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Feb. 18, 2025 - The StoneZONE - Roger Stone

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Roger Stone Provides Crucial Update On Classified JFK Assassination Docs | The StoneZONE

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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 long-time 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.
	Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Troy Smith.
	I'm your regular co-host here on The Stone Zone.
	I want to welcome you to The Stone Zone and urge you, if you're not following us already on Rumble, that's where to find us every single day.
	It's where Roger and I do this show literally five days a week where you can see us.
	Talk about the latest and greatest news and hear what Roger has to say.
	Well, folks, you're not going to go anywhere today because we have a breaking news announcement from the legendary Roger Stone himself.
	He helped Richard Nixon get to the White House.
	He helped Ronald Reagan get to the White House.
	And of course, he was one of the first people, actually the first person, to urge President Donald Trump to seek the presidency in the 1980s.
	He's the most successful political operative in the history of American politics and perhaps in the history of world politics.
	It's my honor to introduce the legendary Roger Stone discussing the latest information on the JFK documents that are set to be released by President Trump.
	Roger is, of course, the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Man Who Killed Kennedy, The Case Against LBJ, and is widely recognized as one of the pioneers of the JFK truth movement, talking about the assassination and outlining who had the most to gain from the assassination of talking about the assassination and outlining who had the most to gain from That was Lyndon Baines Johnson.
	So, the legendary Roger Stone, ladies and gentlemen.
	Roger, take it away.
	Well, it might come as a shock to learn that the CIA has been lying about President Kennedy's assassination.
	I know, it's shocking, right?
	It only took however many years to be able to say that, Clayton.
	Out loud, I know, it's crazy.
	All in an effort, of course, to block the American people from knowing what happened on that day.
	Well, this week, suddenly, out of the blue, the FBI has just discovered 2,400 new JFK documents, 14,000 pages.
	Timing is amazing.
	Comes just a few weeks after President Trump asked for a full release of all JFK documents related to the murder.
	Well, the man we wanted to ask to come on who knows arguably more about this than anyone in the United States has written a book about this, the man who killed Kennedy, the case against LBJ, and that is Roger Stone.
	Roger Stone, welcome into the show.
	Great to see you again, my friend.
	Thank you to be back with you.
	So what do you make, first of all, before we get to what you expect to see in these documents, the full release here once President Trump signs off on that and Tulsi Gabbard being in there, etc.
	But this new revelation, 2,400 new JFK documents, 14,000 pages.
	The timing strikes me as odd, first of all.
	Does it strike you that way?
	Well, it's far worse than that because really it's just the tip of the iceberg.
	You see...
	All of the relevant documents pertaining to John F. Kennedy's murder did not go into the JFK assassination documents archive.
	It's available in a number of other places and other agencies.
	Those documents are not included.
	So the president could broaden his order to say all documents in possession of any federal agency.
	And then if we're serious, and the president is quite serious, About examining the documents pertaining to the death of Senator Robert Kennedy.
	Who was murdered while running for president on the evening he won the California primary, or Dr. Martin Luther King.
	Well, we need to have the Los Angeles Police Department's records and the Memphis, Tennessee records, as well as the records from the Dallas Police Department and the Dallas Sheriff's Office.
	The president's committed to full disclosure, but the bureaucrats are always going to play these games, hiding documents here and there.
	Congressman Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, and Congressman Tim Burchett, who is a real fighter.
	On this issue, have both written a letter to the president explaining where various places the documents could be hidden and urging him to set up someone as a liaison to ensure that every single document is ultimately declassified and made available to the American people.
	But the president's order called for a plan.
	We're supposed to have a plan by now.
	We gave them 15 days.
	We've still seen no public plan.
	Once we see that, we'll see if it's adequate to uncover all that which is covered.
	Well, obviously our show is called Redacted because usually the things that are redacted are the things that we want to know about.
	So what do you think will be redacted?
	How much of it do you think that those juicy details that the public wants and is in the public interest to know at this point will be hidden from us under redactions?
	Look, I think if you go back and look at the history of this, it tells you a lot.
	The law mandating the release of all of the JFK assassination doctrines was passed in the late 90s.
	The J! Turned out to be 2017. So this decision came to President Donald Trump whether he should declassify the documents.
	In the end, he decided to declassify about 80% of them.
	We learned all kinds of things that we didn't know about Kennedy's assassination.
	For example, there's a memo from J. Edgar Hoover to President Lyndon Johnson saying, Sir, our sources tell you the KGB, their Russian intelligence agency, has conducted their own independent investigation and they concluded that you, sir.
	We're working with several federal agencies.
	That was one of the things that was released.
	But the part that was held back was held back at the behest of Mike Pompeo, who was the CIA director.
	And his reasoning was that it would expose the methods and sources of the agency.
	Now, President Trump told me that it was Pompeo who talked him out of full disclosure.
	He also told Judge Andrew Napolitano.
	And then about, I don't know, 10 days ago, he told Sean Hannity.
	So that kind of tells you what piece is missing.
	If you understand, the Kennedy assassination is a puzzle.
	While I maintain in my New York Times bestselling book that Lyndon Johnson is the drum major, he's calling the shots.
	He appoints himself to the secret black box subcommittee of the Defense Appropriations Committee.
	At the time, he's the Senate Majority Leader.
	Very rare for a majority leader to serve on any committee, but that's where the CIA's budget is controlled.
	In other words, Lyndon Johnson is the paymaster for the CIA. And very recently, I think it was Alex Jones posted an audio that came from the great-grandson of Billy Sal Estes, one of Johnson's cronies, and the executive director of the Democrat National Committee, basically Johnson's chief political operative, in which they talked casually about the fact that Lyndon Johnson hired Malcolm Mack Wallace to kill John F. Kennedy.
	That is part of the story.
	That is part of the story.
	So we now have...
	And Wallace's fingerprints are found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Laboratory.
	There's multiple things tying Johnson to Wallace and Wallace to the assassination.
	The CIA's involvement is also clear.
	In other words, I'm not alleging that Johnson does this alone, but the CIA is angry at Kennedy over the Bay of Pigs because they believe that he made a mistake, not understanding that the plan that Kennedy approved for the invasion of the Bay of Pigs included air cover from 29 Panamanian flag bombers flown by Cuban pilots to protect the men storming the beaches.
	Kennedy only approved the plan for the Bay of Pigs on the condition that it looked like an indigenous Cuban uprising, not an invasion by the United States government.
	Unbeknownst to Kennedy, the CIA canceled that air cover the day before the invasion.
	The thing was, of course, a fiasco for which Kennedy suffered very badly politically.
	But it's just yet another example of their motives.
	They blame Kennedy because Curtis LeMay wanted to send in the U.S. Air Force, stamping this as the U.S. invasion Kennedy had never agreed to, and it was denied.
	The CIA also believes, and this is, we learned, true, the great story about the Cuban Missile Crisis that you've been told.
	Jack and Bobby faced down the tough Nikita Khrushchev who agreed to remove the missiles.
	That's not the whole story.
	Fifty years later, when documents are declassified, we learn that they made a deal to remove NATO missiles, our missiles, from Italy and Turkey in return for a pledge by Castro to remove the missiles from Cuba.
	Which included no on-site inspections.
	So the deep state, the military-industrial complex, they are very upset with John Kennedy.
	Kennedy was supporting a silver dollar.
	The banks didn't like that.
	They didn't want silver back to money.
	Big Oil is furious because Kennedy is trying to repeal the oil depletion allowance, costing him millions on taxes.
	These are all of the entities who are an organized crime, of course.
	Shouldn't leave them out.
	Remember, Joe Kennedy got the mob to give $1 million to John Kennedy's race for president.
	And in return, the Kennedy administration was supposed to drop deportation proceedings against Santo Traficante, the mobster who ran Florida, and Carlos Marcelo, who controlled the mob in Johnson's Texas, as well as in Louisiana. who controlled the mob in Johnson's Texas, as well as After Kennedy was elected...
	Bobby becomes attorney general.
	Joe Kennedy suffers a stroke, so he can no longer keep the deal.
	And they go after both gangsters.
	That is their motivation.
	They are also involved in Kennedy's murder.
	So what I expect we're going to see here is the CIA piece.
	That is what they're hiding.
	But there are other things the government has that we need to know.
	But just to get everything out of the CIA, I think that would be a significant achievement.
	And the president's got to look at this more broadly.
	I spoke to him the other day and I said, this was great.
	Getting all of the data regarding all three assassinations, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Dr. King.
	But I also told him he should release all documents pertaining to the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.
	The government's never given us a full report.
	I'm writing a book on this subject now because there are many, many anomalies that are hard to understand.
	If John Pinkley Jr. is always in front of Reagan shooting upwards, which he is, there's four bullets, all of which are accounted for.
	Reagan was shot from above and behind, as you will see.
	So I'd like to get the government's records on this for my own selfish reasons.
	I want to finish this book.
	But there are many anomalies there.
	The president told me that it was a good idea and he would think about it.
	I mean, there's still questions, too.
	I see people recently, as soon as these files came out, asking about APEC and John F. Kennedy's move to try to have them register as a foreign agent in the United States.
	Plus his interest in the connections with Mossad and the nuclear program in Israel.
	Exactly.
	That's, I think, the real issue.
	Israel wanted a nuke.
	JFK did not want them to have the nuke.
	Only days after Lyndon Johnson became president, they had approval to get the nuke.
	To get the nukes.
	It's remarkable.
	It's remarkable how that happens.
	And right now, they have the nuke.
	And we pretend we don't know that they have the nuke.
	I want to ask you, before we let you go, Roger, on Representative Luna, we just heard from her pushing for this new JFK commission.
	She says what she's seen clearly shows that there's two shooters.
	First of all, do you trust the Congresswoman on this piece?
	And do you think this is going to be more whitewashing?
	Or we'll get some actual answers from a House of Representatives commission.
	I haven't seen the full context of what Congressman Luna said.
	A week ago, she had a bill to add Donald Trump to Mount Rushmore, and I strongly support her bill.
	Let me say that first thing first.
	The president said that he would appoint a commission to examine all of these investigations.
	And at the time, he rather implied that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would head such a commission, although time-wise, even though Bobby's got a lot of energy, it'd be tough to be HHS secretary and head such a commission.
	But I think a commission's a very good idea.
	We should look at all these presidential assassinations, including the ones in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the one in Whitehall Beach, as well as Reagan.
	Reagans, as I've discussed.
	And we should make sure we're learning everything there is to know about JFK, RFK, and MLK. Yeah, 100%.
	And why stop there?
	Let's go back to McKinley.
	Let's go back to Abraham Lincoln, too.
	I mean, there's a lot of questions.
	People don't realize this, but there was an attempt on Carter's life?
	By Puerto Rican nationalists, there was an attempt on Gerald Ford's life.
	We were told by a member of the Manson family that may actually be true.
	There was an attempt on Nixon's life in Miami, which got very little coverage, but you can find the documentation of it.
	So every modern president has had attempts on their life.
	When there's a foiled assassination, I'm not sure the government has always told us about it.
	And the involvement of the Secret Service in Trump's Butler, Pennsylvania, and Mar-a-Lago.
	Roger Stone, great to see you as always.
	Good luck on the new book.
	But the current book, if you want to grab it, let's put it up here on the screen, is The Man Who Killed Kennedy, The Case Against LBJ. And we really, really sincerely hope we get some answers on this.
	Roger, great to see you as always.
	Many, many thanks.
	God bless you.
	Well, ladies and gentlemen, Roger Stone always knocks it out of the park, and you can best believe that he runs circles around people that are half his age, even a quarter of his age.
	I've seen it myself.
	He's like the Energizer Bunny.
	He never runs out of steam, and this guy, Roger Stone, is somebody that I believe will go down in history as one of the most effective patriotic Americans in the history of our country.
	It's one of the great honors of my life to be on this show every day, and I just love it.
	Folks, we have a lot of news to get into.
	We have more from Roger coming up, so don't go anywhere.
	But we have some news to get into.
	We're going to start with Norm Eisen, who Roger has talked about is one of the chief architects of the Russian collusion hoax.
	Norm Eisen is also one of the chief architects of the impeachments of Donald Trump.
	Norm Eisen is one of the orchestrators of Roger Stone's persecution, and one of the main reasons that Roger had 29 heavily clad FBI agents storm into his home and point guns at his wife, himself, and his lovely dogs, who we talk about here on The Stone Zone all of the time.
	So Roger's life, the life of his family, has been threatened by people like Norm Eisen for years now, and now Eisen...
	You know, despite the American public sending a mandate to Washington DC in November of 2024, where Republicans won the House, the Senate.
	End the White House, end the national popular vote.
	Long gone are the days of Hillary Clinton objecting to the election results, claiming that the Electoral College is bogus, because the American people have awoken to a level where Republicans are now winning the national popular vote.
	And we should be clear, Trump Republicans are winning the national popular vote, as Trump has pulled off a successful remake, a rebuild of the Republican Party, the likes we have never seen.
	Trump took the...
	The Republican Party from irrelevance, irrelevance with John McCain and irrelevance with Mitt Romney and perpetual losses with people like George W. Bush, he took that party and turned it into the party of the working man, the party of the electrician.
	The party of the plumber, the party of the working man of this country, the working men and women of this country who work so diligently hard to put food on the table for their children, to pay their taxes, to cover their mortgage, to cover their ever-increasing prices for things like gasoline and groceries and things like that.
	So because of the accumulation of troubles...
	That the American people have seen throughout the Biden presidency, whether it be through prices or risk to their security or the border overflowing, those risks prompted you, the American people, to go to the ballot box in record numbers and to elect President Trump and Republicans.
	And people like Norm Eisen simply can't stand that.
	Because for years, people like Norm Eisen, people like Andrew Weissman, they've been able to maneuver their way into controlling the outcome of events without actually receiving votes from the people.
	People like Norm Eisen, people like Andrew Weissman, want to operate a shadow government in which unelected bureaucrats get to push the whim and will of radical leftist MSNBC hosts like Andrew Weissman and Jen Psaki.
	And Joy Reid and Ari Melber and all these people, their version of a good government is a government that does exactly what people like Rachel Maddow tell it to do.
	And they can't stand the fact that the American people stood up to them and said, no more inflation, no more wars, no more...
	We're going to stand for America first.
	We're going to do things for Americans and not against Americans, as people like Norm Eisen have perpetrated for years.
	Now Eisen is claiming that he's launching 100 lawsuits against President Trump.
	So it only took two weeks, three weeks, a month for leftist people.
	To get these lawsuits engaged, where they're now going to be challenging President Trump.
	And I outlined this on my show yesterday.
	If you're watching us here on Worldview 2, you saw the show just before this one.
	Lindsey Graham and others voted for a majority of the federal judiciary appointments.
	Of Joe Biden.
	235 federal judges, if you include the Supreme Court justices and the appellate court justices and all these different people.
	All of these individuals only got to that judiciary.
	The same people challenging President Trump because Republican turncoats like Lindsey Graham.
	Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins voted to confirm these individuals, a travesty for our country that is now giving way to people like Norm Eisen, who attempt to use and abuse the judiciary to push their political will against the mandate of the people, against Republican politics that have been cemented in Washington under President Trump, under the America First agenda.
	Let's go to Norm Eisen explaining how he's going to stop the will of the people, and let's come back to it.
	And tell the people why this is going to fail.
	Here's what the other side looks like.
	We are not the only nation that has had an autocratic takeover.
	It happened in Poland.
	It happened in Brazil.
	It happened where I was ambassador, Czech Republic.
	All three of those countries got to the other side.
	They ousted.
	Autocratic regimes like Trump and Musk.
	You know, there's always an oligarch.
	Whenever you've got a dictator, you've got an oligarch by its side.
	Got a money bag.
	How can we get to the other side like those countries did and not go the way of Hungary or Turkey where they never got them out?
	There's 1,001 things you can do, but we've done a big study, and we know the seven things you must do, and that's what we're working on.
	Number one, defend the rule of law.
	That's always what these...
	Number two, protect elections, because that's how you kick them out.
	Number three, you have to fight corruption.
	Number four, protect pluralism.
	And on and on.
	There's a set of seven things.
	And the lawsuits we're bringing, I'm planning a hundred this year.
	One hundred.
	The lawsuits we're bringing are...
	Designed as part of that.
	And it's starting to work because you can't do it in the courts of law alone.
	You need the court of public opinion.
	And what did we see this week in parallel with our Treasury lawsuit, that first Treasury case?
	Peaceful protesters for the first time starting to show up at the Treasury building around the country.
	Members of Congress for the first time starting to come to protests.
	So you need that.
	And even the press.
	So many others have bent the knee.
	Too many corporate owners of press have bent the knee, kissed the ring, count out.
	But the press is waking up.
	I saw some tougher confrontations this week.
	So you trigger that immune response of the body politic.
	Wake up, democracy.
	And that's what's on the other side, is an awakened democracy.
	Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
	People, Donald Trump and Elon Musk can't resist that.
	And here's what he's describing, folks.
	He's describing how the left manipulates the media and lies in order to push their agenda, in order to get their stormtroopers out there, all riled up over things that really have no effect on their lives.
	This was exhibited during a recent appearance by Amy Klobuchar, who Roger hilariously says combs her hair with buttered toast.
	She was on a news channel and she happened to claim that Trump was cutting cancer research.
	Now, if you're sitting at home and you're watching the mainstream media, you're probably saying, wow, it's terrible that Trump is cutting cancer research.
	But he's not cutting cancer research, of course.
	He didn't do that, just like so many of the things that these people claim that Elon Musk is cutting.
	Oh, he's cutting AIDS research.
	No, he's not.
	He's not cutting life-saving medications.
	He's cutting things like LGBTQ propaganda in Bangladesh.
	He's cutting things like Sesame Street.
	For radical Muslims in Iraq.
	He's cutting things that make no sense and the American taxpayer have no reason to pay for.
	Now, if you want to get into semantics of it, should the United States taxpayer be forced to pay for life-saving medications for people around the world?
	Maybe the people should get to decide that.
	Maybe people like Norm Eisen and people like Andrew Weissman shouldn't be the ones that get to decide that.
	Maybe the American people should get to decide that.
	And we just had an election where we had the choice between a candidate who wanted to dole out everybody's money to everyone on planet Earth and somebody who said, look, we need to cut.
	We need to be more responsible.
	And the people overwhelmingly elected the individual that said, let's cut.
	So let's cut, folks.
	The American people elected Republicans to cut.
	And the only thing the left can do is lie about this and say, oh, they're cutting cancer research, just like they do every- Republicans are cutting Medicaid, but it never happens.
	Republicans are coming for your Social Security.
	It's like a freaking blueprint.
	They use it every single election cycle.
	So let's roll Amy Klobuchar telling a flat-out lie about cancer research.
	Truly disgusting.
	You know that our policy of our government should not be giving $2 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest and paying for it by cuts to cancer research at NIH, something that has bipartisan support for years and years, or stopping Head Start or freezing people who are trying to protect our nuclear stockpile.
	I know they are, but what I'm saying is, at some point, the pressure is on them.
	You know, it's just unbelievable, folks.
	Amy Klobuchar is disgusting, and they're not cutting cancer research.
	I mean, they're just not doing it.
	It's not happening.
	And, you know, we talked about...
	On this show, the effects that the NIH has had, whether it be on their animal studies where they put a dog into a torture device where its face is fed on by fleas for hours at a time until it's dead, that's not studying anything.
	That's torture.
	And these people have gotten away with this.
	You know, we talk about so much about what the left wants to do.
	If they are given the chance, what they would like to do.
	We saw a little bit of it during Biden's presidency because they had some power.
	Now that Trump is back in power, things are a little different.
	We're starting to see the left kind of bemoan Trump in the same breath.
	You know, kind of admire authoritarian countries in Europe that have taken strong stands against free speech.
	And it's important to highlight this because the people in America that are celebrating Germany and others for cracking down on free speech are the same people that want to silence their political opposition in this country.
	We have a video that I want to play of Rick Wilson from the Lincoln Project, a real scumbag.
	Attacking President Trump and attacking America and saying that Germany has Better free speech than the United States.
	And then we have a clip to play right after that.
	We'll play them back to back.
	Of German police conducting a raid over a meme.
	Yeah, that's right.
	In Germany, you can actually go to jail for posting something online that the administration in power doesn't like.
	Something that the Biden administration put into, you know, a little bit of practice.
	And Kamala Harris was really keen on doing herself.
	So let's roll those clips.
	Lion Rick Wilson at it again.
	He has nothing.
	He has to lie.
	Let's roll it.
	I communicated with somebody from the German CSU a little while ago.
	I asked her what she thought about what had happened with Vance.
	And the degree to which they were shocked and appalled and offended that Vance came there daring to lecture Germany, one of the most free countries on Earth when it comes to expression, where America is now rated 55th in the world.
	On freedom of expression was appalling and it was insulting.
	Is it a crime to insult somebody in public?
	Yes.
	And it's a crime to insult them online as well?
	Yes.
	The fine could be even higher if you insult someone in the internet.
	Why?
	because in internet it stays there.
	If we are talking face to face, you insult me, I insult you, okay, finish.
	But if you're in the internet, if I insult you or a politician...
	That sticks around forever.
	Yeah.
	The prosecutors explain German law also prohibits the spread of malicious gossip, violent threats, and fake quotes.
	If somebody posts something that's not true, and then somebody else reposts it or likes it, are they committing a crime?
	In the case of reposting, it is a crime as well, because the reader can't distinguish whether you just invented this or just reposted it.
	That's the same for us.
	The punishment for breaking hate speech laws can include jail time for repeat offenders.
	And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.
	Rick Wilson, a disgusting liar, and the pedophilia at the Lincoln Project needs to be investigated.
	I think we need to see some indictments as far as that's concerned.
	And I guarantee you...
	That there was at least a little bit of knowledge about some of the stuff that was going on there on behalf of some of these people in leadership at the Lincoln Project.
	Just disgusting.
	We know what they are, though.
	So, folks, I'm going to introduce this video.
	This is a legendary clip.
	It's a little bit of a throwback from a few years ago, but we talk about it here during the intro every day, and I thought it'd be nice to see it.
	Roger will be back with us in the saddle tomorrow, folks.
	I want to encourage you, wherever you're watching the show, Rumble, X, wherever, give us a follow, give us a like, leave a comment, and we will see you back in the saddle tomorrow, Roger and I. I'm going to introduce you to this clip.
	This is Roger at the Cambridge Union, a major event from just a few years ago.
	And watching this, you really get the sense of Roger's futuristic vision.
	One of the main things that impresses me about Roger is that he's a guy that's experienced so much in his life and it would be so easy for him to sit there and just think about what he used to do and all the times with Nixon and Reagan and all this.
	But he's also, instead of doing that, he is 100% focused on the future.
	He is 100% focused on tomorrow and not yesterday.
	And when you listen to him in this clip, you get the sense that this is a guy who understood where things were going long before they got there.
	And Roger is prophetic as always.
	So God bless you guys.
	I will see you tomorrow in the Stone Zone.
	Enjoy this clip.
	Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace.
	Good evening, everyone, and thank you very much for coming to this really exciting new addition to our term card.
	As some of you may know, Roger J. Stone is an American political consultant and lobbyist with a decade-long career advising some of America's most well-known politicians and presidents, whether you like them or not.
	Now, he's most famed for being a recent advisor to Donald Trump, the current U.S. President, and was the subject of an incredible documentary called Get Me Roger Stone, which is on Netflix, and I watched it before this, and it's really interesting, so do watch it.
	However, without further ado, please welcome Roger Stone.
	Thank you very much.
	First of all, let me thank the Cambridge Union Society for your commitment to free speech and free expression and debate.
	I am delighted to be here.
	As you know, this is, probably know, this is the end of a tour for me, and I will return to the United States on Sunday.
	But I'm delighted that you invited me, and I'm delighted to be here.
	I understand my friend General Flynn has been invited in May.
	I'll come along shortly, and I understand that my good friend Anthony Scaramucci was just here, and although you may judge him more articulate than I, I am taller than he is.
	So I'm painfully aware of the four stages of fame, those being who is Roger Stone, get me Roger Stone, get me a Roger Stone type, Who is Roger Stone?
	So we're in the middle of that cycle, perhaps.
	I have had the great honor of working in ten presidential campaigns, nine of them for Republicans, one of them for the Libertarian Party nominee, Governor Gary Johnson, in 2012. Although I am a former young Republican national chairman, my commitment was to the...
	...old Republican Party of Barry Goldwater.
	That's a party of limited government, a party that is out of the bedroom and out of the boardroom.
	A party that supported privacy rights, that supported limited regulation in your private life, low taxes, a strong national defense as opposed to the neocon model of going around the world looking for trouble and inserting yourself in situations in which your inherent national interest is not clear.
	Like Donald Trump, I'm a non-interventionist.
	I opposed the war in Iraq.
	I am opposed to the war in Afghanistan today.
	It disappoints me that we are still there.
	I think we should also be out of Syria.
	So I am a libertarian Republican in the Goldwater mold.
	I was asked last night at the Durham Union, if Trump had not run, which of the other Republicans would I have supported?
	The answer is none of them.
	I would have supported the Libertarian Party candidate, Governor Johnson, yet again, who I worked for in 2012 and who I helped to get on the ballot in 48 of the 50 states.
	Like Governor Johnson, I'm a supporter of same-sex marriage.
	I'm a supporter of the legalization of marijuana.
	And though I am...
	Most certainly an admirer of my original political mentor, Richard Nixon.
	I think the war on drugs was his greatest, most ignominious failure, a policy mistake.
	So I'm somewhat different than your average Republican.
	Given all of those presidential campaigns, I must tell you that the 2016 campaign of Donald Trump...
	Donald Trump, to me, kind of violated every single rule that I know and have trained to employ in politics.
	Donald Trump was successfully elected without ever spending any money on sophisticated polling or focus group research or analytic targeting.
	He held his own in three debates without ever preparing for any of those debates.
	There is no Karl Rove in Trump land.
	He is very much his own man.
	He is very much a free spirit.
	He is very much his own strategist, his own speechwriter, his own phrase maker, his own tweet master.
	What you see is what you get.
	It was his campaign.
	It was his strategy.
	That is why the...
	The notion that my friend Steve Bannon would call himself chief strategist was a little misleading because the strategy, at least the issues on which Trump was elected, immigration, trade, the economy, and so on, were determined long before Steve Bannon joined the Trump entourage, and they were determined by one man.
	So he is unlike any other career politician that I... He is not out of a cookie cutter.
	He is not somebody who has a wet finger in the wind trying to figure out what to say to be popular.
	There's no question that in the campaign, I think he would admit this, that he made mistakes, but his opponent's performance was so robotic and so programmed, so scripted, that even when Trump made a mistake, it kind of demonstrated that he was authentic, that he was genuine, He was like a man working without a net.
	It's also why he drove these enormous television ratings, why his opponents, at least in the Republican primaries, complained that they weren't getting equal coverage.
	The problem was they had nothing interesting to say.
	People tuned in because they had no idea what he might say, and either did we.
	And therefore it was entertaining.
	You never knew what he might say or where he might go.
	And politics is about being interesting.
	The only thing worse in politics than being wrong is being boring, trying to write out a lead, trying to say nothing to offend the smallest number of people.
	That is almost always a losing strategy.
	Politics is about engaging people with ideas and trying to generate support on the basis of simply understood.
	And I think Trump grasps that also.
	Politics these days in the age of mass media is about imagery.
	It's about impression.
	Reporters always say, well, why aren't you run more issue-oriented campaigns?
	Why don't you put out more issue white papers?
	Well, the problem is nobody reads them.
	No one covers them.
	The mainstream media, the alternative media, nobody writes about them because they're dry and they're boring.
	2016 marked The end of the monopoly on political discourse by the three television networks in the United States, and then later the two cable news networks, and the fact that more than half of the people use the Internet, go through the Internet to get their political news, indeed all their news, gave rise to a vibrant alternative media, left, right, and center.
	And it took power away from...
	The old media, the television network media.
	One manifestation of this that's very interesting is men and women would come to me wanting to run for public office, run for Congress, run for the Senate, run for governor, and they were attractive, they were articulate, they were qualified, but they couldn't raise money and they had no personal wealth.
	And you had to be honest with them that when network advertising, when cable advertising were the main medium for communicating with the voters, if you could not pay for those things, it was very hard to win.
	Therefore, either people of great wealth got elected to office or people who could tap into special interests and other networks to raise millions of dollars.
	The Internet has changed all of that.
	The ability to geo-target people...
	Not only in terms of their geography, district in this case, or their interests, allows a person of modest means who can raise a more modest amount of money to effectively run for office and target voters in a way with maximum efficiency.
	And this, I think, opens the door to a much broader cross-section of candidates.
	That is a very positive development.
	What I don't think is a positive development now is the fact that having had this election result, some of the tech giants are seeking to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
	Why should Facebook decide what news we see?
	We should decide what news we see.
	Why do they manipulate the logarithms?
	Why do they shadow ban you?
	Why do they censor, in some cases, completely close out some people?
	I've been banned for life on Twitter, but don't bet on it because early this year I will sue them.
	I think there are First Amendment rights.
	I think there are antitrust questions.
	I think there are service contract questions.
	I'm against censorship.
	Everybody should have a voice.
	I don't care if you're the most extreme left-wing Democrat or the most extreme right-wing Republican.
	Everybody should have a voice.
	I believe in the good sense of the voters to sort out what they believe and what they don't believe, but I believe people should decide for themselves, not have someone else decide what they can read and not read.
	This, I think, is the great challenge that we face, to have continued debate and have everybody have access to the new media.
	But it is interesting to me that in the election, Particularly in the primary phase, in the nomination phase, the cable news networks built Trump up, not because they were pro-Trump, but because he was good for their ratings, and when their ratings go up, they can charge more for commercial advertising.
	And I think also, once he was nominated, they began to try to tear him down.
	It's also true to a certain extent that even in the new media, he was disadvantaged.
	How could it be that Google would classify a press release from the Trump campaign as a promotion, but a press release from the Hillary Clinton campaign as an update?
	That's the difference between the opens of millions and millions of individual voters.
	So it's an example of the unfair advantage.
	When you look at this from the point of view of money...
	Because Trump won not only without benefit of polling or analytics or focus groups or survey research, he also won without the benefit of massive doses of paid network and cable television advertising.
	Unheard of in American politics.
	So that is a shock to the political system, something that no one saw coming.
	I believe, best guess that I can figure, and it's a little bit of a rough estimate, Trump and his supporters, meaning outside organizations supporting Trump, probably spent about $275 million.
	Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, and groups supporting her spent close to $2 billion, most of it on the old media, and therefore, as it turns out, most of it wasted.
	How then did we get to a situation in October in which every poll virtually showed that she would win and he would lose?
	Well, in most cases, I think that was an honest mistake, meaning many of the pollsters, most I would say, were basing what they thought would be the makeup of the electorate on the last election.
	They assumed that the makeup of the electorate would be similar to the makeup in the Obama-Romney race four years previously, and that Hillary Clinton would get the same percentage of vote among African Americans, among union members, among women, and so on.
	That was never realistic.
	And, in fact, the electorate looked quite different than what they expected.
	So this was a sampling error.
	It was not a willful error.
	They weren't, although in a few cases you would find some pollsters would oversample Democrats, which would pad her lead a little bit, but by and large, it was an honest but inadvertent error because it didn't recognize that the volatility of the race and the coverage of the race would change voter turnout and would render their model obsolete.
	I thought that on the Friday before the election, I was pretty confident Trump would run, but I was looking at polling from the state Republican parties because Trump himself was paying for no polling.
	We had nothing to go on.
	But you could see directionally, because a poll is a snapshot in time, it's really only good for the episecond in which it's taken, and it's almost immediately outdated.
	So you had to look for the direction.
	And to the extent that you can, you look at several surveys of the same subset of voters taken over time to see whether your candidate's going up, whether your candidate's going down, whether the undecided is growing, whether the undecided is shrinking, and the relative position of your opponent.
	Since the election, which was such an extraordinary shock to the elites of both parties, To the two-party duopoly that has run the country, we've seen a number of efforts to delegitimize Trump's election and his presidency.
	But before you even get there, the enormous advantages of the Democrats in this race and the financial advantage that I just spoke of, we went through several different steps.
	First, there was the request for a recount.
	This kind of tickled me because I wrote an article for The Hill newspaper about two weeks before the election in which I expressed concern that these computerized voting machines, which are very simple and kind of rudimentary computers, are very easily hacked and manipulated.
	You can get a $15 device at Best Buy.
	And it allows you to manipulate the results of the machines.
	There are a number of studies where they took machine results and then compared them to actual live exit polling, and the swing would indicate that the machines had probably been tampered with.
	And I was trashed after I wrote this article.
	I was considered irresponsible.
	I was undermining democracy.
	It was an impossibility.
	Yet when Hillary Clinton filed for recounts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the reason for her request for recounts was, well, these computerized voting machines are easily manipulated.
	A little hypocrisy there.
	The recount, as you know, didn't work.
	In fact, what we found out was that Trump won by slightly larger margins than originally thought on election night.
	Then there was a request by John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, that the electors be briefed on Russian collusion.
	Well, that would have been a very brief briefing because there is to this day still no hard evidence of actual collusion, conspiracy, coordination with the Russian state or actors working for the Russian state that affected the outcome of this election.
	Then we have the Mueller Inquiry, which seems to be imploding before our very eyes on the way here, I was following the news and the release of the memo in the U.S. House of Representatives in which I have a personal interest because I am among those who was placed under surveillance.
	My constitutional rights were violated on the basis of a fabricated dossier that said Donald Trump...
	Dallied with prostitutes in Russia when he was there in Moscow for a beauty passion, which he didn't.
	And the genesis of that was partisan.
	It was first paid for by a Republican hedge fund king, then paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton, and then later paid for a third time by the FBI. One thing you can say for Christopher Steele, he's pretty smart.
	He sold the same information three times to three different clients.
	But it wasn't true.
	And it was never disclosed to the FISA court, which ultimately, on the second go-round, allowed the surveillance of Trump and his associates.
	Let's think about that for a moment.
	We use the power and the authority of the state to spy on one of the two major candidates for president.
	That is a gross abuse of power, abuse of authority.
	Watergate pales in comparison.
	Because no one was ever actually bugged, and whatever these guys did was done outside the confines of government.
	In fact, Nixon's greatest mistake was trying to run foreign policy outside the confines of government.
	But it is probably why, as president, he was able to reach a...
	Strategic arms limitation agreement with the Soviets.
	Open the door to China, which the foreign policy, the State Department, his NSA were deeply opposed to.
	Save Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 by airlifting lethal aid when the Israelis had their back against the wall under attack by the Syrians and the Egyptians.
	All of that because he went outside the foreign policy structure of the government because he feared that it leaked, which it does.
	So this is unfolding before our very eyes.
	Where it ends up, I do not know.
	I do think that...
	And I've said this, that Mr. Mueller doesn't have evidence of Russian collusion, not enough to bring a charge, so he appears to be back to focusing on the termination of Mr. Comey, who I think is being revealed today as the epically corrupt FBI director, or the termination of General Flynn, who hopefully you can hear from shortly, in a few weeks.
	And perhaps he hopes to euchre the president in some process crime, obstruction of justice or perjury, but not in relation to Russian collusion, in relation to those terminations.
	I don't know how that works, other than to say, I don't believe that Mr. Mueller can indict a sitting president.
	I think he can issue a report.
	That report would then go to the Justice Department.
	Could send it to the Congress.
	The Congress could vote articles of impeachment in the House, although it's unlikely to do so under this House.
	It's still possible.
	But if we have a change of the House in the next election, that's a possibility.
	But a lot of my Republican friends are wringing their hands assuming that the House will be lost.
	I don't know that that's true.
	We have 2 million new jobs.
	We have the stock market at record levels.
	African-American and Hispanic unemployment now hitting record lows, the lowest since we've been tabulating them, overall unemployment at a record low.
	Massive corporations like Apple coming back into the country, repatriating funds there, announcing a $350 million expansion.
	Things are economically looking up.
	So what was the perfect storm that allowed for the election of a Donald Trump, a most improbable and unlikely president?
	I would argue that the two major parties working together and the elites of those parties had produced a record of endless foreign war in which our national interests were not clear.
	The erosion of our civil liberties, the reading of our email, the reading of our text messages, the collection of metadata.
	General Clapper, who was the National Security Advisor under Obama, testified in the Congress that there was no metadata collection program.
	It didn't exist until Edward Snowden proved that he was a liar and that he'd perjured himself.
	Now he's teaching ethics at Vermont College.
	We also had massive debt and spending and borrowing, which my grandson will pay for, and his children and his children's children.
	We have trade agreements that we were promised by the Bushes and the Clintons individually, NAFTA and so on, that would be the panacea, but which had the exact opposite effect, pulling all the jobs out of the country, making the center part of our country, the Rust Belt.
	Desolate.
	We also have immigration policies that cheat the people who are waiting in line who have gone through the process to obtain their citizenship and seem to reward those who are there illegally.
	We have no path to citizenship for those who want to become citizens.
	The Congress has failed to deal with this again and again and again.
	I think there is, without any question, an opportunity on the table.
	To compromise, keep the DREAMer program, increase border security on the southern border.
	Yes, a wall, if you will.
	That deal can be done today.
	I think the president's willing.
	I think it's the Democrats who aren't serious about it.
	But I'm still hopeful.
	And then, of course, a stagnant economy.
	Taxes so high that they remove the incentive for expansion.
	Tax policies that cause the biggest companies to leave town.
	To get outside the country because it's cheaper to do business there and more profitable.
	Trump's plan for...
	To change the tax laws, what they call inversion, bringing these companies back in the country now to expand in the United States, to hire in the United States, is a step in the right direction.
	The overall cut in the tax rate for all businesses, big and small, which has not even yet gained traction, I think will turbocharge the economy, and a rising tide lifts all boats.
	But at the same time, the president said in his address, which I was very heartened by, that he has a plan to rebuild our cities.
	That he has a plan to rebuild our urban cities and we're going to try it in Detroit.
	Step in the right direction.
	He promised that in the campaign, but then he also promised to get us out of Afghanistan.
	And I'm disappointed that we appear to be going deeper in rather than winding down.
	We appear to be winding up.
	I don't think that's a wise policy.
	But you cannot judge a presidency in just one year.
	The economic news is good.
	There is a sharp increase in the job approval by the president.
	The tone of his address was, in my opinion, correct.
	It was conciliatory and uplifting without abandoning his core issues.
	So if we get to the 2018 election and Trump and the Republicans are running on jobs and prosperity and the Democrats are running on impeachment, I think they will lose.
	I think you have to run on a positive program.
	You just can't say, vote for us because we hate Trump.
	You have to say, vote for us because here's our alternative program to what Trump proposes.
	Yet the Democrats have not yet put forward such a program.
	There's certainly time.
	It is always a mistake to judge the outcome of an election that's 11 months away.
	Or 10. Even...
	Today I get questions about the president's re-election.
	Impossible to determine.
	We don't know who the candidates will be.
	We don't know what the burning issue in the country will be.
	We don't know what the state of the economy will be.
	We don't know what's going to happen between now and then.
	I do believe, and I said this in Durham, that the most likely Democratic nominee, who I believe will be very strong and very formidable, would be Michelle Obama.
	The Obamas are more popular at the base of the Democratic Party than the Clintons ever were.
	Obama within his party is still a rock star.
	His standings in the American public are still relatively strong.
	He too is polarizing, but his wife is an accomplished attorney.
	She is well-spoken.
	She is stepping up her speaking engagements, I notice.
	Yes, I think she will be the Democratic nominee.
	A hunch, but...
	I think she'll be a strong and formidable candidate if she chooses to run.
	On the other hand, look for a spate of billionaires in both parties with future aspirations, because to them, the Trump election means you don't have to be a career politician to get elected president.
	Businessmen and women...
	are going to look at this and think about running themselves.
	That's why the notion of Oprah Winfrey is not a ridiculous idea at all.
	She has one of the great advantages that Trump had.
	Universal name ID. Everyone knows who she is.
	She has a very substantial following in the country.
	She's indicated she's not going to run.
	I think that's probably right.
	But she could if she wanted to.
	And she would be viable.
	Because the pop culture now is more important than career political experience.
	And in fact, Given the track record and the results of government over the last 30 years, political experience may be a negative if you're tied to the failed policies of the past.
	Yeah, I'm kind of a cynic.
	I think no one party could have screwed America up this much by themselves.
	It took two parties working together to get us where we are and to create a dynamic in which an outsider, a business person, somebody with an outside personality, but someone who became well-known, Through a network television show, 15 seasons of The Apprentice.
	Now, I know elites will say, oh, that's entertainment.
	That's reality TV. Voters don't see it that way.
	They see impressions.
	They see the news and they think that's fiction.
	They don't distinguish.
	It's all one.
	That's why I sometimes say politics is show business for ugly people.
	In any event.
	I think you have a dynamic in which the changes are by no means permanent.
	I was asked by the student press earlier about this shift in the industrial states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and the fact that Trump ran marginally better, marginally better.
	Among blue-collar Union Catholic members, marginally better among African-American voters, the difference between 11 and 16%, 11 and 14%.
	It's a small number, but when you only win by 10,000 votes statewide, it's a significant number.
	Those changes are not permanent.
	They'll be based on results.
	If Trump produces results, he can lock in those gains and maybe forge a new political coalition.
	And if he doesn't...
	Things can swing back the other way.
	Nothing is permanent.
	Other than to say, I think that Trump has identified a populist movement that is bigger than Trump himself.
	I think the Brexit vote in your country reflects the same populist movement.
	A feeling that government is not listening to people.
	A feeling that they are being taken advantage of.
	And a rejection.
	Of the surrender of our sovereignty.
	A rejection of globalism and the idea of world government.
	I think that trend is the same.
	But when you criticize it, the answer you get back is censorship.
	You need to be censored.
	Well, I don't obviously agree with that.
	I appreciate being with you tonight.
	I will be more than happy to take your questions.
	But he's kept going and he's smart and he's strong and people love him.
	Not everybody, but people love him and respect him.
	Roger Stone.
	Where's Roger Stone?

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