The StoneZONE - Roger Stone - Stone Zone | 06-23-25
Aired: 2025-06-24
Duration: 39:04


=== Iran's Nuclear Threat (12:57) ===

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[00:00:19]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:00:25]  You are now entering the Stone Zone.
[00:00:28]  Well, as I've said here in the zone, the only thing predictable about Donald Trump is that he's completely and totally unpredictable.
[00:00:38]  So after the head fake of saying he would make a decision in two weeks, on Sunday, he launched a surgical strike against the three locations where American intelligence told him enriched uranium was stored and where the centrifuges existed to produce a nuclear weapon.
[00:01:00]  I stress for those who say this is the end of MAGA or that he's just another neocons, this is specifically not regime change.
[00:01:11]  First of all, there will be no boots on the ground.
[00:01:14]  There'll be no American troops.
[00:01:16]  The president did not hit the Iranians' oil refinery capabilities.
[00:01:21]  That would be a direct challenge to the Chinese, their principal customer and indeed their patron.
[00:01:29]  He did not launch a Soleimani-type drone attack on the Ayatollah because he is a religious leader.
[00:01:38]  And of course, immediately after the attack, which the president decided on, he called for talks yet again.
[00:01:48]  As for the report from the Iranians that we did no damage to their nuclear weapons development program, that they had cleverly moved everything out of those three locations, no military or intelligence source that I trust tells me that's true.
[00:02:08]  I think that was a face-saving statement with no basis in reality.
[00:02:17]  On the other hand, we cannot pretend that the president's historic decision will have no consequences.
[00:02:25]  Many military experts, Colonel John Mills, Colonel Douglas McGregor here in the Stone Zone, predicted that there was a strong possibility that the Iranians would shut down the Strait of Hormuz, where one out of every six barrels of oil in the world travels.
[00:02:46]  They have made noises about that, but have not yet done so.
[00:02:50]  To do so would also hit their clients, such as the Chinese.
[00:02:56]  Whether the Pakistanis or even the Russians or others choose to lend or give nuclear warheads to the Iranians, well, that remains to be seen.
[00:03:08]  That would be a provocation that I don't think President Trump would react well to.
[00:03:15]  But this is a limited operation.
[00:03:18]  It is not endless foreign war.
[00:03:21]  And our inherent national interests, unlike the situation in Iraq or even Afghanistan, is absolutely clear.
[00:03:30]  This isn't even Libya.
[00:03:32]  You saw what happened there.
[00:03:35]  That was about regime change.
[00:03:37]  This is about a direct threat to the United States.
[00:03:40]  Whether that threat is tomorrow or it is a year from now, it is very clear to anyone who listened to all of the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard's report.
[00:03:53]  They have record levels of enriched uranium, and it was not a very short hop to their development of weapons.
[00:04:04]  I think the president made the right decision, and I support him 100%.
[00:04:09]  He is the head of the MAGA movement.
[00:04:12]  He decides what constitutes America first.
[00:04:16]  Meanwhile, of course, the Iranians have attacked a U.S. base in Qatar in what they say is retaliation for airstrikes on their facilities over the weekend.
[00:04:26]  Explosions were heard over the Qatari capital of Joha, while video shows air defense missiles being deployed following what Iran called blessings of victory.
[00:04:38]  A devastating and powerful missile was fired at the U.S. Al-Awaid Air Base in Qatar, according to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in a statement put out by Iranian state media.
[00:04:53]  Some 10,000 U.S. troops are normally based there, which serves as the forward headquarters for U.S. Central Command.
[00:05:01]  Qatar has reported the Iranian missiles attack on our base was successfully intercepted with no reports of casualties, and that Iran coordinated the attacks with Qatari officials, giving them advance notice.
[00:05:16]  You have to wonder to what extent all of this is for public consumption.
[00:05:22]  Why attack with no intent to damage?
[00:05:26]  It's kind of a kabuki act in a way.
[00:05:29]  On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said what happens next will depend on what Iran chooses to do next.
[00:05:36]  If they choose the path of diplomacy, we're ready.
[00:05:39]  We can do a deal that's good for them, the Iranian people, and good for the world.
[00:05:45]  If they choose another route, well, then there will be consequences.
[00:05:50]  I must say, Marco Rubio is emerging as one of the stars of the Trump cabinet.
[00:05:56]  He represented me in the U.S. Senate.
[00:06:00]  I think he has sublimated his earlier neocon positioning to be one of the president's most effective appointees, carrying out the Trump doctrine rather than the doctrine of endless foreign war where our inherent national interests were never clear.
[00:06:20]  Meanwhile, President Trump made a statement on True Social today regarding the fake news reports about the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities.
[00:06:31]  Monumental damage was done to all nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images.
[00:06:38]  Obliteration is an accurate term, said the president.
[00:06:42]  The white structure shown in a photo that the president put up is deeply embedded into the rock, with even its roof well below ground level and completely shielded from flame.
[00:06:55]  The biggest damage took place far below ground level.
[00:07:00]  Bullseye, said the president, with no less than three exclamation points.
[00:07:05]  The sites that we hit in Iran were totally destroyed and everyone knows it, the president said.
[00:07:12]  Only the fake news would say anything different in order to try to demean as much as possible.
[00:07:19]  And even they say they were pretty well destroyed.
[00:07:23]  Working especially hard on this falsehood, the president called out Allison Cooper of Fake News CNN, his words, Brian Roberts, chairman of Comcast, who the president called dumb, Johnny Carl of ABC Fake News, and as always, the losers at Comcast's NBC fake news.
[00:07:48]  Never ends with the sleaze bags in the media, and that's why their ratings are at an all-time low, said the president.
[00:07:56]  They have zero credibility as one who's been the target for their disinformation someone they falsely labored labeled as a Russian intelligence asset for over two years I know exactly how the president feels.
[00:08:16]  Uh, president Trump made a second statement regarding the idea of Russia giving Iran a nuclear weapon.
[00:08:22]  Uh, did I hear that former president Medvedev from Russia casually throwing around the n word and saying that he and other countries would supply nuclear warheads to Iran?
[00:08:35]  President Trump wrote on social media, did he really say that or is it a figment of my imagination?
[00:08:41]  If he did say that and if confirmed, please let me know immediately.
[00:08:46]  The n word, meaning nuclear, should not be treated so casually.
[00:08:51]  I guess that's why Putin's the boss.
[00:08:54]  By the way, if anyone thinks our hardware was great over the weekend far and away the strongest and best equipment we have 20 years advanced over the pack that describes our nuclear submarines, the president said they are the most powerful and lethal weapons ever built, and we just launched 30 Tomahawks.
[00:09:16]  All 30 hit their mark perfectly.
[00:09:18]  So, in addition to our great fighter pilots, thank you also to the captain and crew.
[00:09:24]  Now, regarding the idea of regime change, I think the president was trolling his critics when he said it's not politically correct to use the term regime change.
[00:09:36]  But if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran great again, why wouldn't there be a regime change?
[00:09:45]  My, he said m-i-g-a.
[00:09:48]  Another three exclamation points.
[00:09:50]  You can always tell when the president himself is posting these, because he has an inimitable personal style, make Iran great again, again.
[00:10:00]  Trump favors negotiation over confrontation, commerce over chaos.
[00:10:08]  We will be following the story, but as someone whose life was saved by the president, I myself support him 100 in this decision, but I also continue to differentiate this from decisions made by previous presidents.
[00:10:25]  It's kind of interesting that Joe Biden uh, Barack Obama and even Hillary Clinton all said uh, that if the Iranians developed a weapon of mass destruction, a nuclear bomb that they themselves would attack.
[00:10:41]  It's interesting now that Democrat war makers lawmakers are now saying that the president's actions violate the war powers act and that he needed the permission of congress to do this.
[00:10:55]  That's wrong.
[00:10:56]  By the way, in the meantime, i'm happy to see that the?
[00:10:59]  U.s's.
[00:11:00]  His chief administrative officer informed congressional staffers today that the messaging app, WhatsApp, is banned on their government devices.
[00:11:08]  The ban, which censors on the vulnerability of status staffers' data, comes as Congress is also taking steps to limit the use of AI programs it deems similarly risky.
[00:11:22]  AI, artificial intelligence, is one of the greatest dangers in the world.
[00:11:28]  I know I have been a target of it.
[00:11:31]  You can see dozens of videos of me online saying things, appearing to say things, that I never actually said.
[00:11:40]  Some of them are really pretty rough around the edges and can be easily detected as fraud, while others you need to use an AI software detection program.
[00:11:54]  There are several good ones out there to prove that these are fraudulent.
[00:11:58]  This is the real danger to democracy because for a very little amount of money and not much technical skill, one can produce a video making it appear that, oh, I don't know, Joe Biden said something that he never said, or perhaps Donald Trump.
[00:12:17]  So we're now to the point where you cannot necessarily believe what you see with your own eyes.
[00:12:24]  It's interesting that they're in recent days are banning in Congress a number of AI technologies.
[00:12:33]  It has also heavily restricted the use of Chat GPT, instructing offices to only use the paid version, ChatGPT Plus.
[00:12:42]  The Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored encryption, and potential security risks involved with its use.

=== Congress Bans AI Technologies (05:17) ===

[00:12:58]  That's what the chief administrative officer of the U.S. House of Representatives said.
[00:13:04]  House staff are not allowed to download or keep the WhatsApp application on any House device, including any mobile, desktop, or web browser version of its products.
[00:13:16]  The email added, if you have a WhatsApp application on your house manage device, you will be contacted to remove it immediately.
[00:13:23]  Andy Stone, a spokesman for WhatsApp, a no relative of mine, said in a statement, we disagree with the House's chief administrative officer and their characterization in the strongest possible terms.
[00:13:36]  We know members and their staffs regularly use WhatsApp, and we look forward to ensuring members of the House can join their Senate counterparts in doing so officially.
[00:13:47]  I'm Roger Stone.
[00:13:48]  You're in the Stone Zone.
[00:13:49]  Whatever you do, don't go away because we'll be right back.
[00:13:53]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:13:58]  Rural Americans deserve access to the best our nation has to offer, especially when it comes to health care.
[00:14:05]  Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
[00:14:13]  No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
[00:14:15]  They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
[00:14:20]  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.
[00:14:32]  Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
[00:14:39]  Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
[00:14:41]  They employ our neighbors and keep our families health.
[00:14:45]  But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
[00:14:48]  Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
[00:14:52]  Don't cut rural health care.
[00:14:56]  The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:15:03]  And we're back in the Stone Zone.
[00:15:05]  President Donald Trump announced last week that he was seriously considering the appointment of a special counsel to study the 2020 election results.
[00:15:16]  I think that is a good way to proceed, particularly in the wake of reports from FBI Director Kash Patel that there were 20,000 fraudulent driver's licenses sent from China to Chicago intercepted prior to the 2020 election.
[00:15:36]  Unfortunately, this fact was buried, and FBI Director Christopher Wray clearly perjured himself before the Congress when he said that he was aware of no efforts of foreign interference in our 2020 election.
[00:15:52]  Add that to the fact that the Secretary of State in the state of Colorado posted the passcodes for their entire election system online prior to the 2020 election.
[00:16:08]  And now an explosive news story where veteran and former Hillsborough County Florida supervisors of election candidate William Billy Christensen has come forward blowing the whistle on what he calls a coordinated internal manipulation of democracy.
[00:16:27]  Armed with damning evidence, Christensen submitted a formal criminal complaint to state authorities calling for immediate investigation into doctored official election results, statistical anomalies, and digital tampering surrounding the 2024 general election in Hisboro County, one of the largest counties in Florida.
[00:16:48]  This isn't just administrative negligence, it's systematic corruption, and it threatens every Floridian's right to a free and fair election.
[00:16:55]  At the center of Christensen's complaint is the final certified election results report from the Hillsborough County Board of Elections held by incumbent Craig Latimer and Dee Faran.
[00:17:10]  A forensic review of the publicly released PDF report reveals clear digital tampering, visibly editing marks, and graphical layering embedded directly into the final version.
[00:17:23]  Those anomalies, which bear all the hallmarks of post-processing tools like Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Word, are suspiciously concentrated in the race for supervisor of elections.
[00:17:38]  How convenient.
[00:17:39]  The report appears altered and the artifacts weren't scrubbed.
[00:17:43]  This isn't just sloppy, it's fraudulent.
[00:17:46]  Yet another example of why the president should go ahead and appoint a special counsel to examine the integrity of our elections.
[00:17:55]  We should have these questions and only a thorough investigation and full disclosure to the American people is going to satisfy our democracy.
[00:18:06]  By the way, we don't live in a democracy.
[00:18:08]  We live in a democratic republic, as people like to remind me on social media every single day.

=== Why We Left Google (15:35) ===

[00:18:16]  You're in the Stone Zone.
[00:18:17]  I'm Roger Stone.
[00:18:18]  When we come back, Pat Garandi, one of the leaders when it comes to the field of rare diseases and their cures, is going to join us to talk about the fight to find an efficable treatment for sickle cell disease.
[00:18:36]  Whatever you do, don't go away.
[00:18:38]  Stick with us right here in the Stone Zone.
[00:18:41]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:18:47]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:18:54]  And we're back in the Stone Zone.
[00:18:56]  Joining me now is Patrick Garandi.
[00:18:59]  Now, if you met Patrick Garandi, you would not know that he's a biomedical company executive who has spent a life trying to find the cures and treatments for rare diseases.
[00:19:11]  You might think that he was a very hip jazz musician or an A-less celebrity, but Pat Garandi is a respected, well-known leader in the field of rare diseases.
[00:19:22]  He's traveled all over the world, counseling medical centers on the strategies to be most effective when it comes to rare diseases.
[00:19:30]  He's devoted his life to curing sickle cell disease and thalassemia after his own son Rocco was diagnosed with thalassemia as a child.
[00:19:41]  An early pioneer in the field of gene therapy, Pat Garandi has fought big pharma corruption every step of the way in the court of public opinion as well as in the courts to save his own son and others from these debilitating conditions.
[00:19:58]  It's an honor to have this courageous fighter with us today in the stone zone.
[00:20:03]  Patrick, welcome.
[00:20:05]  Well, thank you very much.
[00:20:06]  I appreciate it.
[00:20:08]  So let's kind of start from the beginning.
[00:20:10]  Explain to folks exactly what gene therapy is.
[00:20:14]  Sure.
[00:20:15]  So once you identify the therapy that creates a genetic disease, once you know what that gene is, then there's a possibility of delivering that gene to enough stem cells in a patient's body to where the patient defeats the disease or is no longer symptomatic.
[00:20:36]  And you can do that either by changing the gene, which is called gene replacement, which is what we do, or you can edit the gene, which is what CRISPR does.
[00:20:51]  So your company, San Rocco Therapeutics, developed a superior gene therapy for the treatment of sickle cell disease.
[00:21:02]  You would think that this would be greeted as great news, but instead it landed you in court and in the front pages of the New York Times.
[00:21:13]  So tell us what happened.
[00:21:15]  Sure.
[00:21:16]  So my son was diagnosed with thalassemia, which is a cousin disease, a sickle cell disease.
[00:21:21]  Both of them are created by a defective beta-globin gene.
[00:21:25]  And I was told that my son wouldn't make it to be a teenager.
[00:21:29]  I dedicated, I was a trader at that time, and Oprah Winfrey Show, I was an American success story, very fortunate.
[00:21:37]  And I dropped everything and decided that I needed to cure the disease.
[00:21:41]  In 2010, my company delivered to the world the first commercial batch of gene therapy.
[00:21:51]  Up until then, it cost about a million dollars per patient to produce it, and it took about 18 months' time.
[00:21:56]  Instead, we made enough gene therapy to cure sickle cell disease or thalassemic patients.
[00:22:04]  We basically made the vector for $150,000 per patient.
[00:22:10]  At that time, we were sabotaged by Third Rock Ventures and a company called Bluebird Bio.
[00:22:17]  Bluebird Bio became a high flyer at about $12 billion market cap in 2018.
[00:22:25]  So this is an extraordinary story.
[00:22:28]  Big Pharma, basically with a more expensive treatment, blocked this breakthrough technology that you put together, no?
[00:22:40]  Yes, it's exactly true.
[00:22:42]  So Bluebird Bio said, you know, in 2013, After they had sabotaged our product, basically, we weren't aware of that yet, but they said that they would treat patients for around $750,000 per patient.
[00:22:58]  In 2017, when we realized what had happened through discovery in the court system, we went after them.
[00:23:07]  And in 2020, we finally settled out of court and we were getting back into the business of curing patients.
[00:23:15]  We were the first actually inpatients in 2012 in a clinical trial in the United States.
[00:23:21]  Bluebird Bio, however, got approved in 2000, December of 2023.
[00:23:28]  And instead of charging $750,000 because they didn't have any competition, which was us at one time, so they charged $3.1 million per patient.
[00:23:40]  We can treat the patients for $800,000.
[00:23:44]  These are both large sums of money.
[00:23:46]  To what extent are taxpayers picking up the tab for these treatments?
[00:23:52]  So there's basically 90% of all thalassemic and sickle cell disease patients are on some form of Medicare or Medicaid.
[00:24:02]  To treat a patient with gene therapy costs, the company cost my company, excuse me, cost my company somewhere around $500,000 just for hospital costs and for the creation of the product.
[00:24:21]  So after you add overhead for the company, et cetera, et cetera, like I said, I promised Bobby Kennedy that we'd keep the price under $1 million per patient for the next 10 years.
[00:24:33]  But however, like I said, Bluebird Bio for gene replacement charges $3.1 million.
[00:24:39]  And CRISPR, which is gene editing, and it cures the exact same patients, is charging $2.2 million per patient.
[00:24:48]  So if you multiply the difference between $3.1 million per patient and $800,000 per patient, which we believe is the fair price, is the right price, times 100,000 patients, the taxpayer is basically theoretically defrauded out of about $230 billion.
[00:25:06]  Yeah, that's the back-of-the-envelope number I came up with.
[00:25:09]  At some point, you notified New York Attorney General Letitia James about this precarious situation regarding children in New York State with sickle cell anemia.
[00:25:21]  I believe you met with her.
[00:25:22]  What were the results of that?
[00:25:24]  Yeah, so in 2018, we basically, after we did discovery in our court case, we realized that there was this horrible criminal sabotage that happened, including insider trading.
[00:25:39]  So Bluebird Bio traded up to a $12 billion market cap that has raised a total of $4.2 billion in the marketplace.
[00:25:49]  And they were getting ready to treat patients with what we believed was a less safe drug because they were using our first generation of our drug.
[00:25:59]  And since then, we have improved it.
[00:26:01]  And so we went to Letitia James' office.
[00:26:05]  Excuse me.
[00:26:07]  One of our guys actually met with her.
[00:26:10]  But I met with her office probably 10 times.
[00:26:15]  We brought her everything.
[00:26:17]  We brought her all of the emails.
[00:26:19]  We brought her all of the court evidence, which pointed to criminal activity to sabotage our product and to boost the cost of gene therapy for sickle cell disease.
[00:26:32]  We went to her first in May of 2019.
[00:26:37]  We did, and we're pushing back and forth all the way until 2024.
[00:26:45]  And the answer was always the same, that she didn't have the resources to go after the people who were costing the lives of sickle cell disease children.
[00:26:58]  This is an incredible story.
[00:27:01]  I have to ask you, as a high school dropout, how did you assemble a team to take on big pharma in the way you have?
[00:27:09]  Well, initially, I started investing all of my own family money.
[00:27:13]  Like I said, I was a rags to rich historian, Oprah Winfrey.
[00:27:15]  I was in Playgirl Magazine.
[00:27:17]  It's one of America's Most Oliver Bachelors with Magic Johnson and Sylvester Stallone.
[00:27:23]  So once my son was diagnosed, I stuck all my own money.
[00:27:26]  I stopped trading and I stuck all my money, own money, into curing the disease.
[00:27:32]  And by doing that, I won a lot of heroes and a lot of people who thought that I was a hero and a lot of people who wanted to collaborate, including some of the top researchers in the United States, including the head of gene and cell therapy at the NIH, Dr. John Tisdale, an incredible person.
[00:27:50]  And I also attracted the Walton family.
[00:27:54]  The Walton family, meaning John Walton, they have son Lucas.
[00:27:59]  Lucas had a rare disease.
[00:28:01]  We got involved in 1995, and he was partners all the way to 2004.
[00:28:07]  And the Walton family, over the last 20-some years, have also put in about $23 million into the project.
[00:28:16]  But by being the father of a sick patient, being very serious about all of this and not chasing the money, just chasing the cure, it actually won me tons of wonderful allies, including Dan O'Connor of Trial Site News, Professor Frank Park, Dr. Lucha Luxato.
[00:28:36]  It goes on and on and on, all of the wonderful people who are helping us.
[00:28:41]  Because this is obviously, for some people, not about a cure or treatment, but about making money.
[00:28:48]  Are you concerned that these powerful big pharma corporations will move to try to stop you again?
[00:28:58]  That's always a possibility and always a concern.
[00:29:00]  We know how these huge multinational corporations work.
[00:29:05]  For them to knock somebody off is not a big deal.
[00:29:09]  Somebody dies of a heart attack or gets hit by a car and something like that.
[00:29:13]  However, I've met President Trump.
[00:29:16]  I've met Vice President Vance.
[00:29:20]  I'm very close to Robert Kennedy and him, Senator Tim Scott from North Carolina, have all pledged to make a gene therapy for sickle cell disease and thalassemia, my own son's disease, accessible.
[00:29:36]  So at this time, if they decide to do something against me, I think they'd have a lot of, they'd have to think about it very real before they would do something.
[00:29:47]  But of course, it's always a concern.
[00:29:50]  Well, we obviously not only pray for your safety, but we pray for anybody who's afflicted With these horrific diseases.
[00:29:59]  I really think Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of the standout appointees by President Trump.
[00:30:06]  I knew him casually before he himself ran for president, had a high regard for him then.
[00:30:13]  What impresses me most about him is when you watch him prior to his appointment, even prior to his candidacy, running first as a Democrat, then as an independent, and ultimately putting his own personal ambitions aside to endorse President Donald Trump, forming a powerful new political realignment,
[00:30:35]  because I think millions of common sense-minded Democrats and independents followed him in the last election.
[00:30:44]  But what impresses me the most about him is that in any format, whether in a panel or whether questioned about his beliefs, he never makes any statement that he can't back up with solid research from a credible source, whether it's a trial or whether it is a study.
[00:31:08]  And that, to me, earned my respect.
[00:31:12]  I also think it was disgusting the way that big media tried to just erase him, just to try to censor him entirely.
[00:31:22]  So even when he did get on, say, CNN or one of the three networks, they would severely edit his interviews, never allowing him to fully and completely express himself.
[00:31:36]  It was a news blackout that this administration opposes.
[00:31:43]  I think one of the three pillars of this new coalition is free speech.
[00:31:49]  And the fact that he's changed the vaccination advisory board makeup, the fact that he is outlawing certain toxic additives, dyes, and other chemicals in our food, things that have already happened long ago in Europe that will now happen now, shows me that his commitment to make America healthy again is very serious, very much on target.
[00:32:17]  I notice that he is relentless in his efforts.
[00:32:21]  I admire him tremendously.
[00:32:22]  I don't know him as well as you do, Pat, but I think he's among the president's very, very best appointees.
[00:32:30]  Folks, if you're just tuning in, this is the Stone Zone.
[00:32:33]  I'm Roger Stone, and we're talking to Patrick Garandi, one of the most respected leaders in the field of rare diseases, a man who's fighting big pharma to bring a less expensive treatment for those with sickle cell disease.
[00:32:50]  Don't go away because we'll be right back to talk about this David and Goliath struggle and how Pat Garandi has given everything he has for his own son and for others afflicted with this horrific disease.
[00:33:08]  You're in the Stone Zone.
[00:33:09]  I'm Roger Stone.
[00:33:11]  Whatever you do, please don't touch that dial.
[00:33:14]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:33:20]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:33:26]  And we're back in the Stone Zone.
[00:33:28]  We're talking to Patrick Garandi.
[00:33:31]  He is one of the most respected and well-known leaders in the field of rare diseases.
[00:33:36]  He has put his entire fortune and future into the fight against big pharma corruption and an effort to find a less expensive and more effective treatment for sickle cell disease.

=== Cured Next Year (04:27) ===

[00:33:51]  He was motivated by the illness of his own son.
[00:33:56]  If your son, Rocco, could join us now, Patrick, what would he say?
[00:34:01]  Well, you know, Rocco has thalassemia, but I've always, I mean, he's never been a thalassemic patient.
[00:34:07]  He's always been a boy and then a man with thalassemia.
[00:34:13]  I think he's kind of tired of waiting because since 2010, I've been saying, son, you're going to be cured next year.
[00:34:20]  You're going to be cured next year.
[00:34:23]  And these criminals, I don't know what else to call them, have actually cost years of my son's life and the lives and years of many children with sickle cell disease and people with thalassemia and sickle cell disease.
[00:34:42]  But Rocco is a fighter, and he just says, you know, Dad, just keep it up.
[00:34:49]  Just keep it up.
[00:34:50]  I'll hold on.
[00:34:51]  You just keep it up.
[00:34:53]  It is a riveting and I think highly motivational story.
[00:34:58]  You can read about the famous San Rocco Therapeutics Bluebird Bio Memorial Sloan Kettering court case.
[00:35:05]  It was very well covered in the New York Times.
[00:35:09]  Also, I want to thank you, Patrick, for that audio clip that you sent me.
[00:35:14]  Very, very cool.
[00:35:17]  What is next for your company?
[00:35:19]  What happens next?
[00:35:21]  Yeah, so we have now produced enough vector for 60 patients.
[00:35:29]  We are amending the clinical trial, IND.
[00:35:35]  Like I said, we were the first, ours was the first vector in patients in the world in 2012.
[00:35:42]  And then again, it was sabotaged by Bluebird Bio and Third Rock Ventures.
[00:35:47]  But we now are going to start recruiting patients.
[00:35:52]  The product is 30% more efficient than the approved Bluebird product, which is called Zinteglo.
[00:36:00]  It's much more patient-friendly than the CRISPR product, which is called Casjavi.
[00:36:06]  And we're working with Bobby Kennedy.
[00:36:09]  He's hired, like you said, some incredible people.
[00:36:13]  His chief of staff, Stephanie Spear, Prasad, Macri, Bhattarichira.
[00:36:19]  They're all incredible people.
[00:36:21]  And we're working basically with all of them.
[00:36:24]  We made the promise, and Bobby made the promise, and Senator Tim Scott made the promise.
[00:36:30]  President Trump knows about it and is committed, as well as President or Vice President Advance, that we're going to, in President Trump's administration, bring forward an accessible gene therapy for sickle cell disease and thalassemia.
[00:36:47]  And we're right on target to do that.
[00:36:50]  We should be treating patients again, the latest by the beginning of 2026.
[00:36:57]  Well, it is an inspiring story of one man's struggle against big pharma.
[00:37:03]  Of course, our greatest interest is in the children, praying for the children afflicted with this horrific disease.
[00:37:10]  Patrick, thank you for bringing your story here into the Stone Zone for this inspiring discussion.
[00:37:18]  God bless you, my friend, and good luck in your struggle to bring a more affordable treatment to the American people.
[00:37:26]  And I share your high regard for Robert Kennedy and his mission to make all Americans healthy again.
[00:37:34]  Pats, thanks for joining us.
[00:37:37]  Thank you.
[00:37:37]  And, you know, I know how influential you were getting Bobby to support President Trump.
[00:37:46]  And I really do believe that that's what put us over the top.
[00:37:50]  So I want to thank you because I was involved in some of those conversations and back then.
[00:37:56]  So thank you.
[00:37:57]  You're an incredible patriot, Mr. Stone, and I'm a huge admirer of you and your books.
[00:38:03]  Thank you and God bless you.
[00:38:05]  It is really a realignment.
[00:38:07]  It's changed the face of American politics.
[00:38:09]  Thanks for joining us today on the Stone Zone.
[00:38:11]  Until tomorrow, God bless you and Godspeed.
[00:38:15]  Thanks for listening to the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.

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