The Stone Zone dissects America’s rural hospitals under congressional threat while Roger Stone argues Trump’s Panama Canal reassertion counters China’s $23B port deals and Panama’s treaty violations, framing it as a strategic lifeline for U.S. trade and military dominance. Retired Colonel Rob Manis warns of Chinese control over 90% of antibiotic precursors and Cuba’s potential missile threats, defending Trump’s tariffs and NATO stance amid SignalGate fallout. The episode ties economic sovereignty to national security, ending with Stone’s JFK assassination claims and a rural healthcare plea. [Automatically generated summary]
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our country has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state, every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress: protect patient care to keep America strong.
Don't cut rural health care.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
People love him and respect him.
Roger Stone.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
Welcome to the Stone Zone here on the Red Apple Audio Networks.
Do you remember when President Ronald Reagan warned us of the folly of giving away control of the Panama Canal?
At that time, of course, he was just former California Governor Ronald Reagan running for the presidency.
This issue revitalized his campaign against Gerald Ford, who had ascended to the presidency after being appointed vice president upon the resignation of Vice President Spiro Agnew.
And then, of course, Ford became president upon the resignation of Richard Milhouse Nixon.
But Reagan challenged Ford in 1976.
It was a, as they say, a close-run thing.
And he revitalized his campaign for president by raising the secret deal that Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were engaged in to give away control of the Panama Canal for the princely sum of $1 to the tin pot dictator Omar Torreos, then in control of Panama.
Well, it turns out Ronald Reagan was right.
Although it wasn't Ford who gave away the canal, he supported the canal giveaway, only to be defeated in the following election by Jimmy Carter Carter, who consummated the deal to give away this vital asset, which was both a national security and a commercial question that put this country in danger.
Listen to President Ronald Reagan.
If these reports are true, it means that the American people have been deceived by a State Department preoccupied with secrecy.
The Panama Canal zone is sovereign United States territory, just as much as Alaska is, as well as the states carved from the Louisiana Purchase.
We bought it, we paid for it, and General Tarillo should be told we're going to keep it.
Well, we didn't keep it, and Ronald Reagan is right.
Now the Panama Canal has come under the control of the Chinese communist government, which is why earlier this month, BlackRock, a U.S.-based company, secured control, at least on paper, over key ports near the Panama Canal, stripping away Chinese-linked influence over one of the world's most crucial Chinese shipping routes.
The $23 billion deal, which includes $5 billion in debt, would effectively place the strategic ports under American control.
This is a move advocated by President Donald Trump and the national security hawks concerned about China's grip on our global infrastructure.
The transaction that was announced last Tuesday involves Hong Kong-based C.K. Hutchinson Holdings selling its controlling stock in Hutchinson Port Holdings and Hutchinson Port Group Holdings to a U.S.-led consortium spearheaded by BlackRock.
This historic acquisition is set to grant control over 43 ports in 23 countries, including major sites in Mexico, the Netherlands, Egypt, Australia, Pakistan, and Panama's critical ports of Balboa and Cristobal, the two primary gateways to the Panama Canal.
Now, President Donald Trump has vowed to take back the Panama Canal, arguing that Panama has violated its neutrality pledge and allowed China to gain control of that crucial waterway.
Emphasizing the canal's strategic importance, which is a vital trade route built by the United States to connect the Atlantic oceans, he warned that it must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.
You see, the Panamanians are in violation of the agreement that they signed, in which we turned over control of the canal to them, as I said, for the princely sum of $1.
The Panama Canal zone has been under U.S. control for 75 years until, of course, as I say, Jimmy Carter gave it back to Panama in 1977, signing treaties with Panama's then-leader, General Omar Charios.
Almost 38,000 workers risked their lives during its construction due to diseases like malaria, and in 2004, America spent nearly $287 million to build the canal.
That is equivalent to well over $10 billion today.
6,500 Americans lost their lives during the construction of the Panama Canal.
The stretch of 50 miles long and 10 miles wide in the middle of the Panamanian Isthmus had been given under U.S. control since 1903, but Jimmy Carter gave it all the way for a buck.
And since then, the crucial transportation route has come under the complete and total control of the communist Chinese.
Two Chinese companies operate the two huge ports on both ends of the Panama Canal, and the concession for these ports were extended to 2021 for a 25-year period without any bidding or notice to the United States.
Chinese Communist Party officials are well known to bribe other officials in countries all around the world.
In addition, the government of Panama is violating the treaty, which they got for the princely sum of $100.
Panama has been unwilling and unable as well to close the Darien Gap where millions of immigrants have come across to invade the United States.
This is yet another violation of U.S. sovereignty and a hostile act against our nation by Panama.
Once more, both the Chinese control over canal infrastructure and the exorbitant fees they are currently charging for canal transits are a violation of the neutrality treaty between the United States and Panama.
If the United States, under President Donald Trump, determines that Panama is in violation of the treaty, we may yet decide to use the military to take back control of the canal, and that may be the appropriate remedy.
In a Senate hearing in January, professor and executive director of the Antonin Scalia Law School, Eugene Kantravich, testified, and I quote: It may be shocking to people to hear today,
but when one goes over the ratification history and the debates and discussions in this Senate body over the treaty, it's clear that the treaty was understood as giving both sides separately the right to resort to use armed force to enforce the provisions of the treaty.
Now, of course, armed force should never be the first recourse for any kind of international dispute and should not be arrived at rashly or before negotiations or any other kind of good offices are exhausted.
However, it's quite clear that the treaty contemplates that as a remedy for violation.
President Trump will very soon have to make a decision with China blocking the transfer of critical ports to a BlackRock-owned company.
Chinese regulators are investigating the deal for the two ports in Panama Canal zone, delaying the deal's closing as it was originally set for last week.
President Donald Trump has previously threatened to take control once again of the canal.
As Ronald Reagan, one of our greatest presidents, said, We built it, we paid for it, and it's ours.
I think you can count on President Donald Trump to take back the Panama Canal.
Why?
Because it puts the interests of America first.
Speaking of the interests of America first, today is a liberation day.
This is the day that President Donald Trump has marked for the beginning of putting reciprocal tariffs on any country, charging our country tariffs for the goods and services that they sell in our nation.
Folks, this is far bigger than perhaps you think it is.
It's not just about the United States.
It is about the world economy.
Let's listen to a little bit of Donald Trump declaring what is an action that I think brings us into the golden age of peace, prosperity, security, and justice that President Trump has been talking about.
Let me offer just a few examples of the vicious attacks our workers have faced for so many years.
The United States charges other countries only a 2.4 tariff on motorcycles.
Meanwhile, Thailand and others are charging much higher prices, like 60%, India charges 70%, Vietnam charges 75%, and others are even higher than that.
Likewise, until today, the United States has for decades charged a 2.5% tariff.
Think of that, 2.5% on foreign-made automobiles.
The European Union charges us more than 10% tariffs, and they have 20% VATs, much, much higher.
India charges 70%, and perhaps worst of all are the non-monetary restrictions imposed by South Korea, Japan, and very many other nations as a result of these colossal trade barriers.
81% of the cars in South Korea are made in South Korea.
94% of the cars in Japan are made in Japan.
Toyota sells 1 million foreign-made automobiles into the United States, and General Motors sells almost none.
Ford sells very little.
None of our companies are allowed to go into other countries.
And I say that, friend and foe.
And in many cases, the friend is worse than the foe in terms of trade.
But such horrendous imbalances have devastated our industrial base and put our national security at risk.
I don't blame these other countries at all for this calamity.
I blame former presidents and past leaders who weren't doing their job.
They let it happen, and they let it happen to an extent that nobody can even believe.
That's why, effective at midnight, we will impose a 25% tariff on all foreign-made automobiles.
There's going to be new investment.
There's going to be new plants built.
And the UAW members, and I brought 20 of them with me, they're sitting.
So Donald Trump is deadly serious about this.
You know, when they ask him who is his favorite president, sometimes he says Ronald Reagan.
End Of Segment00:15:19
He's restored the portrait, the oil portrait of Ronald Reagan to the Oval Office.
But I think his real favorite president was William McKinley.
You see, when William McKinley was president, we had no federal income tax.
America's government operations were funded solely by the revenue from tariffs, proving that it can be done.
When Donald Trump says he is serious about phasing out the U.S. income tax and closing down the IRS, he's not kidding, folks.
His Secretary of State, Scott Besson, who could be the greatest Secretary of State since Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton, is quite serious about the real possibility of closing down the IRS and ending the federal income tax.
They often claim that we as conservatives want to turn back the clock.
Well, I'd like to turn back the clock to the time that America had no federal income tax and that we ran our entire country on the basis of tariff revenues.
By the way, under President William McKinley, we also liberated Cuba.
That wouldn't be so bad either.
You're listening to the Stone Zone here on the Red Apple Audio Networks.
And whatever you do, don't touch that dial because we'll be back with more political news right after this break.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
Americans deserve access to the best of what our nation has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
Don't cut rule health care.
I'm not just stepping stone.
This is the Stone Zone.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
And you're back in the Stone Zone.
I'm so happy to be back after five days of laryngitis.
I want to thank the literally hundreds.
By now, it may be thousands of folks who emailed or texted me missing me here in the Stone Zone.
It's so great to be back in the zone.
I want to thank you all for your prayers and best wishes.
Imagine my surprise watching the congressional hearings led ably, I might add, by Congresswan Anna Paulina Luna, looking into the release of the documents pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy when Congresswoman Lauren Boebert from Colorado seemed to confuse me with Oliver Stone,
the director of the film JFK.
Take a listen.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
Hopefully we can stay on topic for the rest of this hearing.
We seem to be wrapping up pretty close here.
Mr. Stone, you wrote a book accusing LBJ of being involved in the killing of President Kennedy.
Did these most recent releases confirm or negate your initial charge?
being involved in the assassination of president kennedy no no i didn't If you look closely at the film, there's no...
It accuses the President Johnson of being part of a complicit in a cover-up of the case, but not in the assassination itself, which I don't know.
What do you think that he was complicit with?
Yes, sir, I'll get to you.
The cover-up.
Well, how about for starters appointing Alan Dulles, the head of the CIA, who was fired by Kennedy to the commission itself, to the Warren Commission, and he goes to almost every meeting and he's pretty much in charge of the Warren Commission from the beginning.
Alan Dulles, that's part of the evidence that points to President Johnson's either incompetence or involvement.
Mr. Morley, I think you had something to add on that.
I think you're confusing Mr. Oliver Stone with Mr. Roger Stone.
Sorry.
It's Roger Stone who implicated LBJ in the assassination of the president.
It's not my friend.
I thought all the whispers were there.
I may have misinterpreted that, and I apologize for that.
But there seems to be some alluding of, like you said, incompetence or some sort of involvement there on the back end.
So not accused.
Sorry, I'm going to move on.
Mr. Morley, I would like to talk more about.
There you have it.
You can't pay for publicity like that.
Yes, I wrote the New York Times bestseller, The Man Who Killed Kennedy, the case against LBJ.
The only difference between Oliver Stone and me is I believe that LBJ planned and orchestrated the murder of JFK, and I prove it in my book where Oliver Stone, who dropped me a nice note telling me he wished he had read my book before he made his film, concedes that LBJ was involved in the cover-up.
You're listening to the Stone Zone, and we'll be right back to talk about the strategic importance of the Panama Canal and why President Ronald Reagan was absolutely right.
We should never have given it away, and why President Donald Trump is right when he says perhaps it's time to take it back.
Whatever you do, don't touch that dial.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the Stone Zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
And we're back in the Stone Zone.
Joining me now, retired Colonel Rob Manis.
Rob Manis has a lifelong record of providing dedicated service to our country.
He made the decision as a 17-year-old high school senior to enlist in the United States Air Force and has served in uniform as the country faced multiple crises around the world.
He worked his way up from the enlisted ranks to be a full colonel and retired from active duty in 2011, ending his military service of more than 32 years.
Now, we only have about 15 minutes in this segment.
If I read his entire biography and all the service he has rendered to this country, well, we'd use the whole segment and we wouldn't get to talk to Colonel Manis.
So I'm going to skip through this other than to say that Rob Manis is one of the gentlemen that I look to for analysis of any geopolitical or geomilitary question, someone who has my enormous respect.
He is, as a private citizen, also an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump and his America First Agenda.
And it is a great honor to have him today in the Stone Zone.
Colonel Manis, welcome.
Hey, Roger.
Thanks for having me.
So in our earlier segment, we focused on the strategic and commercial importance of the Panama Canal.
Now, I worked in three presidential campaigns on the staff of Ronald Reagan in 1976, when he challenged Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination.
I was the national director of youth for Reagan, working directly for Senator Paul Laxall, the national chairman of our campaign.
In 1980, when I was the Northeastern Regional Director for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign, handling New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
And then in 1984, when I handled those three states, plus all the states in New England all the way to the Canadian border, plus at the recommendation of President Nixon, the Reagan campaign also assigned me Ohio on the theory that if you took one large state and you kept it out of Walter Mondale's clutches, that he could not possibly win.
Remember it very well.
Nixon told Reagan, assign Ohio to Stone, he said.
Stone's an animal.
I always considered that a compliment.
But Ronald Reagan was right when he warned us that this day would come.
Tell us what's going on today in Panama and about the strategic importance of the canal and the canal zone.
Well, from a national security perspective, you know, I think most people know, but especially those of us that practice that as a profession, that it's the largest choke point for Navy traffic, U.S. Navy and international Navy traffic in the world.
You know, and we're risking lives to protect the international traffic in the debts in the Red Sea because this is a critically important shipping lane.
The Panama Canal is probably to the United States 100 times more important than that.
But it goes way beyond just Navy traffic.
You know, China controls the companies at each end of the canal, the port companies, at this point.
And every company that's Chinese has a part of it, if not wholly owned by the Communist Chinese Party or the People's Liberation Army and Navy.
So it's extremely important that we get control of that back.
And I think the president had lined up, President Trump had lined up to have a company buy those ports, but China's obviously pushing back against that deal.
But you know what else is going on?
Economically, I don't know if you guys talked about this in your last segment, but we're trying to expand our liquefied natural gas LNG marketing out to new markets.
And the Panama Canal is crucial to that because the LNG exporter capability in the United States, it's on the Gulf Coast and Louisiana and places like that.
So that canal has to be able to carry that type of energy type product for us so that we can easily get through there, get to the Pacific theater of operations and deliver that to potentially new customers.
So it's very much tied together from a national security and an economic security perspective.
And obviously with everything that's going on in the world, the more that we can have direct control over from a trade perspective, the better off our country's going to be.
And I think the president's done the exact right thing with the tariff issue.
I was pleased to see that Liberation Day yesterday.
I still have a smile on my face with that because it puts the manufacturing capability is going to come back to the United States that we have been offshoring for decades now, and it's made us weak.
You know, China controls 90% of the precursor materials for antibiotics.
We can't make antibiotics on our own without the Chinese Communist Party.
So we have to bring that type of manufacturing back.
But we also need the canal for free flow of our goods, especially with this LNG exporting effort to expand that going on.
As someone who served his country at the highest levels of our military, I have to ask you about what has become known as Signal Gate.
Now, I'm amused to see senators like Mark Warner of Virginia, who I went back and looked.
He had no problem whatsoever when Robert Malley, a high-level Biden State Department official, was sharing classified documents with the Iranians.
He actually never even got fired.
They just suspended his security clearance.
They also let his Confederates, who were involved in the transfer of these classified documents to Iran, continue in their positions at state.
He never said a word.
When Hillary Clinton got caught sending 30 plus thousand classified documents over an illegal computer server located in her bathroom, once again, not a peep from Mark Warner.
But now he's in a lather about a signal exchange in which, based on what I've seen, no classified information was exposed.
Give us your take on SignalGate, if you will.
Well, let's talk about the information itself.
There's been a lot of angst about that and lathering up, as you said, with Senator Warner and his ilk over that information.
None of that information was classified, not one iota of it.
There were not enough specifics in that thread for anything to be classified.
But even if Secretary Hegset, and that's the information that most of you are talking about, is what he put into the chat or his phone did, is put in, he is the original classifying authority on there, just like President Trump is the overall original classifying authority for every single piece of classified.
Secretary Hegset, the Defense Secretary, is the OCA for that information.
And even if it had been classified, if he chose to put that in there, it's declassified from that perspective.
So now let's talk about Signal itself.
It's an end-to-end encrypted chat.
Hegseth's Chat Conundrum00:04:24
And this is one of the areas that I'm concerned about is that the National Security team and National Security Council team, especially under Mike Waltz, they got to get that stuff together.
They have to investigate how that reporter, Goldberg, from the Atlantic, I mean, the worst fake news guy, RussiaGate, all of it, the suckers and losers lie, all of that that they tried to use to hurt President Trump and the team was due to that one guy.
So that's a major issue.
And I'm not seeing anything yet that makes me satisfied that that team is cleaned up internally and that they don't have people that have access to their information threads like the signal chat that shouldn't have access to it.
So Waltz has got to get that fixed.
Now let's talk about the senators because you didn't mention the Republican senator that has also joined in with Warner and is demanding a DOD Inspector General investigation of Hegseth over the Signal thing.
You know, my Senator Roger Wicker, I agree with him on a lot of things like increasing shipbuilding and returning to peace through strength instead of being in endless war policies when it comes to China.
But I disagree with him on a lot too.
On this, I disagree with him.
It's absolutely unnecessary, number one, because the National Security Council is the team that set that chat up.
It wasn't the Department of Defense that set it up.
So there's no reason whatsoever to investigate Secretary Hegseth or the Department of Defense over that particular issue.
Look, I'm all for investigating the government.
I don't trust hardly anybody in the government, but I do trust President Trump's appointees and that they need the maximum flexibility possible so we can move forward and get the president's policies that we all voted for in place and throttled up so that they're running appropriately and calling for investigations when it's not necessary is just the wrong thing to do.
Yeah, I agree with that.
This is beginning to look to me like an effort to get Hegseth to oust Hegseth.
Yeah.
That's because he was an outside-the-box anti-establishment choice.
He's the right choice.
I strongly supported the president's nominee.
When I defended this on a show with Chris Cuomo, it was amazing the way they twisted what I said.
See, I don't trust any online service, encrypted or unencrypted.
I frankly think they're all vulnerable to being hacked.
They're all vulnerable to being monitored.
So I always operate on the assumption that anything you put in writing online, you should assume that someone else is going to have the ability to see it.
So don't say stupid things online.
That's kind of my attitude.
I was defending these people, but if you read their story, it makes it appear like I was criticizing them, which I was not.
But the Democrats have spun this up because, frankly, they don't have anything else to talk about.
It was interesting to see Corey Booker, the senator from New Jersey, breaking the previously held filibuster record held by Senator Strom Thurman of South Carolina, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes without a bathroom break, I might add, back in 1957.
Corey Brooker has now broken that record.
He spoke for slightly longer, but strangely enough, with all that time, he never explained why, when he was the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, he authorized the New York City, the Newark City Water Authority, known as Watershed, to pay $200,000 to his law firm, which he then put in his pocket.
And when confronted by reporters, he said that he didn't vote for that yet, and they're hard to find, but when I found the actual formal minutes of the meeting, he was not only in the chair, but he also voted for the disbursement.
Then he came up with three different explanations as to why he got that money.
Once he said it had no connection to Watershed, that it was the buyout of his portion of the law firm.
Another point, he said it was deferred compensation.
Russian Missiles Near Cuba00:07:40
I'll tell you what it was.
It was graft.
That's what it was.
And he's never been, never answered that question.
I actually wrote a biography on him.
It's called Spartacus, The Real Corey Booker Story.
It's now out of print, but I might bring it back to tell you the truth.
It may be time to put it back in truth.
By the way, what you saw there was the launch of Corey Booker's presidential campaign because he sees himself as a presidential candidate.
By the way, he is the senator from Greenwich Village.
He doesn't even live in New Jersey.
I hope to get a copy of that book, sir.
I got to pull it out of mothballs.
I published it when he was running for president, but his campaign was such a flop, didn't sell many copies.
But if he's going to run again, I may have to republish it again.
When we come back, I'm going to ask Colonel Manis about Cuba and the fact that the Chinese have a very sophisticated spy station set up in Cuba.
But I also want to know: do they have missiles?
And if they have missiles, are they offensive missiles or defensive missiles?
And do they pose the same danger that Russian missiles posed to this nation in 1962 when the Russians put them in Cuba?
We'll be right back with Colonel Rob Manis right here in the Stone Zone.
So don't go away.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
The Stone Zone.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
This is the Stone Zone.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the Stone Zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
And we're back with Colonel Rob Manis, retired.
Colonel Manus led numerous combat operations during his military service, including as a bomb squadron commander in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Colonel Manus also served as an enlisted bomb disposal technician in three assignments countering terrorism before being commissioned and selected for flight training.
He is a man who's put his life on the line for his country, and we are honored to have him with us today.
I want to focus on that question regarding Cuba that I raised before the break.
My wife is a Cuban-American.
She is one of those who fled the Castro regime, her family, and she as a child.
And therefore, I have a special interest in the regime 90 miles off of our shore.
Cuba was a great danger to the United States.
Then, with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse, really, of the Russian economy when they could no longer subsidize their comrades in Cuba, they became less of a danger to us.
But now they seem to have been scooped up by the Chinese.
It is indisputable that Joe Biden's administration knew they had a sophisticated spying operation set up on the Cuban island about which he did nothing.
And some military experts tell me that they also have missiles, and that all those missiles, although those missiles may be defensive, with a very slight technological fix, they could be offensive missiles.
What is the situation going on today between us and Cuba?
Well, I think with President Trump coming into office, you're going to see the view of the United States from an official perspective change back to one of questioning why are the Chinese armed forces allowed to have bases on the island?
Why are they being allowed to run these surveillance operations on the island?
They're so close, as you reminded us, you know, it's 90 miles away.
So electronic surveillance capability that we have today is much more effective than it would have been even 10 years ago.
Not just that, but there are cable lines that give them access to the digital networks inside the United States that they are able to get access to, being in such close proximity and uncontrolled.
And I think, and I hope that we're going to see the national security team start putting pressure on the Cuban government again to get those forces removed.
But, you know, one of the conflicting issues, though, is the Russia-Ukraine war, Roger.
And as the president tries to stop the killing over there, I wish it could happen tomorrow because that's going to be a conflicting issue when every time we talk about China being 90 miles away, the other side gets to talk about, well, we're letting Russia expecting Russia to allow NATO to be right up against its border.
And so that kind of debate will get generated out of that.
But knowing President Trump, he'll ignore that and push through to take care of the interests of the United States of America in both of those situations.
And I'm so glad that he's in office because we're going to get the killing stopped in Europe and get that situation resolved.
Yeah, I don't think it's an illegitimate argument, by the way.
We signed the Budapest Memorandum in which we promised when the Russians united East and West Germany, or they allowed us to have it reunited, we agreed not to push Ukraine into NATO, which means not to mount NATO missiles on the ground in NATO aimed at Russia.
We reaffirm that in the Minsk Accords.
We are in violation.
Putin has made it abundantly clear that that was his line in the sand.
No, I'm not pro-Putin.
I have many of my own family relatives mowed down by Russian tanks in Budapest in 1956.
So they'll say, oh, Roger Stone's a rollover for Putin.
He's pro-Russian.
Not even an IOTA.
But I understand why the Russians might not want intercontinental ballistic missiles on their border pointed at their nation.
All right, we're out of time.
I want to thank my special guest, retired Colonel Rob Manis.
He has a killer substack that you might want to check out.
But I appreciate your being with us, Colonel, and I appreciate your bringing your real world defense and national security expertise to my listeners here in the Stone Zone, my friend.
Thank you for being with us, and God bless you.
Thank you, sir.
And I hope to get you on the show to spend an hour with me talking about who killed John F. Kennedy now that all these documents have been released.
I would be most honored to do so.
For you out there listening to the Stone Zone, I want to thank you as well.
Until we meet again, God bless you and Godspeed.
And yes, God bless America.
Hopeful Kennedy Discussion00:00:53
Rural Americans deserve access to the best our nation has to offer, especially when it comes to health care.
Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families health.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.