The Stone Zone dissects rural hospitals’ vital role in U.S. healthcare while Roger Stone praises Trump’s Mar-a-Lago vitality and Elise Stefanik’s strategic retreat from UN ambassador, naming potential replacements like Friedman and Grenell. He defends Trump’s tariffs—citing Mexico/EU wins and China’s retaliatory 50% response—while accusing Wall Street of treasonous market manipulation. Historically, Stone ranks LBJ as worst (tying to JFK’s death) but elevates Nixon and Reagan, framing Trump’s policies as a continuation of their tough, fiscally disciplined legacy, with tariffs, tax cuts, and spending slashes countering inflation myths. [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, give him a zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
Welcome.
You are entering the Stone Zone.
Later, Ayan, I'm going to be taking your questions.
You can send them to me at stone at stonezone.com.
That's stone at stonezone.com.
I was at President Donald Trump's palatial Mar-lago Club Saturday night for dinner, saw the president, also my colleague on 77 WABC Radio, Janine Pirro, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
It was a great evening.
I must say, the president is fit as a fiddle.
He was happy.
He looked healthy.
He's lost a little weight.
I have noticed that his hair color is increasingly blonde, so blonde that it is almost white.
In fact, he's almost identical to my hair color.
But I've never seen him in such a good mood.
Of course, the topic buzzing through the club was who will be the next UN ambassador.
As you know, the president decided to withdraw the nomination of Elise Stefanik, the upstate New York congresswoman who had previously been designated as the UN ambassador.
She had actually been approved by committee in the Senate, but had never submitted her resignation from the House because of the slimness of the Republican majority there.
After the president won back-to-back victories in two Florida special elections, the decision was made to withdraw the nomination because the victory was not assured in this upstate New York district.
Elise Stefanik could certainly be elected, but a special Election is a different animal.
It doesn't bring out the same electorate.
And frankly, Democrats are angry because the new world order is being taken down.
And I guess they're unhappy that the U.S. Supreme Court has now ruled that the most dangerous, violent extremists and terrorists and criminals can be deported.
They're unhappy that Elon Musk and his Doge are uncovering not millions, not billions, but trillions of dollars of our tax dollars going for esoteric and political causes that, well,
the American people never knew we'd be giving $140 million to the New York Times or $90 million to Politico or $5 million to Reuters or $150 million to Brown University.
Why would we be spending money on these things?
Why would we be spending money to push the Russian collusion hoax narrative or to push the COVID-19 hoax narrative?
So it is absolutely clear that the president did the right thing.
And hats off to Elise Stefanik, who put her personal ambitions on hold.
I think she's a great woman.
I think she would have been a great UN ambassador.
I think that her greatest days of public service lie yet ahead.
And I'm certain that she will be appointed to a high-level position in the future Trump administration.
But there are a lot of names buzzing.
First of all, let me say the president himself was giving no hints.
So the mentions here are what I picked up, but not what he told me.
If he's chosen somebody, he's keeping that to himself.
If there's a frontrunner, he's not telling you that either.
David Friedman, a banker from New York, is thought to be one of the frontrunners.
He was instrumental in the passage of the historic Abraham Accords, which highlights his diplomatic experience and his alignment with Trump policies.
Rick Grinnell, I guess he'd be my personal favorite.
Rick Grinnell has a history of diplomatic roles under President Trump, including ambassador to Germany and the acting director of national intelligence.
It was under Rick Grinnell that the crossfire hurricane documents were ordered to be declassified, something that actually never happened at the end of the Trump administration.
Trump gave the order, but the bureaucrats knew he was leaving office, so they didn't care.
The president more recently, now in his new term, has ordered yet again the release of the crossfire hurricane documents.
Those are the documents that tell us who was behind the Russian collusion hoax and why.
If you want to know why the FBI raided President Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago, same way they raided my home, well, it was because they need to get the Russian collusion crossfire hurricane documents back, because it will show you exactly who, starting with Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and National Security Advisor Susan Rice and FBI Director James Comey and CIA Director John Brennan,
Andrew McCabe of the FBI, all of them in an illegal cabal.
I mean, let's face it, the Russian collusion hoax was the greatest single dirty trick in American political history.
Was nothing less than the use of the full authority of the United States government and the extraordinary capability of our intelligence agencies, utilizing two pieces of quote-unquote evidence that they all knew were fraudulent, the so-called steel dossier.
That was a report commissioned and paid for illegally by Hillary Clinton's campaign.
She paid a fine for it, actually, which falsely alleged that Donald Trump had dallied with prostitutes when he was in Moscow as a private businessman years ago, and that he had witnessed them allegedly urinating on a hotel bed that Barack Obama and his wife had once slept in.
Total fiction.
In fact, Andrew Weissman, who was the de facto head of the Mueller Inquisition and also the single most corrupt federal prosecutor in U.S. history, a man who got his start covering up mob murders right there in Brooklyn, the guy who brought down Enron and Arthur Anderson only to have the convictions that he won unanimously overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court for prosecutorial misconduct.
Weissman knew all the way back to his days as general counsel to the FBI that the so-called steel dossier was a fraud.
But nonetheless, it was used as the pretext to launch the entire Russian collusion hoax, which came very close to destroying me and my family, even though there was never any evidence produced that connected me to Russian collusion, WikiLeaks collaboration, or any other illegal act.
No, folks, I was prosecuted to pressure me into testifying falsely against President Donald Trump, which I, of course, refused to do.
But others being mentioned for the UN, Senator Bill Haggerty, Republican senator from Tennessee, previously served as Trump's ambassador to Japan during his first term, although his Senate seat could affect his availability due to the slim Republican margins in Congress.
There is also some discussion of Carrie Lake, who ran for both governor and the Senate in Arizona.
Both of those questions elections have election integrity issues that are deeply troubling.
Zero Tariffs Debate00:04:45
Carrie Lake is one of the most effective communicators I've ever met.
She's a good friend.
She'll be great at the UN.
I like her as well.
There's actually some outsider speculation about former casino mogul Steve Wynn, one of the president's closest friends.
That would be an interesting choice.
But again, as I say, if the president has chosen somebody or if there's really a frontrunner, he hasn't tipped his hand.
By the way, we're going to be taking your questions by email later.
Go to stone at stonezone.com, stone at stonezone.com, and we will entertain your questions, whether it's about news, history, politics, style, or culture.
Be happy to answer your questions.
The big news, of course, is Donald Trump's dogged insistence that our trading partners are going to give us a fair deal.
And if that means hitting them with tariffs that are larger, pardon me, hitting them with tariffs that are not as large as the tariffs that they are levying on American products entering their countries, well, then so be it.
Any idea that the president is going to soften his line on tariffs, well, then you just don't know Donald J. Trump.
What's going on in the stock market, and I'm not a financial expert, but I think it needs to be investigated.
Either the Treasury Department or the SEC or perhaps Doge should do a forensic audit on the large trades which have caused the stock market to crash.
This was done by institutional investors to purposely crash the market, in my opinion.
By the way, that's treason if they're Americans, or it may be an act of war done by foreign actors.
It's definitely stock market manipulation.
It was done to try to force the president to reverse the tariffs.
One thing I know about Donald Trump, who I've known for 50 years, by the way, he hates it when I say that because he says it just tells everybody how old both of us are, is that when he sets his mind on a goal, he is the most stubborn person in the universe.
I don't say that as a criticism.
I say it as a compliment.
He is dogged in his determination to make America first again.
This is really not complicated.
The SEC can find out who's involved within a day.
They can track all of this stock market activity very closely due to their monitoring for insider trading.
They just need to search the server to see who made the biggest trades and when.
This, again, was not done by individual investors.
It was done by, quote, institutional investors.
Those are companies.
We need to see who they are because I, for one, smell a rat.
In the meantime, President Trump's hard line on tariffs that began last Wednesday are already bringing massive, successful results.
The Mexicans have announced that they will go to zero tariffs.
They will drop all tariffs, and therefore the president has said that we will drop all tariffs on Mexico.
This is what this is really about.
When I interviewed Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth, who, in my opinion, is one of the most brilliant economists in the country.
He was a chief economic advisor to President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.
I interviewed him right here on the Red Apple audio networks.
He said that he's not a fan of tariffs.
Well, you know, either am I. In fact, in a perfect world, I'm a free trader.
Guess what?
So is Donald Trump.
If we could have no tariffs between any of ourselves and any of our trading partners, well, that's what the president would prefer.
But as long as they are slapping prohibitive tariffs on us, then we need to return the fire.
And it is having the desired results.
The European Union has already offered the United States a flat deal of zero tariffs for zero tariffs.
European Commission President Ursula von der Land said the UN offered zero for zero tariff for industrial goods because Europe is always ready for a good deal.
So let's keep it on the table.
This woman is starting to get Donald Trump.
On True Social, President Trump said we have a massive financial deficit with China, the European Union, and many others.
The only way this problem can be cured is with tariffs, which are now beginning to bring tens of billions of dollars into the United States.
Trump's Trade War Tactics00:15:33
They're already in effect and a beautiful thing to behold.
The surplus with these countries has grown during the presidency of sleepy Joe Biden.
We're going to reverse that, and we're going to reverse it very quickly.
Someday the American people realize that tariffs for the United States of America are a very beautiful thing.
As I said earlier, this is but one leg of a three-legged stool.
The other two are tax cuts.
No, not tax cuts for the rich, but the across-the-board tax cuts initially enacted by President Trump, which need to be renewed before January.
If you're against the renewal of the tax cuts, well, then you're for the greatest single tax increase in American history.
In the meantime, you're in the stone zone.
Here we tell the stone-cold truth.
We criticize Republicans and Democrats, but we bring you the inside story on American politics behind the scenes, what's really going on.
So, whatever you do, please don't touch that dial.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
At university, a graduate degree is not out of reach.
You'll gain real-world skills, credentials, employers' value, and connections to New York City's top companies.
Choose from their new master of science degrees in healthcare, informatics, digital marketing and analytics, business analytics, or financial analytics.
All built around hands-on learning and industry partnerships.
Graduate ready to lead, not just work.
Take the next step at manhattan.edu slash graduate.
Manhattan University.
lead the future this is the stone zone with roger stone They went after a guy named Roger Stone, who's sitting in the office.
And I'll say this in front of Roger.
He's no baby.
And right now, he's cleaner than anybody in this place.
Now, as they treated him very unfairly.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
And you're back in the stone zone.
Ignore the fake news media.
President Trump's three-pronged strategy of sweeping tariffs on those who put tariffs on our goods and services.
Tax reduction and deep spending cuts in the waste, fraud, and corrupt spending uncovered by Elon Musk is going to revive the American economy.
As the president said yesterday, don't be a pannikin.
He's a new party, the pannikins, those who are flipping out, hysterical, apoplectic about the fact that finally we're going to get fair trade in this country.
Now, we could have no tariffs at all.
If our trading partners will go to zero, we'll go to zero.
And that's the desire because Donald Trump really wants to increase our prosperity, and he will fight for the middle class.
Those who think you can cow him into backing down, well, they just don't know Donald Trump the way I know him.
Stock markets across Asia cratered yesterday as a result of President Trump's sweeping tariffs, triggered panic selling.
The Chinese stock market was down 5.5% in a major plunge.
Now, those who say that the tariffs cause inflation, well, that's just False.
It's interesting.
China has the lowest tariff rate on other countries in the United States, yet they have no inflation whatsoever.
They have deflation.
So that whole notion that inflation will be fed by the tariffs, well, that is, once again, liberal disinformation.
When it comes to China, Trump said yesterday China issued retaliatory tariffs of 34% on top of their already record-setting tariffs, non-monetary tariffs, illegal subsidiary of companies, and massive long-term currency manipulation.
Despite my warning, that any country that retaliates against the United States by additioning additional tariffs above and beyond their already existing long-term tariff abuse of this country will be immediately met with new and substantially higher tariffs over and above those initially set.
Therefore, if China does not withdraw its 34% increases above their already long-term trading abuses by today, the United States will impose additional tariffs on China of 50%.
I think he did that this afternoon.
Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated.
Negotiations with other countries, which have also requested meetings, will begin taking place immediately.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, the president.
Donald Trump is open for business, folks.
He is a master negotiator.
All we have to do is remain steady, remain focused on the target, and move forward.
We must continue, and I'm comfortable with the leadership of the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln.
That would be Donald J. Trump.
You're in the Stone Zone, and we'll be right back.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
They went after a guy named Roger Stone, who's sitting in the office.
And I'll say this in front of Roger.
He's no baby.
And right now, he's cleaner than anybody in this place.
Now, as they treated him very unfairly.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
And we're back in the zone.
Again, taking your questions at stone at stonezone.com.
Stone at stonezone.com.
As promised, today the Trump administration increased tariffs to 104% on China.
That went into effect today.
While President Trump is correcting a decades-long problem with the economy, talking heads on cable news attempt to cause a panic over the stock market.
I talked of this earlier.
This is stock market manipulation.
To this, President Trump said the United States has a chance to do something that should have been done decades ago.
Don't be weak.
Don't be stupid.
Don't be a pannikin.
That's a new party that he has conjured up based on weakness and stupidity.
Be strong, courageous, and patient, and greatness for America will be the result.
The White House also had to issue a statement in response to a false report that Trump would announce a 90-day pause on the tariffs.
Fake news.
The White House rapid response account on X basically said wrong fake news.
I'd say they nailed it.
We're taking your questions now.
Lisa in Canarsie says you have worked for at least four presidents.
Who is the greatest president of your lifetime?
Now, there is a complicated question for me of my lifetime.
Well, I was born in 1952.
Ironically, my birthday is August 27th, the same day as, well, Lyndon Baines Johnson, the man who I argued in a 2013 New York Times best-selling book, The Man Who Killed Kennedy, The Case Against LBJ, planned and orchestrated the murder of President John F. Kennedy.
He did it with assistance from the CIA, the mob, Big Texas Oil, and banking interests, among others.
And Lyndon Johnson was certainly the worst president of my lifetime.
And that's saying a lot because it covers Jimmy Carter.
I think Jimmy Carter, by the way, was a good man, a fine, patriotic American, a good Christian.
He was just way in over his head.
He was not evil.
He was not corrupt, but he was not up to the job.
He died a happy man because, well, after Joe Biden, he no longer goes down as the worst president in history.
That title is reserved for Sleepy Joe.
But it was Lyndon Johnson who first dipped into the Social Security Trund to pay for other government expenses.
This is what endangers the future Social Security payments of so many Americans who have paid into the system through their payroll taxes.
And they say by 2033, well, the system will be bankrupt.
Thank you, Lyndon Johnson.
But as to who was the greatest president in our lifetime, well, in 1952, Dwight Eisenhower was president.
Now, Ike was a far greater president than most people realize because he was so low-key.
And because we were just coming into the television age in the early 50s, I don't think he gets the credit he deserved.
We had unprecedented peace and prosperity under Ike.
And he was a military man, but he refused the demands of the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex for deficit spending to pay for armaments that he adjudged that we did not need.
We had the ability to kill everybody in the world three times over.
Why did we need to pay to be able to kill them 15 times over?
Your last balanced budget was under Dwight Eisenhower.
I am, of course, a protégé and an unabashed admirer of one Richard Millhouse Nixon.
Up until the time of Donald Trump, he staged the greatest single comeback in American political history.
He was cheated out of the presidency in 1960.
I established that in my book, Tricky Dick, The Rise and Fall and Rise of Richard M. Nixon.
And he was toppled by the CIA in Watergate.
Don't take my word for it.
Look at the declassified documents that were released less than a year ago.
Four of the eight Watergate burglars were still on the payroll of the CIA.
By the way, it's the same four who just happened to be on the ground in Dealey Plaza on November 22nd, 1963.
How incredibly coincidental.
Under Richard Nixon, we had a strategic arms limitation agreement with the Soviets.
We desegregated the public schools without any violence or incident.
But when Nixon became president, almost 82% of the public schools in America were still segregated.
When he left office, that number was about 16.
He gets no credit for that.
By the way, Richard Nixon appointed more African Americans to federal office than Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy combined.
Some criticize Nixon for opening the door to China, saying that it is his fault that China menaces this country today.
I think that is a misreading of history.
When Richard Nixon brought China in out of the cold when he visited Peking in a daring gambit to force the Russians to the table for strategic arms limitations, China was a dirt-poor, backward, agrarian society.
Very few people in China had indoor plumbing, and the rural areas had no electricity.
They had no military capability.
They had no nuclear weapons.
They had no technology.
There was no way for Richard Nixon to know that 30 years later, Bill and Hillary Clinton would give the Chinese most favored nation trading status, which is what made them the danger to this country they are today, made them an economic superpower.
It was also Bill Clinton who sold them in the Laurel scandal our most sensitive military secrets, including our missile targeting technology, in return for illegal campaign contributions for his re-election.
That, by the way, is what he should have been impeached for, not his dalliance with an intern in the Oval Office.
It was Richard Nixon who unilaterally saved Israel from complete annihilation in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Over the objections, by the way, of his national security advisor, later Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, over the objections of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, over the objections of his entire national security apparatus, when Golda Mair publicly called on President Richard Nixon and put out the urgent SOS, the Israelis had their backs to the sea.
They were out of ammunition after a surprise attack by the Syrians and the Egyptians, which was not predicted in advance by Israelis wanted intelligence services.
And it was Nixon who airlifted $37 million of lethal aid to Israel, allowing them to survive.
It's amazing how many people don't know this.
There is a Watergate area tape, which is almost never played.
Those who worked for Nixon knew that sometimes when he gave an order, if you disagreed with it, you could kind of wait him out.
And maybe the next day or the day after, he would reconsider and rescind the offer.
In this case, he ordered the lethal aid be sent to the Israelis as quickly as possible.
When he saw his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, the next day, he said, so have the Israelis gotten the aid yet?
And Kissinger said, no, we haven't been able to decide what kind of plane to send it in.
Nixon was furious.
He called Admiral Thomas Moore, who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he said, send anything that will fly, anything that will fly.
If those planes are not in the air within the hour, I'm going to come over there and put my foot up your, well, you can imagine the rest.
How come they don't play that Watergate area era tape?
No, whether it is those accomplishments, he was above all a peacemaker.
And I do think his history will be very kind to Richard Nixon, kinder than it has been.
When you look at Watergate, it looks like a milk-fed puppy compared to the dirty tricks and abuse of power by Barack Obama in the Russian collusion hoax.
Ronald Reagan: The Same in Public and Private00:05:38
And then, of course, there is Ronald Reagan.
I spent a lot of time with Ronald Reagan.
I worked in his 1976, his 1980, and his 1984 campaigns.
76, when we challenged Gerald Ford, he would go down in history of as not one of our better presidents.
Gerald Ford, of course, was involved in the cover-up of John F. Kennedy's murder as a member of the Warren Commission.
Gerald Ford, then a congressman from Michigan, actually, at the request of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, took a pencil and changed the official diagram in Kennedy's autopsy from his military doctor,
moving the depiction of the wound in his upper back to the back of his neck to accommodate the single bullet theory.
This is, by the way, you can find this in the New York Times.
It was reported there.
Ford was asked why he made this crucial change.
He said, well, the country needed finality.
It needed closure.
You notice he didn't say the country needed truth.
Reagan was that rare thing you see in politics, someone who was the same in private as he was in public.
There were not two Ronald Reagan.
There was only one.
I can't say that of any of the presidents I have worked for.
They're all slightly different in public than they are in private.
Trump would be closest in that regard.
In fact, Trump and Reagan bear many similarities.
But Reagan was affable, easygoing, genial, optimistic.
He had boundless energy, but he conserved his energy.
He was very, very careful about getting enough rest, very careful about his diet.
He did not drink other than occasionally before a TV appearance, he would have a small glass of red wine to bring a kind of a pink glow to his cheeks.
When he was asked at the end of his presidency by a reporter whether the fact that he hadn't come from the world of politics, but had, in fact, come from the world of entertainment, had been an actor before being elected governor, and then being re-elected governor by almost a million votes before challenging Gerald Ford in 1976 and then trouncing George H.W. Bush for president in 1980.
And Reagan said, you know, actually, I don't know how a guy who wasn't an actor could do this job.
When he said that, what he meant was that people look to the president and they want to see confidence.
They want to see strength.
They want to see leadership.
Trump, pardon me, Reagan understood the American people looked to their president to see how things were going.
If the president looked worried, if the president looked scared, well, that did not give the country a good feeling.
Now, without any question, Ronald Reagan rebuilt our military strength.
He restored respect for America and the world.
In the early parts of the Reagan administration, they said the tax cuts were going to destroy the stock market, that it was going to crash the national economy.
Does this sound familiar, folks?
But stay, the course was the slogan, and it should be the slogan yet today.
He also appointed scores of conservatives to the courts, including the Supreme Court.
He was among our greatest presidents, and it would be very hard for me to choose.
And of course, then there is Donald Trump.
Now, Donald Trump, who I have, as I said earlier, known for almost 50 years, is a phenomenon.
He's unlike any other political figure I have ever worked for.
He's not a politician, so don't call him one.
He is the head of a political movement, but he will never be a politician.
He has boundless energy.
He, I think, sleeps maybe three or four hours a night.
He is an optimist, but above all, he is tough as nails.
He is the toughest person I've ever met.
I worked for Richard Nixon.
I worked for Senator Bob Dole.
He was a great American, would have been a great president.
But Donald Trump is tougher than both of them.
That is why those who think that he's going to fold on tariffs because heads of big companies are calling him and begging him to back off, he will never back off.
He has the right formula.
By the way, Scott Besant, the Secretary of Treasury, this guy may be the greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton.
When you watch him on the morning shows, when you watch him in the media interviews, he has a reassuring quality and a strength and a sureness about the president's plan that I think gives the American people great confidence.
Howard Luttnick, the commerce secretary, well, not so much.
I say we need more Besson and a little less Luttnick.
But Donald Trump has to be in my top two.
I mean, I'm a Nixon man.
I love Reagan, but I love Donald Trump.
And of course, without Donald Trump, I wouldn't be with you today.
I'd either be dead or still locked up in a federal prison, even though I did nothing whatsoever wrong.
Satchimo's Marijuana Mishap00:05:12
You're listening to the Stone Zone.
Whatever you do, don't touch that dial.
We're going to come back and take more of your questions on the other side.
Up next, Keeping the Live in Alive with Debbie Nigro, sponsored by Native Path Collagen.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
It's the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
They went after a guy named Roger Stone who's sitting in the office.
And I'll say this in front of Roger.
He's no baby.
And right now, he's cleaner than anybody in this place.
Now, they treated him very unfairly.
Now, give him a zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
And you're back in the Stone Zone with yours truly, Roger Stone.
I love this story in the New York Post.
John Katzman, owner of the Christides and D'Agostino food chains, as well as host of the Katz and Cosby Show and the owner of 77WABC Radio in New York,
has told the socialist candidate for mayor, Zorhan Mamdani, that he would let him use one of his grocery stores to test his socialist Soviet-style theory about essentially free food for the people, as long as the city of New York agrees to pay the shortfall for shoplifting.
I love this story.
This is genius.
Socialism doesn't work, folks.
It hasn't worked in Russia, hasn't worked in China, won't work here.
Here is a question from Annie in St. Louis, Missouri.
Annie says, Is it true that Richard Nixon once trafficked marijuana?
Well, let me tell the story.
Louis Armstrong was tapped to be a UN Goodwill Ambassador, did several tours of Africa and Asia with his trumpet, was granted ambassadorial status and therefore never had to go through customs when he was leaving the country or when he was coming into the country.
And on one particular occasion, he was coming back into what was then Idawild Airport.
Now I believe it is Kennedy Airport in New York City, outside New York City.
And to his surprise, instead of just being waved through customs as he had been previously, he was put online to have his bags checked.
Well, the problem with that was Satchimo was traveling with three pounds of the finest marijuana on earth because, as many of the jazz musicians of the day, Satchmo was a heavy marijuana smoker.
This is in all of the written biographies of him.
And Satchimo began to sweat.
He could see the headlines: U.S. Goodwill Ambassador busted for muling drugs at Idawild Airport.
It was then that the doors swung open wide and Vice President Richard Nixon walked in.
And he said, Satchmo, what are you doing here?
And he said, well, Pops.
And Satchimo called everybody Pops.
He said, I was coming back from Asia and I was put in this line to go through customs.
And the vice president said, that's ridiculous.
You have ambassadorial status.
You don't need to stay in that line.
In fact, let the vice president of the United States take your bags to the curb so you can be on your way.
And Vice President Richard Nixon picked up Satchimo's two suitcases.
One of them contained three pounds of probably the best marijuana on earth.
He took him to the curbside, and the jazz great Louis Armstrong was on his way.
Little did Richard Nixon know that he was muling drugs, for one of the greatest jazz musicians that ever lived, the great Louis Armstrong.
I heard this story from a member of Satchimo's band, and I absolutely believe it to be true.
So there is the inside story about the one time that Richard Nixon muled drugs.
You've been listening to the Stone Zone here on the Red Apple Audio Networks.
Until we meet again, God bless you and Godspeed.
If you're looking to create, grow, and sustain your wealth, download and subscribe to the Pain Points of Wealth podcast at BeBullish.com with Bob, Ryan, and Chris Payne.
It's your podcast for market insights, money tips, and real talk on the economy.