The StoneZONE - Roger Stone - The Stone Zone | 04-28-25
Aired: 2025-04-29
Duration: 40:53


=== The Stone Cold Truth (14:15) ===

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[00:00:20]  This is The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
[00:00:32]  People love him and respect him.
[00:00:33]  Roger Stone.
[00:00:35]  Now, give him a zone.
[00:00:37]  It's the stone zone.
[00:00:39]  Here's Roger Stone.
[00:00:42]  And you're back in the Stone Zone with me, Roger Stone.
[00:00:46]  Here we give you the Stone Cold Truth.
[00:00:49]  We call them like we say them.
[00:00:51]  We criticize Republicans and Democrats and just about everybody else.
[00:00:57]  President Donald Trump made it clear Sunday that he would not be following Joe Biden's practice of celebrating Indigenous Peoples Day alongside Columbus Day in October.
[00:01:09]  I'm bringing back Columbus Day from the ashes, said President Trump on True Social.
[00:01:14]  The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and of all of the Italian Americans that love him so much.
[00:01:24]  They tore down his statues, put up nothing but woke, or even worse, nothing at all.
[00:01:30]  Well, you'll be happy to know that Christopher is going to be making a major comeback.
[00:01:35]  I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations as it has had for all of the many decades before.
[00:01:45]  It was the lynching of 11 Italian-American immigrants in New Orleans in 1891 that led to the first Columbus Day celebration in the United States, which was declared by President Benjamin Harrison.
[00:01:58]  President Franklin Roosevelt designated Columbus Day as a national holiday in 1934.
[00:02:05]  President Trump has long complained about Democrats tearing down statues of Columbus.
[00:02:10]  In 2020, Trump's administration paid to restore a statue in Baltimore, Maryland that was dumped in the harbor during protests against the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
[00:02:23]  Joining me now to talk about it is my friend Mike Crispy.
[00:02:28]  Mike, welcome to the Stone Zone.
[00:02:31]  Roger, an honor to be with you.
[00:02:33]  Great to be back.
[00:02:34]  And it's been a great 100 days under President Trump, and this Columbus Day news was just another cherry on top of what's been an amazing ride so far.
[00:02:41]  It is.
[00:02:41]  Mike, I invited you because you are one of the founders of the Italian American Civil Rights League.
[00:02:50]  That is a nonprofit organization.
[00:02:52]  You can find it at iacrl.org.
[00:02:57]  You and I are both affiliates.
[00:02:59]  It is a nonprofit with no overhead.
[00:03:02]  Everybody involved is a volunteer.
[00:03:05]  But our specific purpose is to preserve Italian American culture and the proud heritage of Italian Americans who have contributed mightily to the greatness of this nation.
[00:03:18]  So I think the president's action today is very much in keeping with the principles and mission of the Italian American Civil Rights League.
[00:03:28]  Now, 100%.
[00:03:29]  You know, President Trump had said over the course of the campaign trail several times that he would save Columbus Day.
[00:03:35]  He made that distinction very clear.
[00:03:36]  And we were running in the race in the 2024 election with Kamala Harris and Tim Waltz, candidates on the Democrat side who said that they wanted to abolish Columbus Day, get rid of every statue, and create Indigenous Peoples Day far and wide.
[00:03:49]  So President Trump made that promise.
[00:03:51]  Actually, had a phenomenal performance in all of the major Italian counties in the United States, all the top 10 Italian-American counties.
[00:03:59]  There was a shift to the right by three to eight points in each of those respective counties.
[00:04:04]  So, President Trump has a great base of support with Italian-Americans for years to come, Roger.
[00:04:09]  This was a great move by him, and I'm looking forward to this Columbus Day under his presidency.
[00:04:14]  Mike, tell us about your show because your show is red hot, and I don't want anyone to miss it.
[00:04:21]  Well, thank you, Roger.
[00:04:22]  So, on Real America's Voice TV, our last call with Mike Crispy, we're having a good time on weekends now.
[00:04:28]  You know, we're celebrating the golden age of America.
[00:04:31]  So, we have a show on Saturday nights.
[00:04:33]  It's a little bit fun, but it's obviously very entertaining and uniquely, you know, fast-paced and hard-hitting.
[00:04:40]  We have that Italian-American energy going on, and it's been really great.
[00:04:44]  We've been doing it for a month on Real America's Voice, a channel that, you know, many people know, and we have great people who come on, great panelists.
[00:04:50]  And, you know, we're trying to cover President Trump's first 100 days and then his four years subsequent while celebrating his successes, laughing at the peril of the leftists, and also giving people a fun new alternative to watch on Saturday night when the leftists put out their mindless content.
[00:05:09]  They can now watch Last Call and they can get informed and get entertained.
[00:05:13]  And it's never been a funner way to spend your weekend.
[00:05:15]  So we look forward to having you on soon, Roger.
[00:05:17]  I appreciate that.
[00:05:19]  So, Mike, let's talk some New Jersey politics because you made a valiant and very strong race for Congress two years ago.
[00:05:28]  I know many, many Republicans, conservatives, MAGA supporters are urging you to take another stab at it.
[00:05:36]  On the other hand, you're a young man.
[00:05:39]  You have a great future.
[00:05:40]  You're building a very, very substantial media following.
[00:05:44]  I think anybody who is paying attention really credits you, beyond President Trump himself, of course, with the president's incredibly strong showing in the Garden State in the last election.
[00:05:56]  I mean, New Jersey was not a targeted state.
[00:06:00]  The Trump campaign candidly, wisely sent their funds to targeted swing states that were absolutely crucial to the president's victory.
[00:06:12]  In no one's count were New Jersey's electoral votes counted in the 270 likely for Donald Trump.
[00:06:20]  Yet the president ran incredibly strongly in the Garden State.
[00:06:24]  And I think that is due very much to the grassroots shoe leather effort that you and others in New Jersey put forward.
[00:06:33]  You know, it was pretty amazing because they were trying to kick President Trump off the ballot in New Jersey in January of 2024.
[00:06:41]  And we formed our group, the America First Republicans in New Jersey, out of that fight.
[00:06:45]  We said they're not going to kick off President Trump from the ballot.
[00:06:49]  This guy is extremely popular in New Jersey.
[00:06:51]  And that actually kicked off a 32-stop rally tour that we held from January all the way up until November, holding events for President Trump's campaign all around the state.
[00:07:03]  We would be in the most red counties.
[00:07:05]  We'd be in the most blue areas, such as Newark.
[00:07:08]  And no matter where we went, Roger, we would have over 100 to 300 people coming out to learn how to get involved.
[00:07:15]  We didn't have any fancy speakers or guests or anything like that.
[00:07:18]  It was just grassroots patriots coming together whenever we had an event to talk about the future of New Jersey and talk about what we could do together to maximize the output for President Trump.
[00:07:29]  So 32 events.
[00:07:30]  We got 2,000 volunteers signed up.
[00:07:33]  We did 1.5 million voter contacts through text, digital, and door knocking all throughout the state.
[00:07:39]  And President Trump obviously had a historic rally in New Jersey in Wildwood where he had 107,000 people.
[00:07:46]  They said that was perhaps his biggest or one of the biggest rallies that he had all 2024 campaign season long.
[00:07:52]  So nobody was expecting it in New Jersey.
[00:07:54]  You know, he had lost the state in 2016 and 2020 by 16 points both times.
[00:08:00]  This time, only losing it by five and a half.
[00:08:02]  It shows that he has totally changed the whole paradigm in this state, and he has set it up for the future for it to turn red.
[00:08:10]  I think that's going to be a big part of President Trump's legacy in the Garden State in the future, that he changed this state.
[00:08:16]  And I think in the future, 2028 and beyond, we can flip it red.
[00:08:20]  That's going to be thanks to the groundwork that President Trump put in, awaking so many of the masses and obviously our volunteers and helping spread that message.
[00:08:28]  It looks to me, Mike, like you may have a presidential candidate from New Jersey, Senator Corey Booker, a former mayor of Newark, whose last campaign for president fizzled badly, seems to have kicked off his campaign.
[00:08:47]  First, he gave a filibuster on the U.S. Senate, speaking for 24 hours plus, breaking the previous record, which was held, I think, in 1958 by Senator J. Strom Thurmond.
[00:09:01]  And I noticed that while he did have a lot to say, the one thing he did not address is why, as the mayor of Newark, he received a $200,000 payment from the New York City Water Authority, essentially called Watershed, that went immediately to his law firm and from his law firm to his pocket.
[00:09:26]  Now, when he was confronted by those very few souls in the New Jersey media who are not in the tank about how this was possible, then Mayor Booker said, well, I am an ex officio member of the board of the Watershed Authority, but I wasn't present and I didn't vote to award the money to my own law firm.
[00:09:51]  The problem is that I dug up the official minutes and they show him present and voting yes.
[00:09:58]  Two of the top officials of the Water Authority went to prison, but Corey Booker went to the U.S. Senate.
[00:10:06]  Will he face this kind of scrutiny if he runs for president?
[00:10:10]  Well, you know, Roger, you're one of the first people to blow it out in the open with your book that you wrote about Corey Booker, Spartacus, as we call him in New Jersey.
[00:10:18]  And I believe that Corey Booker right now is totally setting up to run for president.
[00:10:23]  The stunt that you mentioned with the 24 hours, and then there's that footage of him over the weekend sitting on the steps.
[00:10:29]  He was sitting on the steps for 10 hours on Washington, D.C., outside the Capitol or something like that.
[00:10:34]  And he was talking about what a courageous effort he was undertaking, him and Hakeem Jeffries.
[00:10:38]  So this is what a Democrat on the rise looks like.
[00:10:41]  I like our chances for 2028.
[00:10:43]  He's not going to have an easy time.
[00:10:45]  I don't think he's going to be top five when it's all said and done in the Democrat nominations.
[00:10:49]  There's a lot more candidates that have a lot more money and, frankly, a lot more political savvy in skill and are a little bit smarter than Corey Booker.
[00:10:57]  So he's going to try, but he's going to fail.
[00:10:59]  And our two senators in New Jersey have been just an utter disgrace, Andy Kim and Corey Booker, every single time.
[00:11:05]  They're the loudest mouthed who are inhibiting progress to this country, whether it be speaking in favor of illegal immigrants or speaking in favor of tanking the economy.
[00:11:16]  These people don't want America to be made great.
[00:11:19]  They're the biggest loudmouthed cronies of the left.
[00:11:22]  And Corey Booker is going to go no place when he inevitably declares his candidacy.
[00:11:27]  Look forward to seeing him flop.
[00:11:29]  Yeah, I saw him on the steps of the Capitol.
[00:11:32]  Candidly, looks like he's put on a few pounds.
[00:11:35]  So here's another question for you, Mike.
[00:11:38]  The other U.S. Senator who was forced to resign, Senator Menendez, this was his second brush with the law, but now convicted of far worse than bribery, convicted of taking national security information and leaking it to a foreign enemy, putting American lives in danger, accepting gold bars along with his wife.
[00:12:03]  It is rumored that he or some of his supporters are furiously lobbying President Trump for a pardon, either for himself or his wife.
[00:12:15]  Separately, there's a rumor that the gentleman who actually bribed the senator is also lobbying for a pardon.
[00:12:24]  Should the president consider pardoning any of these people?
[00:12:28]  Absolutely not.
[00:12:29]  Absolutely not.
[00:12:30]  We have a rule of law in this country.
[00:12:32]  The Democrats for the last decade have totally flaunted it.
[00:12:35]  They have made a joke, quite frankly, the rule of law.
[00:12:38]  And anytime there is any exercise of power, they've used it against innocent conservatives.
[00:12:44]  So when a Democrat does something illegal, which many of them have over the last decade, they usually don't face any consequence.
[00:12:50]  The reason that Menendez was caught red-handed is because his crimes were so egregious, egotistical, and out there that it was right there in everybody's face.
[00:13:00]  That goes to show you the status of the modern day leftists and Democrats is that they think they can get away with anything.
[00:13:06]  So Bob Menendez, dead to rights, him, his wife, the one who was paying off the bribe.
[00:13:12]  You know, these people operated like an organized crime racket.
[00:13:15]  And Menendez, quite frankly, it's treasonous activity.
[00:13:18]  I mean, putting the interests of foreign countries over the interests of America, which he very much is guilty of when you read through the case and the file.
[00:13:26]  I mean, that's horrible.
[00:13:27]  That is the exact opposite of what we elect our members of Congress to do.
[00:13:32]  We elect them to advocate at the very least, even though if they have a different worldview of us, to advocate for the people of the state and the country.
[00:13:39]  Menendez is such an egregious case because everything he did was to advocate for essentially foreign countries.
[00:13:47]  And that's where that money was coming from.
[00:13:49]  It was to advocate for the interests of the Egyptians over the interests of the people in New Jersey.
[00:13:54]  It's an insane case, and there needs to be an example made out of him that if you're going to act like this, you need to face the consequences because members of the Senate, even on both sides, are getting really kind of out of line on stuff.
[00:14:06]  We need to bring it back.
[00:14:07]  We need to have more people who are transparent and advocating for the constituents.
[00:14:11]  So Menendez, I don't think he's going to get a pardon, and I sure hope not, Roger.

=== Advocacy Over Advocacy (05:16) ===

[00:14:16]  All right.
[00:14:16]  If you're just tuning in, we're talking to Mike Crispy.
[00:14:19]  This is the Stone Zone.
[00:14:20]  Whatever you do, don't touch that dial because we'll be right back.
[00:14:25]  Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our nation has to offer, especially health care.
[00:14:31]  Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
[00:14:40]  No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
[00:14:42]  They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
[00:14:48]  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.
[00:15:00]  Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
[00:15:09]  Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
[00:15:11]  They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
[00:15:14]  But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
[00:15:18]  Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
[00:15:22]  Don't cut rule health care.
[00:15:35]  This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
[00:15:39]  They went after a guy named Roger Stone who's sitting in the office.
[00:15:42]  And I'll say this in front of Roger.
[00:15:44]  He's no baby.
[00:15:45]  And right now he's cleaner than anybody in this place.
[00:15:48]  Now, as they treated him very unfairly.
[00:15:51]  Now, get him a zone.
[00:15:53]  It's the Stone Zone.
[00:15:55]  Here's Roger Stone.
[00:15:59]  And we're back in the Stone Zone.
[00:16:01]  We're talking to Mike Crispy.
[00:16:03]  Mike, you still have your show on Rumble, yes?
[00:16:05]  Yes.
[00:16:06]  Every day, people can check me out, 10 a.m. Eastern, rumble.com slash crispy.
[00:16:11]  Or we're talking about national politics with a little New Jersey flair, of course.
[00:16:15]  So people got to go check that out as well.
[00:16:17]  Excellent.
[00:16:18]  So, Mike, I want to ask you about this upcoming Republican primary.
[00:16:22]  New Jersey, one of only two states in the nation that have their gubernatory election in the off year, often read as an indicator of how the new president is doing.
[00:16:33]  But you have, I think, a spirited, although it appears to be one-sided Republican primary for governor.
[00:16:39]  Many, many conservatives and MAGA supporters, Trump supporters, urged you to run.
[00:16:45]  I know you thought about it seriously, but elected not to run because you thought you could make a greater contribution doing what you're doing now.
[00:16:52]  But how do you see this contest?
[00:16:54]  Well, you know, it's coming down in less than 45 days at this point.
[00:16:59]  And it looks like the field is starting to narrow.
[00:17:03]  I think the campaign of Bill Spadia, who people say is a MAGA guy, is starting to fizzle out.
[00:17:08]  His campaign has run out of money, spent almost a million dollars, and he can't break 11% in the polls.
[00:17:15]  So people who have been talking about his candidacy, it looks increasing by the day that it's effectively over.
[00:17:20]  Can't run out of cash and not move in the polls.
[00:17:22]  That's a recipe for a disaster.
[00:17:24]  So that really leaves us with three other candidates.
[00:17:27]  John Bramnick is in the race.
[00:17:28]  He's an avowed Trump hater.
[00:17:30]  So his candidacy was kind of dead on arrival.
[00:17:32]  And the other two candidates on the ballot are Mario Kranjak and Jack Chitterelli.
[00:17:37]  I'm hearing from sources, Mario Kranjak, who is the most pure MAGA candidate in the race, is ready to do a pretty substantial ad spend.
[00:17:46]  You know, they say half a million to a million dollar ad spend in Lake Bush because people are looking for a MAGA alternative and he's starting to catch some fire.
[00:17:54]  So that's Mario Kranjak, the former mayor of Englewood Cliffs and an ally of President Trump.
[00:17:59]  And then we have Jack Chitterelli, who was at Bedminster a couple of weeks ago.
[00:18:03]  He had a conversation with President Trump, and he has moved his message more towards the Trump angle, obviously known as more of a moderate, but attempting to rehab his image a little bit and look more to Trump.
[00:18:17]  And he looks like he's leading in the polls right now.
[00:18:19]  So it's going to be a very interesting finish.
[00:18:22]  And I really truly hope, Roger, that whoever wins this primary embraces President Trump's message because it's proven.
[00:18:29]  You could only win New Jersey if you embrace the MAGA message.
[00:18:32]  President Trump had an incredible finish here in 2024.
[00:18:36]  Every candidate running right now needs to run to that message, not run away from it.
[00:18:40]  And all of the fake Trump people who are running, those people, well, the voters are smart.
[00:18:46]  They know it.
[00:18:46]  They realize that people like Spadia are phonies who only want to jump on the Trump bandwagon when it's convenient.
[00:18:52]  We need people who are real and disciplined so we can actually turn this state around.
[00:18:56]  Yeah, I recall Spadia supporting first Ron DeSantis and then Nikki Haley, find the landing of Donald Trump.
[00:19:01]  If I had to call this, I think Jack Chitterelli is going to win the primary.
[00:19:06]  And then it is uphill for any Republican in the Garden State, but nothing is impossible.
[00:19:11]  I want to thank our guest, Mike Crispy, for joining us today in the Stone Zone and ask our listeners, don't go anywhere, because we'll be back because J.B. Pritzker thinks he's running for president.

=== J.B. Pritzker's Leftist Agenda (15:10) ===

[00:19:32]  This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
[00:19:36]  They went after a guy named Roger Stone who's sitting in the office.
[00:19:39]  And I'll say this in front of Roger.
[00:19:41]  He's no baby.
[00:19:42]  And right now, he's cleaner than anybody in this place.
[00:19:46]  Now they treated him very unfairly.
[00:19:48]  Now, give him a zone.
[00:19:50]  It's the stone zone.
[00:19:52]  Here's Roger Stone.
[00:19:56]  And we're back in the Stone Zone.
[00:19:58]  Now we're joined by Mark Vargas.
[00:20:00]  He is the publisher and editor of the Illinois Review.
[00:20:05]  Mark, welcome to the Stone Zone.
[00:20:08]  Great to be with you, Roger.
[00:20:09]  Thank you so much.
[00:20:10]  So the governor of Illinois, J.B. Pritzker, if he was in New York, they'd want to make him his own borough.
[00:20:20]  This guy says, and I quote, it's time to fight the Trump agenda.
[00:20:27]  It's time to fight everywhere all at once.
[00:20:30]  He goes on to say, to try to get the exact quote here, that Republicans should have no peace.
[00:20:38]  This sounds to me like a call for insurrection and violence.
[00:20:43]  How did you read this?
[00:20:45]  There's no question about it, Roger.
[00:20:47]  This is inciting an insurrection.
[00:20:50]  This was a hate-filled speech that Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker delivered on Sunday night in New Hampshire as he teases a potential presidential campaign.
[00:21:02]  But after President Trump's not one, but two assassination attempts and one in Butler, Pennsylvania, that nearly took his life by hitting his ear, this type of rhetoric is dangerous and it's now putting the lives of everyday Americans in grave danger because Governor Pritzker has called for Republicans to have no peace as he attacks the Trump MAGA agenda.
[00:21:31]  Roger, he also calls for, which is very interesting, he also calls for, should Democrats win majority of Congress this upcoming midterm elections, he's calling on his Democratic counterparts to immediately launch investigations on their political enemies.
[00:21:50]  But this type of rhetoric is dangerous.
[00:21:53]  It's wrong.
[00:21:54]  And you were absolutely right in your post on X earlier this morning that if this were a Republican using this type of rhetoric, there would be insurrectionists.
[00:22:03]  They'd be calling it an insurrection, and there'd be investigations launched immediately.
[00:22:09]  Yeah, it really is quite extraordinary.
[00:22:11]  I seem to have read about a recent scandal in Illinois where the governor, who, as we both know, he and his family are fabulously wealthy, actually cheated on their property taxes by removing a certain number of toilets from their home.
[00:22:26]  Can you explain this to us?
[00:22:28]  Yeah, that's exactly right.
[00:22:29]  He's got a mansion in downtown Chicago, and he wanted to buy the mansion next door, but he didn't really want to pay for it because he didn't want to use it.
[00:22:37]  He just didn't want to have any neighbors around him.
[00:22:40]  So what he did is he ordered all of the toilets, about seven or eight bathrooms.
[00:22:45]  He ordered all of the toilets to be removed from the home so that could legally be called uninhabitable.
[00:22:53]  And therefore, he would get a property tax decrease because the home wasn't livable.
[00:23:00]  When it was finally discovered, the governor candidate Pritzker then scrambled, paid the difference, and then claimed to have no knowledge of it.
[00:23:13]  And so that has dogged him his last two campaigns.
[00:23:16]  Yeah, kind of rules for the, but not for me.
[00:23:20]  It's a very common thing we see among Democrats.
[00:23:24]  I look, this guy, he's so fat, when he walks down the street, the cops say break it up.
[00:23:30]  But I don't see him as a viable presidential candidate because I assume he would do for America what he's done for Illinois.
[00:23:40]  How is Illinois doing these days in terms of crime and the quality of life and the economic climate?
[00:23:50]  Horrific in every aspect of it.
[00:23:54]  And Roger, this is a man who doesn't have any friends because he inherited billions of dollars from his family who owns the Hyatt hotels.
[00:24:02]  And so what he did is he bought his camp.
[00:24:04]  He bought the governor's seat to the nearly spending $400 million of his own money in his last two elections for governor.
[00:24:13]  And so this is a man who doesn't know how to run for office.
[00:24:15]  He just knows how to pay for it.
[00:24:17]  And this thought of him running for president is laughable.
[00:24:20]  I mean, he's going to make, he would make Howard Taft look like a supermodel at a 450-pound man who during the pandemic we used to refer to as the health czar.
[00:24:30]  But Chicago is an utter disaster.
[00:24:33]  Think about this for your listeners, Roger.
[00:24:35]  Chicago is the crime capital of the nation.
[00:24:38]  We, in fact, lead all major U.S. cities in both murders and mass shootings every year.
[00:24:45]  In 2023, and this is a horrific statistic, 76 school-aged children, 15 years or younger, were murdered in the city in Chicago.
[00:24:56]  That's more than any other major city in the country.
[00:25:00]  In addition to that, another horrific statistic is not only are we losing school-aged children to murders in very large numbers, but we also lead the nation in murders committed by youth.
[00:25:12]  We're facing a domestic violence pandemic crisis here.
[00:25:16]  And at a time when crime is skyrocketing, when over the last four years, they've welcomed violent and dangerous migrants into our city.
[00:25:25]  We're facing a police shortage.
[00:25:27]  In fact, the city of Chicago has short 2,000 police officers.
[00:25:32]  And think about this, Roger.
[00:25:34]  In 2023, 225,000 high-priority 911 calls, like shots fired, assault in progress, they went unanswered.
[00:25:44]  Why?
[00:25:45]  Because we have a police officer shortage.
[00:25:48]  And so if Chicago has any idea and the state of Illinois has any idea of what Pritzker's leadership looks like, I can't imagine this guy coming anywhere close to winning a Democratic primary for president.
[00:26:02]  I see that he has now jumped into the controversy regarding Kilmar Garcia Abrego, who is, of course, an El Salvador citizen who was quite legally deported to his home country of El Salvador.
[00:26:19]  He is without any question a MS-13 terrorist who also has a history of beating his wife.
[00:26:27]  The president demonstrated that Abrego actually had M-13 tattoos on his hands.
[00:26:36]  But for some reason, the Democrats have decided to die on this hill.
[00:26:40]  They keep insisting that he is a quote-unquote Maryland man because he lived illegally in the state of Maryland when he was here.
[00:26:48]  But now the Illinois Sanctuary State Governor J.B. Pritzker has directed all state agencies to take actions against the country of El Salvador because El Salvador refuses to ship Abrego illegally back to the United States.
[00:27:08]  Pritzker is asking state agencies to boycott and divest from companies controlled by El Salvador, cancel state contracts with Salvadorian companies, and analyze trade between Illinois and the country of El Salvador.
[00:27:23]  First of all, I don't know how much such trade there could be, and I don't know to what extent that this is largely a press release, but when Abrego Garcia was arrested in 2019, he was with two other members of MS-13.
[00:27:37]  He was known by investigators to be affiliated with the gang.
[00:27:41]  He was further detained in December 2022, investigated for human trafficking by the Tennessee Highway Patrol until the FBI ordered his release.
[00:27:51]  But this hasn't stopped radical Democrats like Pritzker from glorifying this deported illegal alien, attempting to bring him back to America from El Salvador, where the government has him imprisoned for his crimes.
[00:28:06]  Mark, you're a shrewd political analyst.
[00:28:09]  Where are the votes in this for Democrats?
[00:28:13]  You know, this is Pritzker's, he has gone so far left.
[00:28:19]  This is a 9D-10 issue.
[00:28:20]  And, Roger, we shouldn't be surprised because under Pritzker's leadership here in Illinois, the Illinois Democrats that have a supermajority control in our state capital, Springfield, they've introduced a bill to allow illegals to change their name in order to evade ICE.
[00:28:36]  That's point number one.
[00:28:37]  So we shouldn't be surprised what Pritzker is trying to champion and support and protect an MS-13 gang member when he can't even protect his own citizens, his own legal residents.
[00:28:49]  The state legislature has also tried to pass a bill to allow illegals to vote in local elections.
[00:28:55]  Think about that.
[00:28:56]  So it really is remarkable that under the last four years of Pritzker's leadership in Illinois as governor, they have coddled to the migrants, the most vicious and dangerous migrants.
[00:29:10]  They have completely ignored their own residents as black and Latino residents continue to live in poverty.
[00:29:17]  Roger, they even asked Chicago public school teachers to give migrant children passing grades.
[00:29:24]  Now, how fair is that?
[00:29:27]  Regardless of what their test scores are, regardless of how well they do on their homework, you must give migrant children passing grades.
[00:29:35]  This is all under J.B. Pritzker's leadership.
[00:29:39]  And this is why the Democrats in Chicago, particularly the blacks, have turned on Governor Pritzker and on Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has a 6% approval rating, by the way, and it continues to go down because they have continued to prioritize vicious and dangerous migrants over law-abiding residents.
[00:29:59]  It's interesting because New York State, under Andrew Cuomo and then under Governor Kathy Hokul, really pioneered the bail reform, which is really just a turnstile that puts violent criminals back out on the streets.
[00:30:14]  The experience in New York has been horrific, where despite the fact that they try to cook the crime statistics, crime is very definitely up in every category across the board, both in the cities, but also in the suburbs and in upstate.
[00:30:30]  Rather than take this as a cautionary tale, J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Democrats have essentially copied the New York Democrats to put in place the same system of bail reform in which all but murderers, the most violent criminals, are put back out on the streets within hours of their arrest.
[00:30:53]  There is no more common sense in this party.
[00:30:57]  And Roger, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that under J.B. Pritzker's leadership, the state allows high schools, middle schools and high schools, allows boys to participate in girls' sports under Pritzker's leadership.
[00:31:12]  They also force young girls to change in middle school locker rooms in front of trans-identifying boys.
[00:31:22]  Pritzker wants to make Illinois the Disney world for gender transition services.
[00:31:28]  You can get an abortion as a young girl, underage, young girl, without asking for permission from your parents.
[00:31:34]  You could take medication from your school nurse as hormone blockers without permission from your parents.
[00:31:41]  This is the type of chaos.
[00:31:43]  This is the type of United States of America that Pritzker envisions under his presidency.
[00:31:52]  I guess I have to ask this question.
[00:31:54]  It's a hard one, but it's been a long time since Illinois has been competitive in a presidential race.
[00:32:00]  It's been a long time since they've been competitive in a gubernatorial race.
[00:32:04]  Yet there's a lot of very good people, a large number of common sense voters.
[00:32:10]  Mark, what's wrong with the Illinois Republican Party?
[00:32:14]  It is in total chaos.
[00:32:17]  It's led by a bunch of never-Trumpers who never supported Trump from day one.
[00:32:23]  And they like to target, they use their funding and mailers to target conservative, grassroot Trump Republican candidates throughout the state.
[00:32:33]  And because they are so fractured, they have no idea what it's like to win.
[00:32:36]  But here's the strength of President Trump.
[00:32:39]  He didn't spend one cent in Illinois during this last presidential election.
[00:32:43]  He didn't even visit Illinois.
[00:32:44]  And yet he gained nearly a million new votes from 2020 and got 45% of the vote.
[00:32:52]  I mean, imagine if the president had spent just a little bit of time and a little bit of money in the state.
[00:32:57]  I think we could have seen a whole  ⁇ I think we could have seen a much different situation here in Illinois.
[00:33:04]  And I hope in the future that they begin to focus on this state because the failed leadership is finally catching up with the Democrats.
[00:33:10]  They've got nowhere to go but to hide.
[00:33:13]  Excellent analysis from Illinois.
[00:33:16]  I want to thank my friend, Mark Vargas, the publisher and editor of the Illinois Review.
[00:33:23]  Mark, where can folks find you on social media and where could they read the stuff that you write?
[00:33:29]  Thank you, Roger.
[00:33:30]  You can follow me on X at Mark A. Vargas, and you can go to our website, illinoisreview.com, illinoisreview.com.
[00:33:39]  Thank you, Roger.
[00:33:39]  God bless you, my friend.
[00:33:41]  One final question for you.
[00:33:42]  Some polls, I doubt this, show a substantial dip in the president's approval rating.
[00:33:49]  But anecdotally, as I talk to people on the streets, it's not what I'm finding at all.
[00:33:54]  I have yet to find one person who says they voted for Donald Trump, but they now regret doing so.
[00:33:59]  What are you hearing on the streets?
[00:34:02]  I'm hearing the same thing here on the streets of Chicago.
[00:34:05]  They're thrilled with President Trump as tough on crime, his shutting down the border, deporting vicious and dangerous migrants.
[00:34:14]  They know that the economy has needed some help and a boost, and that they have confidence in President Trump and his team, like the Treasury Secretary and the Commerce Secretary.
[00:34:23]  I think that everyday hardworking Americans who don't listen to the mainstream media, they love what President Trump has done in, what, 100 days starting tomorrow?
[00:34:32]  Yes.
[00:34:32]  I would remind people, these are the same polls that showed that Kamala Harris was leading or she was closing fast or she was in a competitive race, all of which was a psyop.

=== JD Vance Succession Speculation (03:40) ===

[00:34:43]  you're just tuning in we're talking to Mark Vargas the publisher and editor of the Illinois Review and we'll be 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.
[00:35:08]  And I'll say this in front of Roger.
[00:35:10]  He's no baby.
[00:35:11]  And right now, he's cleaner than anybody in this place.
[00:35:14]  Now, as they treated him very unfairly.
[00:35:17]  Now, give him a zone.
[00:35:19]  It's the stone zone.
[00:35:21]  Here's Roger Stone.
[00:35:25]  And we're in Stone Zone.
[00:35:26]  We're joined yet again by my good friend Mark Vargas, the publisher and editor of the Illinois Review.
[00:35:34]  Mark, as you know, everybody in the political business loves to handicap the horse race.
[00:35:39]  And although it's very early, I noticed that President Trump was asked the other day whether Vice President JD Vance would succeed him.
[00:35:48]  Now, I think JD Vance is doing a very good job.
[00:35:51]  I also think he understands that you don't upstage the President of the United States, particularly this president.
[00:35:58]  But he played a very key behind-the-scenes role in winning the confirmation votes for Tulsi Gabbard and Robert Kennedy, for Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, for Kash Patel, for the FBI director.
[00:36:13]  On the other hand, Donald Trump broke the mold.
[00:36:16]  I mean, he changed all the rules.
[00:36:19]  Before him, every president had been a governor, a senator, a congressman, or a general.
[00:36:24]  How do you handicap the race in 2028?
[00:36:27]  Yes, I know it's early.
[00:36:30]  It is very early.
[00:36:31]  And, you know, in true Trump fashion, I think, you know, he's not going to endorse anyone early on.
[00:36:38]  It's still wide open, as you know, Roger, better than anybody else.
[00:36:41]  A day is a thousand years in politics, and we'll see what happens.
[00:36:44]  But that's what one of President Trump's strengths is he's predictably unpredictable.
[00:36:50]  But Vice President Vance has done a terrific job.
[00:36:53]  And I think sometimes this is some of the media just trying to create a little bit of division and distract from President Trump's historic record and his first 100 days in office and just the difference that it has made in people's everyday Americans' lives, whether it's securing our border, whether it's fixing our economy and his America first policies.
[00:37:14]  I mean, look at the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in investment that's coming back to the United States because of what President Trump has done.
[00:37:21]  China's on its heels.
[00:37:23]  America is back.
[00:37:25]  Just look at what President Trump, just look at what the audience looks like when President Trump was at either Pope Francis' funeral, when he's overseas.
[00:37:32]  All eyes are on him.
[00:37:34]  You know who the leader of the free world is when he walks in.
[00:37:37]  That's President Donald Trump, while Joe Biden's walking in still seeking assistance and holding on to people's arms and not even sure where he's at, to be honest.
[00:37:46]  Yeah, I couldn't believe how much criticism President Trump got for wearing a dark blue suit instead of a black suit.
[00:37:53]  He was wearing a somber tie, but you're right.
[00:37:57]  All eyes were on him.
[00:37:59]  It's because he has that elusive quality that I first saw in 1988.
[00:38:04]  Charisma, magnetism, confidence.
[00:38:08]  He exudes it, and it represents the country well.
[00:38:12]  I saw him at dinner two Fridays ago, and I must tell you, he's never looked happier.
[00:38:18]  He's never looked more satisfied.
[00:38:20]  He's never looked more determined.

=== Charisma And Confidence (02:30) ===

[00:38:23]  He was in a great mood.
[00:38:24]  He's lost a little weight.
[00:38:26]  He looked terrific.
[00:38:27]  He feels terrific.
[00:38:29]  He's best in conflict, in all honesty.
[00:38:32]  He loves a good fight.
[00:38:33]  And when it comes to America, he'll never stop fighting.
[00:38:37]  They can attack him.
[00:38:38]  They can try to undermine him.
[00:38:40]  But his late-night true social postings are just extraordinarily entertaining.
[00:38:47]  For those who don't watch them, particularly when he goes to all caps, you know he's really, really serious.
[00:38:56]  Once again, Mark, tell folks where they can find you on social media and the Illinois Review.
[00:39:01]  Yeah, I appreciate that, Roger.
[00:39:02]  You can find me on X at Mark A. Vargas, and you can visit us online at illinoireview.com, spelled out illinoireview.com.
[00:39:13]  All right.
[00:39:14]  I want to thank our guest, Mark Vargas.
[00:39:16]  I urge you to check out His social media postings.
[00:39:22]  And for those of you who have been listening on the weekend and last week, who have been contacting me to pray and send your prayers for my wife who has experienced some health problems.
[00:39:38]  God bless you.
[00:39:39]  She's doing much better now.
[00:39:40]  Proves once again that there is power in prayer.
[00:39:44]  God bless you all for your warm wishes.
[00:39:46]  She's doing great and the future looks bright.
[00:39:50]  Many, many thanks to you.
[00:39:51]  For those of you tuning into the Stone Zone every five days a week here, thank you.
[00:39:57]  God bless you and Godspeed.
[00:39:59]  And well, we'll see you tomorrow.
[00:40:04]  Thanks for listening to the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
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