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Feb. 14, 2024 - The StoneZONE - Roger Stone
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Historian and Author Lord Conrad Black Discusses Trump, USA, and Canada—The StoneZONE w/ Roger Stone
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The Stone Zone with legendary Republican strategist and political icon and pundit Roger Stone.
Stone has served as a senior campaign aide to three Republican presidents.
He is a New York Times best-selling author and a longtime friend and advisor of President Donald Trump.
As an outspoken libertarian, Stone has appeared on thousands of broadcasts, spoken at countless venues, and lectured before the prestigious Oxford Political Union and the Cambridge Union Society.
Due to his four-plus decades in the political and cultural arena, Stone has become a pop culture icon.
And now, here's your host, Roger Stone!
Welcome, I'm Roger Stone, and yes, you are back in the Stone Zone.
We have an extraordinary program for you today because we will be joined by historian, author, businessman, columnist, And citizen of the world, Lord Conrad Black.
Lord Black has written two award-winning biographies, one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also one of Richard Nixon.
He's also written an extraordinary book on Donald Trump.
I'm very anxious to get his current viewpoint on both American and Canadian politics and the world situation.
So this is going to be a very important interview.
I'm very honored to have him.
So stay tuned for that.
To join me now for a quick roundup of the political events overnight is independent journalist with Liberty Forward, my good friend Troy Smith.
Roger, it's an honor to be here on.
On top of the news last night that Alejandra Mayorkas, the DHS Secretary, was impeached by the House.
A vote of 214 to 213.
Interested to hear your thoughts right off the bat on that.
Well, you know, I think the Speaker Johnson is redeemed in two folds.
One, the courageous act of refusing to pass a $92 million appropriation for Israel.
Taiwan and Ukraine because it is not tied to any action to seal our border.
That's an act of courage.
And now, finally, the House has impeached Mr. Mayorkas, which I think we both recognize while the odds of his conviction in the Senate are very slim, this is an important symbolic act.
The Democrats knew when they impeached Donald Trump.
Uh, that they were not going to get a conviction in the Senate, although with their handmaidens in the fake news media, they certainly tried.
Uh, and I think it is unlikely, I think you need two thirds actually, uh, to, uh, impeach Mayorkas in the Senate.
Uh, this is, I think, uh, an important symbol of the complete failure, uh, of his policies and the lies he has told the American people because as you know, Troy,
He has insisted for months that despite what we see with our own eyes, or the statistics that demonstrate the horrific impact of his policies on the country in terms of fentanyl abuse, the crime epidemic, and the hemorrhaging of our cities and counties and states who seek to pay for the social welfare costs of the illegals, that our border was secure.
So I think it is an amazing act of courage.
Here's Congresswoman Sheila Jackson of Texas for a little comic relief.
Tonight we did a foolish thing, and that is to pass an impeachment of a very qualified and effective Secretary of Homeland Security.
Do your job, Mr. Secretary.
Do not be impacted, Secretary Mayorkas, by this false attempt to diminish you.
Help us as we work toward making the border safe.
I correct myself, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.
I'm not sure exactly what planet she lives on, to call Mr. Mayorkas effective.
One of the things I find most objectionable about Secretary Mayorkas is we learned yesterday that he personally is the official who rejected the request for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
for Secret Service protection.
Now, I am not a supporter of Mr. Kennedy.
I'm not an advisor of Mr. Kennedy.
Despite what a number of demented people on the internet may say, met the man once in my life.
I like a few of his public positions.
He has other positions I vehemently disagree with.
However, I do think, not only given the history of having both an uncle and a father gunned down in public service, and the exceptional number of threats
that Mr. Kennedy says he has received, plus an incident at one of his public events in which a man was actually apprehended wearing a fake badge and who was armed, what we don't need is the murder of a presidential candidate.
But Mr. Mayorkas, despite the fact that Mr. Kennedy qualifies in every legal sense, he He is a legal candidate for president.
He has reached the threshold of funds to be considered such.
He is eligible under federal law for Secret Service protection, but this administration fails to give it to him.
I think for two reasons.
One, because they know that it places an extraordinary financial burden on his campaign that must pay to keep him safe.
But also, secondarily, in some demented sense, I think that they believe it connotes a certain seriousness or viability to his candidacy.
Once again, not a supporter of Mr. Kennedy, but I do pray for his safety, as I pray for the safety of President Biden, as I pray for the safety of Donald Trump and his family.
I lived through the Kennedy assassination, both of them, as well as the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.
We do not need that or want that in America today.
Troy, you did some digging on those who voted against the impeachment of Mr. Mayorkas.
What did you learn?
Well, Roger, it's really important to remember that you look at Mike Johnson and you look at what he's accused of being, and that is being a supporter of the America First agenda.
And if you listen to the Democrats, that's exactly what they say.
And we saw 214 Republicans side with him yesterday in deciding to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas.
Now, there were three Republicans who didn't go along with it, Tom McClintock, Ken Buck, and Mike Gallagher.
And digging into the campaign finance data of these individuals, I found some pretty alarming stuff.
And we have some of it we're going to put up here.
Richard Uline, who is a huge donor in Republican circles and even has some questionable donations, I think.
You look at his donations to Ron DeSantis, I want them to put up Ron DeSantis' donations from Uline.
He's put $1.5 million into never back down going into the 2024 election, Roger.
So you have to ask yourself, Ken Buck Who's supported by this Richard Ulein, who's one of his top donors, just happens to have connections to Ron DeSantis to the tune of 1.5 million dollars.
And also looking at some of the other people like McClintock, we had a video of him defending Kevin McCarthy and going into Mike Gallagher, we saw tremendous donors that supported Protect the House.
Now this is all detailed in my report on LaunchLiberty.com that people can check out.
But the main problem here is, Roger, that we have Republican establishment donors supporting these candidates who just happen to vote against Mayorkas or with the Democrats to vote against the impeachment of Mayorkas.
It shows that there is a definitive Trump element, America first element to the Republican Party, but there are still these nefarious donors who will try to sink things like the impeachment of Mayorkas.
It's very interesting that you say that.
first agenda.
And I think it's important for people to understand how this money works, who is behind these things.
And the fact that DeSantis and McCarthy are very closely linked to some of the top donors of all of these people who voted against the impeachment, I think says a lot.
It's very interesting that you say that.
Last night, I was on with Laura Loomer on her Rumble-based program, Laura Loomer Unleashed, I guess Loomer Unleashed.
We started at 10 o'clock At 11:30 we were still talking.
I was pretty much punch drunk, but it was a great political discussion.
And we highlighted the fact that not only is Nikki Haley staying in this race long past the period in which she has any reasonable prospect to be nominated, But Ron DeSantis has never actually endorsed Donald Trump.
Endorsed as in, I support Donald Trump, I urge people to vote for Donald Trump.
What he said was, he conceded, rather bitterly, that a majority of Republican primary voters, and indeed Republicans, favor the renomination of Donald Trump.
Now, what the governor of Florida is doing, rather than focusing on the state insurance crisis, The state's utility rate crisis, the creeping crime rates, which are actually, there's a higher murder rate in Jacksonville than there is in Los Angeles.
Instead of focusing on these very important state issues, he's decided to start opining on federal issues.
He's now beating the drum for a constitutional amendment for a balanced budget.
He's talking about term limits.
I'm copacetic with all those things, but he's running essentially a shadow campaign for president.
He's letting us know that he's available.
That's what I think that is all about.
Well, Roger, and we talked about this too, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis have different approaches here.
Nikki Haley is kind of out in front, still having her candidacy, and Ron DeSantis, I believe, and many others too, is hiding in the grass, waiting for a possible Trump indictment, waiting for him to drop out of the race so that he can reassert himself and try to come back into this race.
I think it's important for people to understand, and it's important for people to understand that the same people funding DeSantis will also be the ones that are moving into I appreciate that.
We're going to take a very quick commercial break, and when we come back, our esteemed guest, historian, author, businessman, columnist, and citizen of the world, Lord Conrad Black, will join us.
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All right, now it is my distinct honor and pleasure to introduce our next guest.
Lord Conrad Black is a historian, author, businessman, columnist, and, well, citizen of the world.
It is an extreme honor to have him join us today in the Stone Zone.
Roger, the honor is mine.
I've been an admirer of yours for many years, so thank you for having me on.
I almost don't know where to start.
You and I have a number of things in common.
I've written two books on Richard Nixon, but you, sir, have written the definitive book on Richard Nixon, your book, A Life in Full.
When young people ask me if I want to recommend one book on Richard Nixon above all, it is your book that I consistently recommend.
Thank you.
Prior to the publication of your terrific book on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom, my favorite book was James McGregor Burns the Lion and the Fox, but you even have superseded that.
So my hat is off to you.
I'm kind of like you, that rare conservative who has an appreciation for FDR.
Some of my friends give me a lot of crap about it, but so be it.
He was a great leader.
So here's a good place to start, Lord Black.
The breaking news today that the United States intelligence agencies, principally the Central Intelligence Agency, was involved with British intelligence in essentially spying on 26 associates of President Donald Trump.
I am among them.
The New York Times reported On January 20th of 2017, the very day of President Trump's inauguration, that I was one of three individuals under surveillance for my contacts with the Russians, with whom I had no contacts.
The New York Times has never retracted that.
The government vehemently denied it in discovery.
Parts of this we knew.
Parts of it had been speculated about.
What is your assessment of these new developments?
Well, I think it's all part of this process.
And by the way, I defer to you.
You've been in the front lines of that.
It's like James Joyce's description of the confession, you know, in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
The details of the politicization of the intelligence services and the FBI and other parts of the Justice Department, in Joyce's phrase, oozes out sluggish and filthy.
We get a little more of it all the time, and the sooner it's all out there, we know all of it, the better.
I mean, these are just chapters in the lengthening book, What Not to Do and What Not to Tolerate Happening Ever Again, to anybody, any party.
And it's a shocking story, and it is, I'm sure, even more galling to you than it is to me to have so much of the media consumed with discussions of President Trump's ethics and the legality of his actions when his opponents have assaulted the Constitution.
I mean, if in Canada or Britain the leader of the opposition was indicted on ridiculous charges like Like the president, the ex-president, is facing.
It would be seen everywhere in the world as the end of democracy in that country.
And look, it's shocking, except we're beyond being shocked, especially you and anyone who saw the miniature reenactment of the Normandy landings conducted at your house in Fort Lauderdale, I believe.
would know that the whole thing is just completely out of control.
And, I mean, it seems to have abated somewhat, but that is an augy and stable that the next president is going to have to clean out.
Well, actually, I guess I would argue that the witch hunts against Donald Trump by certain elements of government and the deep state...
Who are supposed to be nonpolitical.
Exactly.
They continue really unabated.
The irony here, since you have written a terrific biography of Richard Nixon and have a broad appreciation of Watergate, is of course that compared to Watergate, Obamagate, which is what we call it, Is the greatest single dirty trick in American political history.
There's no evidence that Mr. Nixon himself, even after 50 years, there's no evidence that he himself committed, I mean serious evidence, committed any crimes.
Because he admitted he made mistakes and some of his subalterns committed crimes, but he didn't.
And yet he's still, he's been so smeared that he's still It's getting better as it does as time passes, and people see what an outstanding president he was.
But he's still been pilloried so severely that he's, to many people, synonymous with wrongdoing.
But what's gone on here?
You call it Obamagate, but Biden's not innocent, and neither are the Clintons.
It's been an absolutely shocking corruption of large elements of the Justice Department and the intelligence services.
And, you know, you can't do that in a democracy.
I mean, you can't make a habit of it and keep it as a democracy.
Well, in this particular case, it's pretty clear to me that Barack Obama and Joe Biden, who was in the room, and their FBI director, their CIA director, their national security advisor, and others, were engaged in nothing less than an abusive power in which were engaged in nothing less than an abusive power in which they used the full legal authority of the United States and the extraordinary capabilities of our intelligence agencies, using what they knew was completely fabricated evidence, the Steele dossier,
using what they knew was completely fabricated evidence, the Steele dossier, and a false claim that the Russians had performed an online hack of the Democratic National Committee to justify and You can go back now and look at Leslie Stahl insisting that there's no evidence that Trump was spied on.
In fact, there's overwhelming evidence.
My good friend, Judge Andrew Napolitano, one of the first people in America to make the connection between British intelligence and the Russiagate hoax, was pilloried for it, was excoriated for it.
Talked to him this morning.
He feels now entirely exonerated.
Good.
Yeah, look, you're absolutely right.
I mean, even things that aren't technically illegal, but James Clapper padding around the entire world on the overpaid lecture circuit, announcing as a matter of fact, like saying, you know, Washington is the capital of the United States, that Well, again, the two-tiered justice system works.
an intelligence asset.
The then sitting president of the country was an intelligence asset of Russia.
It's not illegal, but it's totally improper conduct for the former holder of that office.
Well, again, the two-tiered justice system works.
So Mr. Clapper, as you know, lied to Congress under oath about whether we indeed had a program to track the metadata of Americans.
Michael Hayden, also in the national security apparatus, also purged himself.
Of course, neither one of these men were classified.
So did John Brennan.
John Brennan did too.
No, it's scandalous.
Look, Comey, and again, we're reciting to each other things that we know well, and you better than I, and most of your listeners would know it as well.
James Comey, I believe, said 245 times under oath, I don't recall, about things that happened in his term as director of the FBI.
And these were matters not from 50 years ago, from a few months before, and he didn't recall any of them.
I mean, where was the media attention to that?
Excellent point.
Actually, it never hurts to repeat these things because here is the enduring quality of the America Left.
It doesn't matter how many times one of their assertions is debunked or completely discredited.
Just wait a few days and they'll recycle it yet again as if that information was never made public.
They do it again and again and again.
It's extraordinarily annoying.
Oh, Roger Stone was in communications with the GRU to coordinate the release of the WikiLeaks material.
No, Roger Stone had an innocuous Twitter direct message exchange with the persona of Guccifer 2.0 three months after WikiLeaks had already published all of the DNC and Hillary Clinton material, and the content of that exchange, which was extremely limited, is entirely benign.
But you won't find that reported by the New York Times or the Washington Post or any of the other legacy media.
Let's talk for a moment about Canada.
I have many friends in Canada, many patriots in Canada, many believers in liberty.
They are, I think, pretty downhearted about the current authoritarian regime in power in Canada.
Is there hope for Canada?
Yes, great hope.
All the polls indicate that the opposition will win the next election, which will be next year.
And the political tradition in Canada has been the Liberals win more elections than the Conservatives because of their historically superior position in Quebec.
But at the worst, every four or five elections, the Conservatives come in and laterally they've When they've come in, they've stayed for at least a couple of terms.
Brad Mulroney did, and Stephen Harper did.
And the last—I'm giving you more detail than you or your listeners want—but the last Canadian leader who won four consecutive elections was Wilfrid Laurier, and that was more than a century ago.
And this man, Justin Trudeau, he's a very nice guy.
I've known him since he was a little boy, because I knew his father quite well.
He's a perfectly nice person, but he's not, in the opinion of most Canadians, he's not a competent prime minister.
And if he stands for a fourth term, he's not going to get it.
And your assessment of the leader of the opposition, Mr. Paul Veera?
I've known him a long time.
He's a young man, but he's a six-term MP.
He came in in his early 20s.
I've known him all that time.
I think he will be an absolutely outstanding Prime Minister.
I think if your voters come to their senses this November, and ours come to their senses next year, we will have good government throughout North America, north of Mexico.
I watched a terrific interview with him while he was munching on an apple and he completely demolished some antagonistic reporter.
It was one of the greatest things I've ever seen.
I don't know him well, but his skill as a communicator was really extraordinary.
Roger, what he's going to do is he's going to sell conservatism.
I mean, everything's to scale, but a little bit the way Thatcher and Reagan did.
As the conservatives have often done in the past in this country, well, we'll do pretty much the same as the liberals, but we'll do it better.
I mean, if people want liberals, they'll get real liberals and not pretend liberals.
He's going to sell conservatism as liberty, more liberty for you, and particularly more liberty to do what you want with the money you earn.
It'll sell, it'll work, and it'll be a seismic change in the politics of this country.
I pray that you are right.
Otherwise, it appears to me like Canada is on a completely authoritarian track.
I mean, the idea that those involved in peaceful protest against the vaccinations have their banking cut off or harassed by the government.
It's scandalous, but all of the latest court hearings on that have produced the judgment that the Prime Minister was unjustified in invoking the Emergencies Act.
So, in Canada, the judiciary has said things right.
They haven't abdicated the way, if you don't mind me saying so, the judiciary did in the United States over the unconstitutional changes to the voting and vote counting methods in the last election.
They just wouldn't hear the cases.
But here, we finally got into a serious court, and the government has been rebuked, and it's a severe embarrassment for it.
Troy, do you have a question for Lord Black?
Yes, absolutely.
So we hear so much about Canada's connection with China and that relationship.
I'd like you to speak on that real quickly and Trudeau's kind of welcoming in China.
There's even been reports that Chinese military are training inside of Canada, and I'd like you to speak on that.
Yeah, I think that's a little overstated, but it is a matter of widespread concern in this country that it has come to light that the Chinese have intervened in Canadian elections.
You know, there are here, as in your country, but I think it's a higher percentage of the population here, a good many people of Chinese ancestry, and many of them have family in China.
And it is apparently the policy of the government of the People's Republic to lean on these people's relatives in China and say, look here, you do this for us and you tell us this and you do whatever it is, or your relatives in China are going to pay for your non-cooperation.
And so we're finally getting to the bottom of how this is going on.
And there's certainly a consensus in the country that we can't stand for this.
So I think You know, what China has done in Canada at times has been utterly scandalous, and I think our response has been late and insufficient.
I'll give you an example.
Huawei, I'm not maybe pronouncing it right, the famous telecommunications company, they went from nowhere to one of the leaders in the world by industrial espionage against our company, Northern Telecom.
They had extensive facilities in The State of Tennessee.
It was a Canadian company.
And eventually they went bankrupt because everything was stolen by Huawei.
And so the Canadian Ministry of Defense bought their headquarters.
And when they bought it, they went through it.
Every single room in the place was bugged.
And, you know, our government never made the proper Remonstrations against the Chinese for what they've done.
And, you know, the Chinese just say, well, it's not us.
The government of China says, nothing to do with us, you know.
I mean, if our businessmen have misbehaved, it's up to you to deal with it.
But there is not—let me put it this way.
China has taken liberties here, and the Canadians don't like it.
So the problem isn't appeasement or complicity or complacency is we were late getting to the subject, but we're getting to it.
And there's a consensus across the entire political spectrum that we simply can't tolerate such things.
We are going to take a quick, crass commercial break.
And when we come back, we're going to talk to Lord Conrad Black about his new book, The Political and Strategic History of the World, Volume 1, From Antiquity to the Caesars in 14 AD.
Talk about an extraordinary undertaking.
We're also going to talk to him about the 2024 U.S.
presidential election.
His assessment of what's going on there.
Also going to get his personal analysis of the unique Donald J. Trump.
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Returning now with Lord Conrad Black, financier, historian, author, businessman, columnist, truly citizen of the world.
It is a great honor to have us back in the Stone Zone.
Lord Black, tell me your assessment of the 2024 presidential race going on here in the country, specifically reaction to this bombshell report by Joe Biden's own Justice Department.
No, not by some group of Republicans, but his own Justice Department.
I don't want to be flippant here.
suffering from cognitive decline, and therefore he cannot stand trial for what they confirmed was the willful and illegal retention of certain top secret and classified documents that, as vice president, he was actually never entitled and therefore he cannot stand trial for what they confirmed was the willful and illegal I don't want to be flippant here.
Obviously, we're talking about terribly important and complicated things.
But basically, I think it will ultimately be one of the, and seem to be one of the great positive watersheds in the development of American democracy, that more people in the country are scandalized at the corruption that more people in the country are scandalized at the corruption that we were speaking of earlier, the politicization of the justice system and the intelligence agencies
...than are offended by the vagaries of President Trump's personality.
And I think in the end you will have Trump re-elected, and not in as close a race as many people seem to think, because a good many people who have some reservations about him, or at least a lack of enthusiasm for him, are seriously outraged at the liberties the Democrats have taken.
With the supposedly non-political justice system and intelligence services.
And on this latest revelation about the condition of the current president, it seems to me that this is another indication that the powers that be within the Democratic Party, the elders of that party, are in full panic mode in order to ease the president into the view that he really should stand aside and not seek re-election.
They're even sabotaging their own technique of these spurious indictments of Trump, because the conclusion that you described from Mr. Herr, the special prosecutor for Biden and the document retention issue, has, it seems to me, made it a lot easier for President Trump to
Explain that the indictment of him and the same subject was, you know, is not something that is justified.
And, you know, the Democrats, it looks to me like the powers that be in that party are really resorting to extraordinary measures to try and convince President Biden that he should not seek re-election.
But, you know, if they think they're going to Biden is nothing if not stubborn, and his wife very clearly likes her position, even though I think she's often wearing the tablecloth or kitchen curtains.
the country will expect the Democratic Party to pay for the shambles that they've made of government in the last three years.
Biden is nothing if not stubborn, and his wife very clearly likes her position, even though I think she's often wearing the tablecloth or kitchen curtains.
I'm not sure from where she makes up her wardrobe.
So, but great.
They very much like the position.
Joe Biden has always been delusional about the fact that he's some kind of Kennedy.
You saw it in his press conference.
He's a very angry man.
First of all, he's always been that way.
It's interesting because, I don't know, maybe a year and a half ago, Senator Lindsey Graham actually mused that, well, even if you don't like his politics, you have to admit that Joe Biden's a nice guy.
I actually know a number of people who know him.
I know a number of Democrats who served with him in the U.S.
Senate.
Not a single one would describe him as a nice guy.
Most would describe him as a sanctimonious prick, as a matter of fact.
But you saw how he gets his back up.
I mean, he actually believes.
That he's the most qualified person in the country to be president.
Who else could have done the things that I've done?
Like what?
Record inflation?
The country is on the cusp of World War III and at least two theaters now.
These unemployment numbers are entirely cooked.
They're not real.
Millions and millions of illegal entrants.
No, I mean, he said in that press conference, he said, I put the country back in its feet.
What is he talking about?
Skyrocketing crime rate, 8 million or so illegal migrants, chaos in the world.
I mean, a debacle in Afghanistan.
And as you say, the economic performance is such that almost nobody in the country is as well off today as they were three years ago.
I mean, is that putting the country back in its feet?
I would have thought not.
Developments today out of the House Oversight Committee, where Hunter Biden's former business partner, Bobulinski, has testified behind closed doors that the 10 percent earmarked for the big guy is, in fact, has testified behind closed doors that the 10 percent earmarked for the The media here tries to continue to pretend, well, Hunter may have problems, maybe they involve Brother Jimmy, but that, of course, has nothing to do with Joe Biden.
I'm a little perplexed at House Republicans, whose margin is dwindling as we speak.
They dropped a by-election, a special election yesterday.
Where they nominated a woman who is both not a registered Republican and not a supporter of Donald Trump.
And they got the Country Club Republican vote out for her, but the poll showed that in the same district, if Biden and Trump were rematched, Trump would have won.
It's a Long Island, New York district, but the candidate we nominated, instead of embracing the titular and overwhelmingly popular head of the party, ran from him.
Wouldn't even say that she voted for him.
And then the party leaders wonder why we lost that election.
Again, Just what we've seen in the House Oversight Committee hearings and what they have produced publicly, there's more than enough evidence to bring articles of impeachment against Joe Biden.
There's certainly more than there ever was to justify the two impeachments of Donald Trump.
Now, while I'm very happy that the Speaker is not going to approve this massive Spending bill for Israel, Ukraine and Israel because it doesn't meet his criteria of doing something meaningful about border security and the symbolic act of impeaching.
It just seems to me, despite the fact that it's unlikely you would get a conviction, I do not understand why Joe Biden is not being held to the same standard as Donald Trump.
Speaking of Donald Trump, you know him.
You've known him for a long time.
You wrote a terrific book about him.
I've known him for 45 years.
I have a very hard time explaining him to people, trying to get people to see the real Donald Trump.
Your observations on this unique human being?
I've known him about 25 years, and I would say Let me offer you this thought.
I think that he achieved more prior to being inaugurated president than any other holder in history of that office, except those who contributed vitally to the founding of the country and its institutions, who would be Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, and those who Successfully commanded great armies in just wars.
That would be Grant and Eisenhower.
So, next to them, and perhaps Herbert Hoover for the aid work he conducted in Europe at the end of the First World War, building a worldwide engineering firm.
Apart from those people, Donald Trump achieved more before he was inaugurated president than anybody else.
And he is a well-educated man, a very accomplished man, not only as a businessman and as a television personality, but as a political craftsman.
I mean, he developed this technique of translating celebrity into election to the highest office.
You know, as you know, he changed parties seven times in 13 years, looking and waiting for his moment.
And then when he announced his seeking the Republican nomination in 2015, the entire commentary had split their sides laughing, thinking this was going to be the most hilarious fiasco in the history of American politics.
And, of course, he was elected.
He is a historical phenomenon, and he is a remarkably talented person.
Now, you know, I accept that there are certain infelicities to his public personality for that office.
But in fact, he was an excellent president, particularly given the completely unprecedented harassments, furious harassments he was subjected to, the nonsense about collusion with Russia, complete fiction as we know now, and the two ludicrous impeachments.
And despite that, he was, as anyone can see, in contrasting the United States today with what it was when he was president.
He was a very, very successful president.
I think he will very likely be back as president.
And unlike any other president in the history of the country who's had two terms, I think a second term will be more successful than his first.
And so I personally, as you know, he's a delightful man.
He's a loyal friend.
Fine raconteur, and a very entertaining person to have dinner with and so on.
But, I mean, as a statesman, he's a very considerable figure, and he's been systematically underestimated, but not, in my opinion, by the public.
I think, despite the tremendous biases towards and in favor of the left in the media, And, you know, the entertainment world, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, everybody, frankly, except the people.
He clearly is a man of outstanding ability, and I think his time is coming around again, and I hope it is.
We have about 10 more minutes, and we'll get you out the door.
Very much appreciate your coming into the Stone Zone today.
I often say that people just really don't understand how extraordinarily tough Donald Trump is.
Now, I worked with Richard Nixon, a very tough customer, a guy who clawed himself back from political oblivion to the greatest comeback in American political history.
A man who survived Watergate to reemerge as a statesman, advising both Republican and Democratic presidents after him on the fine points of foreign policy.
I was watching the long interview, which I thought was quite excellent, with my friend Tucker Carlson, with Vladimir Putin.
And I thought about how Richard Nixon would have immediately recognized the lost opportunities for peace under the neocons.
Trump is tougher than Nixon.
I also worked for Senator Bob Dole as his assistant in the U.S.
Senate for two years.
One of the greatest men of the 20th century.
Would have been a great president.
A man who was told after being very severely injured in World War II that, well, you'll never walk again.
You'll never have the use of your hands again.
You'll never function normally.
You'll have to be fed.
Donald Trump actually refused to accept that, nursed himself back to total functionality, with the exception of one bad arm.
Donald Trump is tougher than both of them, and they were both very tough guys.
Yes.
Given that he's looked at the potential for 600 years in jail, looking for the fact that his enemies are adamant about trying to lock him up.
He still amazes me in terms of how his mood is so good.
I mean, he is determined, he's resolute, he's eminently confident.
A lesser man, I just think, would have folded under this pressure.
I couldn't agree more.
And furthermore, let me put this to you.
The Trump that the Trump haters hate.
I mean, that was never the real Trump anyway, but this conception of him as a braggart and a bully and a blowhard and so on, which was unjust and was magnified by his opponents, but it must be said that at times he made it easy for them.
That isn't the Trump who's there now.
I mean, like all of us, you always get better at something the more you do it, and very few of his public comments have to be walked back now.
They try and pounce on things like this business in South Carolina about NATO and so on, but basically he's been quite judicious.
But apart from that, Even though he's an ex-president and a billionaire, he is an underdog.
And the majority of the people can see that he is fighting to protect his reputation, defend himself from utterly scurrilous charges that are politically motivated, and are in themselves a dangerous corruption of the justice system.
And so he is actually a natural candidate for admiration.
And I don't think the Trump haters realize that their entire position has been constantly eroded every day by their own misconduct and their abuse of the system.
And I think Trump is becoming naturally a much more popular person than he was even when he was elected president.
And so I want, Roger, if you would, you tell me, am I dreaming here or is Trump's status with the great mass of reasonable, fair-minded, reflective Americans who every four years decide what they want to do in the presidential reflective Americans who every four years decide what they want to Is his status not growing all the time for those reasons or am I dreaming?
No, I think you're absolutely right.
It's not only reflected in the massive amount of polling and survey research that I look at every day, but it's also reflected just in anecdotal conversations.
Ironically, the number of African Americans, woman who is the clerk at the dry cleaner, the man who delivers water to my home, not Who I think would be typical Trump supporters.
I don't raise it with them.
They raise it with me.
So I see it both anecdotally, but I also see it scientifically.
There is a recognition, first of all, that the Trump days In terms of peace and prosperity, we're much, much better than the chaos that we have now, and a feeling that things are, under this president particularly, totally and completely out of control.
Lord Black, tell us about your new book, The Political and Strategic History of the World.
This is just volume one from Antiquity to Caesar, Caesar's 14 AD.
That seems to be an extraordinary undertaking.
As someone who's You've written five books.
I know how difficult it was for me with a more narrow subject.
This is an incredible undertaking.
Tell us about it.
Well, having written a strategic history of the United States and a full history of Canada—you know, I started as a biographer.
You've kindly mentioned my books on Roosevelt and Nixon and Trump and some other people.
I'm getting older, and I wanted to sort of magnum opus, and I recognize that it's not a comprehensive history of the world.
It isn't.
I'm not pretending it is.
It's not a cultural history or a sociological history, though those factors come in, obviously.
It's essentially a political history, how societies developed and how the relations between them developed.
There has been an unorganized, unspoken, spontaneous, not conspiracy, but communion of view in the historical community that this was a vast subject that was, you know, unapproachable unless you were prepared to spend 20 years reading thick volumes like some of the ones behind me in my shelter.
And that's not the case.
You can put it readably and comprehensively in three big volumes, the whole political history of the world.
And that's what I'm doing.
And, you know, it's quite dense in terms of facts.
But you concentrate on the important people, good and evil and in between.
But that's what makes history interesting.
And people make history.
This idea that we just sit here and are carried along in ineluctable waves of society and technology is rubbish.
I mean, it's people who make the history.
And if you do that, you can make it reasonably interesting and reasonably readable.
The three volumes will be 30 chapters each, distinct periods and subjects.
So you can start anywhere, just read bits and pieces, use the index, whatever you want, but it's all there.
And so I'm trying to make history, political history, more accessible and more readable because I don't want to masquerade here as some presumptive teacher to the world.
I'm nothing of the kind.
I'm not trying to, you know, attract a following or something.
But the fact is I'm scandalized at how ignorant most people are in all countries.
All right.
We are unfortunately out of time.
Let's throw up the graphic where that book can be obtained.
But I want to thank Lord Conrad Black for entering the Stone Zone today and urge folks to go to his website, ConradMBlack.com, to learn more about his incredible work.
And I want to thank you again, Lord Black, for Thank you for joining us today in the Stone Zone.
It has been a distinct privilege and honor.
I admire you greatly, and I'm grateful that you gave us the time today.
Roger, your admiration is entirely reciprocated.
I'm delighted to meet you after all these years of identifying with so many of the stances you've taken, particularly when you yourself were The victim of the vagaries of the American justice system in the hands of political opponents.
So, thank you for having me on, and I hope we meet again soon.
Many thanks.
Also, thanks to my co-host, Troy Smith, of Launch Liberty.
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