The StoneZONE - Roger Stone - Hank Sheinkopf | 06-26-25
Aired: 2025-06-26
Duration: 21:47


=== Much at Stake in NYC Vote (15:19) ===

[00:00:00]  Rural Americans deserve access to the best our nation has to offer, especially when it comes to health care.
[00:00:06]  Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
[00:00:14]  No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
[00:00:16]  They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
[00:00:21]  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.
[00:00:33]  Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
[00:00:40]  Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
[00:00:43]  They employ our neighbors and keep our families health.
[00:00:46]  But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
[00:00:49]  Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
[00:00:53]  Don't cut rural health care.
[00:00:56]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:01:02]  Dr. Hank Scheinkoff, my friend Hank, thank you so much for joining us.
[00:01:07]  Roger, it's a pleasure to be with you.
[00:01:08]  I'm grateful.
[00:01:10]  So you are a shrewd analyst of American politics.
[00:01:15]  You have an amazing ability to see the future based on data and trends.
[00:01:22]  Was there anything about the Democrat primary for mayor in New York City that produced Namazi Zoran Maamdani that surprised you?
[00:01:34]  Well, it was surprising.
[00:01:36]  I mean, surprising in the amount of organizing ability that Zora Mandami and the Working Families Party and the left wing brought to the event.
[00:01:44]  New York is now a case example of what happens when the left organizes, as it's known how to do very well.
[00:01:50]  And they did a great job.
[00:01:51]  They turned out a vote.
[00:01:53]  They've turned out voters who don't necessarily vote, which is kind of interesting.
[00:01:57]  And the other campaigns were very stupid.
[00:02:01]  Very simple.
[00:02:03]  Do you think that his victory reflects changing demographics of both New York City and of the Democrat Party in New York City?
[00:02:14]  I think it has a national impact, Roger, because New York is a petri dish, you know, for what goes on nationally.
[00:02:20]  What it tells you is that the New York that we knew no longer exists.
[00:02:24]  The blue-collar New York of Jews and Italians and Irish has now been replaced by an entirely different grouping.
[00:02:31]  The class struggle will be between those who voted for Mamdani, likely, and everybody else.
[00:02:36]  His electorate was better educated, richer, more professional.
[00:02:41]  The Corona Electorate was poorer, lacker, less educated, and the educated people chose to vote for Mamdani.
[00:02:48]  Now, what does that really mean?
[00:02:50]  It means that the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party now owns New York, at least in the Democratic Party.
[00:02:57]  And those folks are highly motivated to turn out again, which they will.
[00:03:01]  They are much more progressive, much more liberal, much less likely to be religiously engaged.
[00:03:07]  The very things that made American culture what it is are things that don't matter to them.
[00:03:11]  They're people who have never borne a burden or paid a price, you know, and have no idea about history that got us to this point.
[00:03:19]  But they do know that they don't want to pay a burden, pay a price rather, bear a burden, and will never serve this nation in any capacity.
[00:03:26]  It makes sense.
[00:03:27]  You know, it's kind of interesting.
[00:03:30]  They're the new class of the Democrat Party, and they will be in constant conflict with the Republicans for some time, who have become much more blue-collar, much less engaged in more engaged in the things that this group has rejected, which is religion, community, and traditional American kinds of values.
[00:03:48]  We also see something important here as well, Roger, that people tend to forget.
[00:03:52]  This was a European derivative country where European institutions mattered.
[00:03:58]  Magna Carta.
[00:04:00]  People don't say, well, I think about the Magna Carta, but the European institutions that created democracy were part of American culture.
[00:04:06]  We now have a society that is more than 50% non-European derivative.
[00:04:12]  And that tells you where we're going to be going.
[00:04:14]  We've got to create some democracy someplace and put it into people's brains or we're going to lose this country.
[00:04:22]  I, for one, do not see how the policies of defunding the police, essentially nationalizing or taking control of grocery stores and having the taxpayers pay for food for everyone, how the failure to denounce anti-Semitism and terrorism.
[00:04:47]  I just don't see how this can work in New York City, a city that already has very substantial problems.
[00:04:55]  Many of the Republicans that I know nationally who believe that in the end Maim Daniel will be elected because of the lopsided voter registration in New York City, think this is a good thing because his policies will, by the next presidential election, turn New York into chaos and be an example for the American people of what happens under these policies.
[00:05:25]  Your thinking?
[00:05:26]  I couldn't agree with you more.
[00:05:27]  I think that this will be the case example, should he be elected, of how it doesn't work.
[00:05:34]  And it will be a place of chaos where police will be, where police will be more significant, but less significant.
[00:05:42]  What do I mean by that?
[00:05:43]  They'll be more needed, but they won't be wanted, okay?
[00:05:46]  Because the people that elected Bandami don't think they need police.
[00:05:50]  And they also believe that others really don't need them.
[00:05:52]  What they need is something else.
[00:05:54]  But what the something else isn't working.
[00:05:56]  You know, even under David Dinkins, who didn't get enough credit for reducing crime, crime went up under Mayor Koch and went down on David Dinkins.
[00:06:06]  He knew that we needed more cops and he went and got them.
[00:06:08]  So we're going to live in a society in New York likely where police are less important, where the belief is that somehow if we reduce enforcement of societal norms, that everything will work out fine, which is not exactly how things work.
[00:06:22]  And New York will change.
[00:06:24]  It's not going to be the melting pot that it was.
[00:06:28]  It's going to be something different.
[00:06:30]  What that difference is is not clear yet.
[00:06:34]  But it won't be the New York that we knew.
[00:06:36]  Cultural institutions will suffer.
[00:06:38]  Educational institutions will suffer.
[00:06:40]  And the people that pay the tab, they're not staying.
[00:06:43]  I mean, the Jews will start to migrate out, which when that happens in any society, Hannah Orange was right, it's the beginning of totalitarianism.
[00:06:52]  Just simple fact of life.
[00:06:54]  You can't have chaos and presume that a society will function well.
[00:06:58]  And that's what this portents.
[00:07:02]  So I'm not hopeful about the future here.
[00:07:04]  Yeah, look, I think we both respect the extraordinary political talents of Andrew Cuomo.
[00:07:14]  The polling always showed him leading in this race, but of course he did not win.
[00:07:20]  He was carrying very, very significant negatives pertaining to the circumstances of his resignation and the attempt to impeach him before he resigned.
[00:07:32]  I candidly never thought that he could win this contest.
[00:07:38]  Now, of course, he did file and preserve the ability to run as an independent in the general election.
[00:07:48]  Do you think he will do that?
[00:07:50]  And corollarily, do you think it could possibly be successful?
[00:07:55]  He will not run is my hunch because he's a New York patriot.
[00:07:58]  And if he were to run, he would lose.
[00:08:00]  Why?
[00:08:00]  He was the issue in the race.
[00:08:02]  He also ran a bad campaign.
[00:08:04]  Why?
[00:08:05]  Because the advertising arguments were bad.
[00:08:08]  And Mamdani's advertising arguments weren't, they weren't great, but they were great ads.
[00:08:13]  They fit the tenor of the moment.
[00:08:15]  They were slick.
[00:08:17]  They looked like text to EXTS.
[00:08:21]  The mail was a combination of Instagram, TikTok, and the overbloated graphics, which are very much a part of some of the movie comic books that are kind of appearing, you know, and hip-hop culture, the overblown graphics, the overblown everything.
[00:08:38]  He understood that.
[00:08:39]  Andrew Cuomo didn't.
[00:08:41]  The ad makers were just lousy.
[00:08:43]  And that goes back to the polling question you raised.
[00:08:46]  You know, we're living with pollsters who I cautioned some people.
[00:08:50]  I said, stop looking at people who voted in four of the last four elections or three of the last four elections.
[00:08:56]  Start looking at people who voted in one of the last four elections or two out of the last four elections because those are the people that Mamdani is going to turn up.
[00:09:04]  And that's exactly what he did.
[00:09:05]  That combined with the understanding of social media and better advertising kind of sunk Andrew Cuomo.
[00:09:13]  Plus, his history, sexual harassment arguments had tremendous impact here.
[00:09:19]  And there's something you can't forget because they roll over the newspapers extensively covered for an extended period of time.
[00:09:29]  I concur with all of that.
[00:09:32]  I actually question at this point the efficacy of polling.
[00:09:37]  I think both between the way we communicate has changed and the extreme, extreme polarization in our politics, I really wonder the extent to which voters, Republicans and Democrats, and those who are neither but who do vote are willing to answer questions either on the phone or online from strangers they don't know.
[00:10:05]  They don't want to be targeted.
[00:10:07]  They don't want to be harassed.
[00:10:08]  They don't want to be identified.
[00:10:11]  I think taking a legitimate scientifically based poll today to try to get a snapshot of voter opinions is increasingly difficult.
[00:10:25]  It is.
[00:10:25]  You know, we're not living, as I've noted before, in a communal society anymore, Roger.
[00:10:29]  And polling is kind of a communal thing.
[00:10:31]  You know, people call you.
[00:10:32]  It might be a neighbor.
[00:10:33]  They say, oh, I'm your neighbor.
[00:10:34]  I live in your community.
[00:10:35]  And by the way, I'd like to know how you're feeling.
[00:10:37]  Would you mind answering some questions?
[00:10:39]  And that'd be really good.
[00:10:40]  Nobody's doing that anymore.
[00:10:41]  They're streaming, televisioning.
[00:10:42]  We live in a society that is much less personal, much more, sorry, much less communal, much more driven by individual needs and desires, much less communal, much less voluntary, and much less civic.
[00:10:59]  You know, our turnout numbers are kind of lousy when you think about it.
[00:11:03]  So why should people want to participate?
[00:11:07]  Why should they want to be polled?
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[00:11:29]  Yeah, we definitely saw this phenomenon in 2024 where President Donald Trump exceeded his share of the vote by several points above all of his polling in the swing states.
[00:11:43]  And I attributed this to the fact that there were Trump voters who did not want to tell a stranger, either online or On the phone, that they were going to vote for Donald Trump because they did not, they feared being targeted and harassed.
[00:12:00]  It's a sad commentary on where we are in our politics today.
[00:12:06]  Many conservatives, many Republicans, many sane people today calling for the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, to drop out of the race and to endorse current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is now running as an independent.
[00:12:25]  In your view, does Sliwa have a chance in the race under the current circumstances, or would those who fear a Mamdani mayoralty be best served if Sliwa and Adams could join forces?
[00:12:44]  Sliwa is a decent man.
[00:12:46]  He loves the city.
[00:12:48]  He's a New York patriot, and the New York Patriot thing to do would be to follow the law, leave the state for a while, and get off the ballot in order to solidify Eric Adams' possibilities of being reelected.
[00:13:00]  Adams is not without flaws, but he was a former New York City police officer who served the city.
[00:13:07]  He cleaned up the act of that administration.
[00:13:09]  The police commissioner he's appointed, the fire commissioner's appointed, the deputy mayor he's appointed, are doing brilliant work.
[00:13:15]  He's got a lot to talk about.
[00:13:17]  And he ought to let he ought to protect New York City from a Mamdani administration run by a guy who managed an office with a budget of $150,000 with three people.
[00:13:27]  You know, this is an extraordinary event to manage New York City.
[00:13:31]  It takes, I mean, it's urcuan by any measure.
[00:13:36]  What is this guy going to do?
[00:13:37]  Put Brad Lander, the former controller who supported boycott that resting the sanctions of Israel in charge of the city as a deputy mayor?
[00:13:45]  What kind of people is he going to bring into government?
[00:13:47]  People who want to destroy the police department or change it radically so it doesn't function?
[00:13:52]  And people who really don't understand the gravity of the situation.
[00:13:56]  Look, maybe, Roger, the argument is that having, you know, it's just, it hits the Trumpian era, right?
[00:14:02]  Maybe the cities have lost their function.
[00:14:05]  Maybe we don't need them anymore because the melting pot has changed.
[00:14:09]  Maybe we don't require cities as places for the exchange of ideas and culture anymore because people are so self-sufficient and so unengaged.
[00:14:18]  Maybe this election reflects that.
[00:14:21]  The suburbanization of America finally, the amalgamation of former cultural and ethnic groups that, frankly, have made their way in America through the melting pot, and that the new immigrants don't need what we've provided in the past.
[00:14:38]  Maybe that's where this is.
[00:14:40]  And that's something we have to consider.
[00:14:42]  It may just be that we're a late stage of urbanization that doesn't have to change.
[00:14:49]  Well, as you pointed out, Mamdani's victory came by mobilizing a very substantial number of voters who hadn't voted before or had voted sparsely in the past.
[00:15:00]  Conversely, however, do you now think it is possible that voters who did not participate in the primary but are alarmed at the prospect that he may become mayor could now vote in the general election in order to vote against him?
[00:15:15]  I think that's not an impossibility, but it depends on the argument.

=== The Great Hank Shankoff (04:52) ===

[00:15:19]  I mean, he is a very, very clever, extraordinarily good to the CABA.
[00:15:24]  His credit in the past has been, you know, to globalize the empty father, which does not mean let's have lunch with Jews.
[00:15:31]  It means kill them.
[00:15:33]  But the liberals and the progressives are prepared to look past that, like Jerry Badler, who really should have retired a long time ago, and to endorse people like this with the hope that somehow this will go away.
[00:15:44]  It's not going to go away.
[00:15:45]  But they don't understand that.
[00:15:47]  And they don't understand that the city's changes are not reflected necessarily the populations that he serves.
[00:15:54]  The very wealthy west side of Manhattan, where people have never really suffered a bad day.
[00:16:00]  I mean, she doesn't understand this.
[00:16:02]  So who knows what could happen?
[00:16:05]  It is because I think we're headed into a realm where all possibilities occur.
[00:16:10]  Even the most irrational.
[00:16:11]  And we proved that at Election Day in New York just a couple of days ago.
[00:16:16]  If you're just tuning in, folks, talking to the premier Democrat strategist in the country, Hank Shankoff, one of the few Democrats I know who accurately predicted the election of Donald Trump in 2024, and we'll be right back.
[00:16:28]  So please don't touch that dial.
[00:16:30]  Well, Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:16:37]  Well, Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:16:43]  And we're back in the Stone Zone.
[00:16:45]  We're talking to Hank Shankoff, to me, the preeminent and I think most brilliant Democrat strategist in the country today.
[00:16:54]  I remember a very specific interview right here on this show where Hank Shankoff said that the National Democrat Party did not understand that between open borders and the fentanyl and crime problem that caused the runaway inflation, the unbridled spending, that the Democrats did not recognize the toxic miscarriage that would lead to Trump's probable reelection.
[00:17:23]  Most of my other Democrat friends were still talking about the election of Kamala Harris, but not Hank Shankoff.
[00:17:31]  Hank, you were right.
[00:17:32]  I want to acknowledge that.
[00:17:34]  And I want to ask you, how do you think you're a Democrat, but how do you think Trump is doing so far?
[00:17:42]  He's got significant problems because of the fissures with his own party.
[00:17:47]  And I think that he's been, you know, away from my own political energy.
[00:17:52]  I was selecting a Clinton Democrat, but I think that shift has sailed.
[00:17:55]  I don't think we have a centrist Democratic Party anymore.
[00:17:58]  But I think the measure of Donald Trump's success, if there in the early one, will be whether this budget bill gets passed and what shape it's in.
[00:18:06]  If he can be the guy like Clinton was who has cured the debt, he will be a gay man.
[00:18:14]  But I don't know that that's going to happen.
[00:18:16]  That's problem one.
[00:18:17]  Internationally, the crisis, the international crisis where America's strength is being challenged by our enemies throughout the world is maybe unmanageable by anyone.
[00:18:29]  And I think Trump is doing the best he can to manage that crisis.
[00:18:33]  But the Ukraine issue alone makes it appear that he is weak.
[00:18:39]  How he cures those two problems, the financial, the internal financial one, the debt issue, and the foreign policy questions will determine how he is remembered in history.
[00:18:48]  And these are very difficult things that he's walking into.
[00:18:51]  I think he inherited these problems.
[00:18:54]  And frankly, he's right for attack because they may not be solvable.
[00:18:58]  And that is a very difficult condition to be in for the United States of America.
[00:19:02]  We believe we can solve almost anything.
[00:19:04]  And Donald Trump, no matter his skill, may not be able to solve those two problems.
[00:19:09]  Final question.
[00:19:10]  The decision he made to strike the nuclear weapons development sites in Iran last Sunday.
[00:19:18]  Do you think he made the right decision?
[00:19:20]  The world depends on the United States to save it, to save the world from insanity.
[00:19:26]  The United States should have done this or taken out Iran or gone after Tehran in 1983 after the attack after the murder of 200 and that close to 300 Marines and French troops whether in a Beirut peacekeeping mission.
[00:19:41]  What Donald Trump did was to let the world know.
[00:19:44]  And this was not just for the Iranians.
[00:19:46]  This was for the Russians and for our European allies to let them know that we will do what we must do and that the Russians should behave better and the Chinese should be very careful.
[00:19:57]  And for those reasons alone, I think that it was the only move he could make.
[00:20:00]  It was brilliantly executed.
[00:20:02]  And we owe the president a great deal of gratitude.
[00:20:05]  All right, we have to wrap it there.
[00:20:06]  The great Hank Shinekoff, I want to thank him for joining us today in the Stone Zone.

=== Why We Owe Trump Gratitude (01:35) ===

[00:20:11]  And until tomorrow, God bless you and Godspeed.
[00:20:17]  Thanks for listening to The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
[00:20:20]  You can hear the Stone Zone with Roger Stone weeknights at 8 on 77 WABC.
[00:20:27]  If you like the podcast, share it with your friends and listen anytime at WABCRadio.com and download the WABC Radio app.
[00:20:35]  Hit that subscribe button on all major podcast platforms.
[00:20:39]  Plus, follow WABC on social, on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and X. See you next time for a new episode so you never have to wonder what the heck is going on here.
[00:20:50]  Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our country has to offer, especially health care.
[00:20:56]  Across every state, every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
[00:21:05]  No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
[00:21:08]  They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
[00:21:13]  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.
[00:21:25]  Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
[00:21:33]  Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
[00:21:35]  They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
[00:21:39]  But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
[00:21:42]  Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.