she said, oh, Colonel Pagano with the New Jersey State Police is on the phone for you.
And Trump says, put him through, puts him on the speaker, says, Colonel Pagano.
He says, Mr. Trump, I have terrible news.
He said, yes.
He said the helicopter Which you chartered, because Trump's own helicopter was in for service.
So they were on a chartered helicopter.
The helicopter you chartered crashed in the Pinelands.
There were 13 people aboard, I believe it was.
There are no survivors.
And Trump said, Colonel Pagano, are you absolutely certain?
And he said, yes, sir, we have the tail number.
There is no question.
He said, thank you very much, Colonel.
Then he turned to Norma and he says, has anybody informed the wives?
And she said, no, I don't think so.
And he said, well, it's much better if they hear it from me than if they hear it on the news.
Let's start making those calls.
Now, remember later when he was president, they said that he wouldn't call service members who were killed, which was a lie.
Of course.
And I sat there and I watched him call every one of these widows.
In a few cases, the women had already heard, but they were still in shock.
In others, in other cases, it was Trump himself who was telling them and trying his best to console them.
Something, by the way, that I could never have done.
Just the feeling in the pit of your stomach watching him do it made you sick.
It was terrible.
And then I realized that He had been saved for some greater purpose.
So you knew then, you felt that inside there was a reason.
I knew at that moment that there was a reason this had happened.
Now, interestingly enough, when he would later say to people, specifically tabloid reporters, I was supposed to be on that helicopter.
Yeah, I heard him say that, sure.
They said, oh, you're just making that up.
You're lying.
You're saying that to pencil yourself into this tragic story.
No, I was there.
But I want to be very clear.
Not then, and not now, and not in the book.
I'm not taking credit for saving Donald Trump's life.
That's not the point of the story.
The point of the story is God saved his life.
I was merely his vessel.
I mean, the Lord uses broken vessels all the time.
I'm far from perfect.
I'm certainly not a saint.
And I'm not a prophet.
I am now a soldier in the army of God, but that's a different thing.
I was put in a place at a time to do something specific, but I didn't save Donald Trump.
God saved his life.
But you didn't even know at that time that you were part of the army?
I was baptized as a Catholic.
I considered myself a Christian.
I certainly wandered from the Lord.
There's no question about that.
But then I saw the bigger picture.
That Trump had been saved for a greater purpose.
And I didn't save him.
Someone much bigger than me saved him.
So that's why I actually knew First, no one thought he would be nominated.
It's also why I was confident that he would win.
People don't remember this now, but it was widely thought that he would lose.
First, no one thought he would be nominated.
He was easily nominated.
He overcome 16 other more experienced, better prepared politicians.
And Then everyone knew he was going to be crushed by Hillary Clinton.
The New York Times, the Friday before the election, said that there was a 95% chance that she would be elected president.
But I already knew that he would be elected the following Tuesday.
I never had any doubt about it.
It was the fulfillment of what began that day.
I believe that he was destined to become president.
I agree with you, and I've heard you described, you said, I'm not a prophet.
I've heard you described, even this morning, as a political prophet, an oracle.
You can ask any political question, too, because you are undeniably, Roger, you know, people agree with you or disagree with you, have strong opinions about you.
But I don't think even people on the left would ever question Your ability and how clever you are as a political strategist.
You are all those things.
I'm not, but I can tell you, I always thought Donald Trump would win.
People who know me know that's the truth.
And I believe, too, it was for a greater reason.
Now I'm going to ask you, does he know that?
I think he's come to know it.
It's funny because just in the last 48 hours I spoke to a group of pastors and I told them a true story that about two months ago I had called Trump on a Saturday night.
I had missed him, but left a message.
He called me back Sunday morning, but literally called me while I was walking out the door to church.
I go to Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, which was founded by Dr. D. James Kennedy, truly great man, close friend of Ronald Reagan's, and dedicated by Billy Graham.
It's a wonderful church.
It's a very large, vibrant church where I found extraordinary Christian fellowship that, candidly, I just didn't find in the Catholic Church.
Just didn't find it.
And I'm very happy there.
And I feel welcome there.
And I've gotten involved in the church activities.
Anyway, I was on my way out to the church when he returned my call.
I was literally walking out the door.
And he said, is this a good time?
I said, well, to be honest with you, I'm on my way to church, and if I leave right now, I'll make it just in time.
Could I call you back this afternoon?
And he said, yeah, that's fine, but you're going to church right now?
And I said, yeah.
And he said, could we take a minute to pray together?
Now, he's never said anything like that to me before.
And I said, sure, if you want to.
And he said, absolutely.
He said, you lead.
So I said just a few brief words of prayer, after which he said, Amen.
Call me this afternoon.
End of conversation.
I told that story to these pastors and it's on video.
And therefore, at this exact moment, it's all over social media.
Now, those who are believers understand how wonderful this is, and those who are not are just, well, Stone's a liar, Trump's a liar, they've never prayed about anything.
The divisions in this country are extraordinary.
I think it was Kim Clement, a Christian prophet, who said that the country would elect a man who is not a religious man, but a man who prays.
I think that's where Trump is.
I think, you know, he used to go to Dr. Norman Vincent Peale's church on Fifth Avenue.
I think that he is very private about his religious beliefs.
He's really private about his belief in God.
Richard Nixon was like this as well.
He was very private in his faith, but very strong in his faith.
Trump does not wear his religion on his sleeve.
He's very private about his faith, but I think he's come to understand that he's been put in place to achieve certain things for the country.
And I think it explains a lot about his extraordinary confidence.
See, I think that's the well of his confidence, that he knows he's doing the Lord's work.
That's interesting, because I think a lot of people do feel that about him and wonder if he feels it in and of himself.
And I think a lot of people think he definitely will find it, you know, on the way to doing what's great for the country, because he does seem to personify what all of the people that support him believe in.
He so much is seen as their leader.
I think he needs to clean house.
that they've placed so much faith in him.
You said you think it's his toughness that makes him the person that can fix the country.
I look at it, it looks like it's in disarray.
What's the first thing you think he should do should he become the 47th president?
I think he needs to clean house.
I think we've had a permanent establishment in place of both Republicans and Democrats combining themselves with the huge defense contractors, the think tanks.
This is a permanent bureaucracy.
President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about this.
He called it the military-industrial complex.
It is an accumulation of unelected power.
Nobody elected these people.
He should have cleaned them out the first time, but he didn't know that.
And I think when he was president in his first term, these people come to you and they, first of all, they pledge their allegiance.
Secondly, they say, look, we know how this operates.
We've been operating this for years.
You know, we know how to run the FBI.
Let us run it for you.
We'll make you look good.
Well, that's fine right up until they get power.
Then once they get power, let's just point out, all of this witch hunt against Donald Trump has been run by an FBI director appointed by Donald Trump.
The Justice Department witch hunt against Donald Trump was carried out by people who were appointed to office by Donald Trump.
So you have a lot of quizlings here.
You have a lot of people whose real loyalty is not to the country but to themselves or to the permanent establishment.
He needs to clean house top to bottom.
The Defense Department, the intelligence agencies, the Justice Department.
He needs to have a White House staff I wish people are not hired on the basis of their party identification, but on the basis of their loyalty and their capability.
And I can tell you, having talked to him about this extensively, believe me, he knows it.
It's unfortunate though, but some people can be bought after a while.
You know, you might think they have loyalty, but if somebody offers them a lot, they might flip just for what they can get out of it.
How would you counsel anyone to be able to judge whether or not a person will be loyal?
And I know some people see that word loyalty as meaning you'll cover up for them.
No, that's not what's understood by loyalty.
Loyalty means that you can confide in someone, and that they've got your back all the time, when they believe in you and they think you're doing the right thing.
So how do you distinguish the people that will maintain a loyalty and people who ultimately will turn and be bought?
I think if you want to know what someone is going to do, you have to look at what they have done.
So in other words, I think past is prologue.
It's one of my roles.
And therefore, people who have done the right thing, not when it was in their best interest, but when it was in the best interest of the country, or the best interest of the whole, are the people you can trust.
People who have proven themselves previously are the people who are most likely to be trusted.
The people who betrayed Trump did not, were not Loyal to him from the beginning and then change their position because they were bribed or because there was something in it for them.
They were never for him to begin with.
So they feigned loyalty.
And to the president's, I think, to a bit to his detriment.
He put too much stock in party identity and he may have put too much stock in academic credentials and not enough stock in proven loyalty.
It is not incidental, for example, that the computerized list of everyone who worked on the Trump campaign was mysteriously lost.
It disappeared right after the campaign.
It was never found.
So for the period of the transition, there was no database of known qualified supporters to go to because, well, somebody lost that computer file.
Seems like there were a few dirty tricks going on, and yet you're the one they call the dirty trickster.
Well, one man's dirty trick is another man's civic participation.
You know, I watch the show, as I'm sure many have on Netflix, Get Me Roger Stone, because I always think if you suddenly woke up one day and you were a Democrat, they would be clamoring to get you to strategize for them, because they acknowledge that you're brilliant, they just don't agree with who you support.
Since that show was made, it ended before you went through all of your trials, which, as I said earlier, I think was kind of shades of things to come.
I never thought it would go so far as with the president.
But it has.
But you've gone through a bit of an epiphany as a result of that.
How did that change your life?
Your whole life was upturned.
I understand the FBI was in your house in the wee small hours of the morning going through everything.
You probably thought, how did this happen in America?
Well, I had a total epiphany.
I wouldn't be here at this moment, at this time, had things not unfolded the way they did.
I would have to say that even I was shocked that I would be targeted the way I was.
I think it was a combination, in all honesty, of my loyalty to Trump, my long-term loyalty to Trump, My rousing, thumping defeat of these people in multiple presidential campaigns.
Yes, I helped beat Al Gore.
Yes, I helped beat Walter Mondale.
And then perhaps my own flamboyance.
Just that's just who I am.
Sorry, but I'm not going to wear a polyester leisure suit.
Sorry, that's just not me.
I'm shocked.
Yeah, just not me.
So those things, you know, I think probably galled some people that I do things my own way.
More fun to take down.
I have this naive feeling in the beginning that, well, this is all nonsense.
I didn't do anything wrong.
I mean, surely I'll have a fair trial and have the opportunity to prove that, and this will all get straightened out.
After all, you're in America.
Yeah.
Little did I know that that was not going to happen, that in my case, the judge might as well have been the fifth prosecutor, that all my constitutional rights would be violated in the pretrial motions.
Put it this way.
The underlying premise of the charge against me is that the Russians hacked the DNC online, stole their computer files, and gave them to WikiLeaks, who gave them to the Trump campaign.
So surely I should have the opportunity to prove that none of that happened.
No, you can't prove any of that.
You're denied that ability.
Or for example, any evidence that I could produce of corruption by the special counsel's office, by the FBI, by the Department of Justice, or any member of Congress, that was inadmissible, could not be used in my defense.
I'll give you two examples.
When they sentenced me, they gave me extra time because I dared to question whether or not there was Russian collusion.
We now know there was none.
But again, the judge gave me additional time in jail because I dared to question their totally fabricated claim.
Doesn't seem like America, though, does it?
No, but that's because our justice system is deeply flawed and deeply politicized and deeply broken.
And now, the same exact guns that were turned on me are turned on Donald Trump.
So, as I have said, I was naive about having a fair trial, but a point came in my life where I realized that I was doomed.
That I wasn't going to get a fair trial.
I was gagged before I was to be lynched, so I couldn't even complain about it.
I couldn't even publicly defend myself, or that would give the judge grounds to incarcerate me immediately, even though I hadn't been convicted of anything yet.
Remember, my former partner and friend Paul Manafort spent 18 months in solitary confinement prior to being convicted of any crime.
And just so you understand what that's like, that's sleeping on a wet cement floor in a cubicle of a room with no blanket and no pillow and a bucket for a toilet.
18 months of that.
Now they move you around to different facilities, but none is better than the last.
That's the kind of treatment that they put you to.
You say, how can this happen in America?
Well, it's happening today.
So I had an opportunity.
I reached the point where I hit rock bottom.
I was drinking too much.
I was angry.
I was depressed, I was scared, not so much for myself, but for my wife.
And your wife was having some health issues at the time.
Well, actually those crop up early, but my wife is 75 and of hard of hearing.
She was my rock during the trial.
She's the one who kept saying, don't give up your faith, put your faith in God.
I wasn't very good at listening in the beginning.
But the time came when I was distraught, and I was depressed, and I was drinking too much, and I was angry, and I was fearful.
And then a very young pastor named Randy Coggins, who's in his 20s, very, very dynamic pastor, convinced me to take a meeting with Franklin Graham.
Now, when I was much younger, I was working for Richard Nixon.
I had the opportunity to meet Billy Graham, and he signed a Bible for me, which I still have.
He was a very great man.
He could have been one of the greatest men of the 20th century without any question.
So I was still thinking like a politician, you know.
So I got this meeting with Franklin Graham.
I explained my situation to him.
And I told him, you know, that it'd be great if he could put in a few words for me with the president in terms of executive clemency.
And he said, well, I'll see what I can do about that.
But in the meantime, let me give you a much better piece of advice.
And I said, okay, and he said, now is the time for you to turn your life over to Christ.
Now is your time to unload this entire burden with Him, confess your sins, get right with the Lord, call for His mercy, and I believe He will lift you up.
I believe He will deliver you from your persecutors.
I've known other men in your situation, and they have done this to great effect.
And I think if you are sincere in doing this, Everything will turn around.
And I was not immediately convinced.
We went to a revival that was, you know, steps away.
And Reverend Graham had seats for us up front.
And he came to the point in his oration where he said, I don't care if your problem is alcoholism or drug addiction or gambling addiction or health problems or family problems.
The Lord will lift you up.
The Lord will save you.
But you have to confess your sins.
You have to get right with the Lord and pledge to walk in His way.
And therefore, those who want to spend eternity with our Heavenly Father in Heaven, stand up now and confess your sins and pledge to sin no more.
And at that moment, this feeling came over me.
It's almost hard to explain.
But I stood up with 200 other Christians in this field.
And it was the most natural thing I've ever felt.
It was just, you know, I wasn't ashamed, I wasn't embarrassed, I wasn't hesitant.
It just, it happened.
Did you feel a lessening of the burden?
Immediately!
It was like having cement blocks taken off your shoulders.
As soon as I confessed my sins and pledged to walk with the Lord, everything in my life changed.
When I got home, My wife said, what happened to you?
You were almost suicidal when you left here this morning and now you've got a bounce in your step.
And I said, honey, you know what?
Everything's going to be okay.
She said, that's not what you were saying this morning.
I said, everything's changed.
Now this was a Saturday.
The following Monday we learned that the forewoman in my case Uh, who had insisted during jury selection and during the trial that she never heard of me and didn't know who I was and knew nothing about the case, had actually been attacking me on Twitter and Facebook during jury selection and in the year prior to the case, but had kept those postings on a private setting so nobody could see them.
And while that did not, it should have gotten a reversal of my conviction, it didn't, it should have, it did, I think, put the lie to their entire case.
The Lord revealed that.
That's how that got revealed.
So it changed my life in every way.
Now, I like to say, and it's still true to this day, in this process, the first thing they do is destroy you financially to put pressure on you to cooperate and lie under oath.
So we lost our home, our savings, most of our insurance, my ability to make a living because I couldn't write or speak.
I was gagged.
I couldn't even travel without That's just mean.
of the judge.
I asked for permission to go to the funeral of one of my oldest friends who was denied.
That's just mean.
I was asked for permission to travel to Ohio for the birth of my first and only great grandson.
It was denied.
It really, so we lost everything materially, but we gained so much more spiritually.
So I guess, as hard as it may seem, the whole process was actually worth it in a way.
Because I now realize there's nothing you can do to me.
If God is with us, who can be against us?
That you cannot lose with the Lord, because it doesn't matter what they do to you in this life, what matters is the next life, the eternal life.
But you are back.
You're back and you are, I know, what is your position now with President Trump?
Because I know that you're close with him.
I still have an informal position.
I sit on a board of wise men working on election integrity issues and other strategic issues.
I travel with them occasionally.
I speak to him fairly often.
I have a very high level of confidence in the people he has selected to run this campaign.
They're really excellent.
They're people I've known for 30 and 40 years.
These are very different than the people who ran his previous campaign, I might add.
I'm obviously doing a daily show myself.
I know, you have to watch Roger's podcast.
StoneZone.live, which is really Rumble, is our principal platform, our strongest platform.
You've done a show, so you know how much work that is.
I'm also doing a two-hour radio show every Sunday afternoon, WABC in New York, which is the most powerful AM radio station.
In the United States.
And that's a challenge.
One of the things that you already knew and I didn't know is it's much harder to interview people than it is to be interviewed.
I never knew that.
It's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work.
But, you know, all is well.
I don't aspire to go into the White House.
I don't want a government job.
I just want Trump to win to save this country.
That's all I really want.
If you were called back to duty, would what's happened to you, your epiphany, your faith now, would it change the way you do things?
They'd still be calling you the dirty trickster, but would your approach be different?
See, I don't fight with people anymore.
In other words, if you want to call me obscene names on social media, I don't fight with you, I just block you.
One of the things that I find almost amusing is nothing enrages them more than when you say that you were redeemed in the blood of the Lord.
That drives them completely insane.
They will say they don't believe you.
They will try to say it's a dirty trick.
Right, well we get some of that.
So what I find, and sadly this happens all the time, in public situations When people start screaming obscenities at you.
In the old days, I would scream obscenities back at them.
But now when I say to them, you're so misguided, I'm going to pray for you.
That makes them apoplectic.
It really drives them crazy.
It throws them right off balance.
It really does.
Well, Roger, your book, Stone's Rules, How to Win at Politics, Business and Style, it's really a great read and you can read it in little bite-sized sections.
You've got to pick it up.
You talk a lot about style.
I mean, look, I think a great place, I've said, I'd love to go sit Front row sometime at a New York Fashion Week, looking at men's fashion with you.
Because, Roger, you are the epitome of style.
Do you ever speak to the President about style?
Because I know he's always got his suit on, his uniform, he's always dressed for the job.
Except when he's on the golf course, of course.
Well, but even on the golf course, you've never seen him in a pair of shorts.
Oh, no.
The only time you see him in shorts is when he plays tennis, and he occasionally plays tennis.
But he has a uniform that really works for him.
He's very broad-shouldered.
He's very tall.
He favors Brioni suits.
He always has.
He invented the red power tie.
He invented the right power tie.
You almost never see him in a striped shirt.
He's always in a solid color shirt, usually white.
It's his signature look.
But you're right.
It's very rare you see him without a jacket and tie unless he's playing golf.
And that was also true in the office as well.
One thing people never knew, interestingly enough, about Ronald Reagan was he would never take off his jacket in the Oval Office.
So if he was working in the Oval Office, he was always wearing his suit jacket because he said it would be disrespectful to the country to take off his jacket.
That's how much he revered the office of the presidency and the institution.
Roger, we have to see your cuffs.
We have to see, and I don't mean fisticuffs, I mean his cuffs.
Look at this.
So, this is a very old world thing that almost nobody does anymore, but cuffs on a men's suit, which, you know, when I went to a tailor and said I wanted to have this particular effect, they said, oh, well, nobody does that anymore.
Beautiful.
Well, I do.
I mean, look, these trousers, I saw these on the cover of Life Magazine from 1938.
They were being worn by Cab Calloway.
They're very full cut.
A great trouser begins at the shoulder, you'd say.
Yeah, I read in your book that the belts, they'll ruin the way your trousers hang.
Right, so you want your trousers to hang properly.
Very few men care about these things anymore.
I care about them.
Look good, feel good, is my motto.
Who do you think some of the best-dressed men are?
Tell me just a couple and the best-dressed women in the world, international women that you think are well-dressed.
That's almost impossible today.
So for 13 years I picked up the tradition of Mr. Blackwell.
And on New Year's Day, I produce a list of the best and worst dressed men in the world.
And it's getting harder and harder because people today think clothing is just disposable.
You wear it once, you throw it out, and that's it.
So Larry Kudlow, for example, who was the president's economic advisor, then later at CNBC, now at WABC radio as well.
Clearly one of the best dressed men in the world.
There is nobody better dressed than Melania Trump.
Yeah, we were talking earlier how stunning she looked on Pennsylvania Avenue that day in that Ralph Lauren outfit, that blue outfit.
It was like, I need that outfit, I want those shoes.
She's always perfectly dressed and she's always perfectly dressed for the activity in which she is going to engage.
So the outfit she wore to Africa, The outfit she wore to India, for which, you know, the fashion press here trashed her.
She looked amazing.
I know.
The sad part of that was a lot of us would have liked to have seen more of her, you know, and she just wasn't on the covers like I thought that she would be.
And maybe we'll get another shot at this.
Well, it proves that politics infects everything, and that's the problem.
Melania Trump should be on the cover of Vogue because she's a gracious, dignified, cultured, educated, kind, gentle First Lady who's done great work for her country.
But it's politically incorrect because we don't like her husband, so we won't acknowledge how wonderful she is.
I just find that tragically wrong.
That is wrong.
Can you tell us one thing, just as we come to our closing comments, one thing about President Trump that we don't know, that would be good to know?
Because, you know, I feel a lot of times when he's interviewed, there's a whole lot of things that I'd like to know more about him, and he's very good at making sure he sticks with what he needs to say, and it's important, but I'd like to know something more about the man.
Let's see.
Well, first of all, he eats his steak well done, which I think is an enormous mistake.
There's one thing.
But secondarily, it's hard to even get him to take an aspirin.
He's very, very anti-drug.
He's never had an alcoholic drink in his life, not even a glass of wine.
Right.
Never even had it in his hand.
He's never smoked a cigarette.
He's never even had a cigarette in his hand.
He's very, very clean living.
And he's an amazing athlete.
I mean, he's an extraordinary athlete, even at 77 years old.
He's an incredible individual.
Tremendous figure for sure.
One other thing I learned about you getting ready for this is that you're a real animal lover.
Yes.
You are, and you do stuff for animal welfare.
Tell me a little bit about the bond.
You have a dog, right?
We have had nine Yorkshire Terriers in our marriage.
We have two right now, Mimi and Peewee.
And I kind of went to war against these underhanded dog breeders who were basically running puppy mills.
And they were selling people these genetically very sick dogs at ridiculous, you know, $6,000, $7,000, $8,000.
Of course, people fall in love with how cute the dogs are.
And I continued to filed complaints against these people and so on in Fort Lauderdale, and the shop would close over here, and then it would pop up over here under a different name, but it was always the same people.
I continue in this fight.
This is something I feel very strongly about.
Jesus Christ loved animals.
It's in the Bible.
We are to love animals and treat them kindly.
We've had nine Yorkshire Terriers.
They're like my little babies.
Okay.
Loves animals, supports animal welfare.
Fabulous dresser.
And a friend of my favorite president of all time.
Roger, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you.
Just absolutely a pleasure to share faith with you.
Thanks so much for being my guest today.
Colleen, thank you.
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