The StoneZONE - Roger Stone - The Stone Zone | 06-26-25
Aired: 2025-06-27
Duration: 39:50


=== Radical Left Plans? (10:20) ===

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[00:00:31]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:00:38]  Welcome.
[00:00:38]  You are entering the Stone Zone, and I am your genial host, Roger Stone.
[00:00:44]  Well, New York Democrats have nominated Zoran Kowame Mamdani as their foreign-born communist nominee for the Democratic nomination for mayor.
[00:00:59]  He has deep ties to terrorist organizations.
[00:01:02]  I am not even mildly surprised by his victory.
[00:01:07]  I think a lot of this has to do with the shaming, the sham in New York City.
[00:01:15]  I think we are sadly at a point where a Catholic Democrat can probably no longer win a Democrat contest.
[00:01:24]  And Andrew Cuomo, despite his history as a brawler in American politics, was carrying very, very substantial negatives into the Democrat primary.
[00:01:36]  I do kind of worry about or wonder about Zoran Kowame Mamdani's name.
[00:01:45]  If his middle name is Kawami, my middle name is Mabutu.
[00:01:48]  I'm going to call myself Roger Mabutu Stone.
[00:01:51]  That sounds to me like a blatant attempt to attract African American votes, but perhaps I'm just a cynic.
[00:02:01]  The criteria is that he is one of the most radical economic attempted in any American metropolis.
[00:02:12]  He is a 33-year-old Uganda-born assemblyman, has in the past supported terror groups, refuses to condemn calls for violence, and has promised to open government-run grocery stores in New York City to sell food below market prices paid for with New Yorkers' tax dollars.
[00:02:35]  That is commonly known as communism.
[00:02:38]  President Trump responded to the Democrats' insane nomination of this radical progressive leftist on Truth Social.
[00:02:48]  It's finally happened, the president said.
[00:02:50]  The Democrats have crossed the line.
[00:02:53]  Zoran Mamdomni, a 100% communist lunatic, just won the Democratic primary and is probably on his way to becoming mayor of America's greatest city.
[00:03:06]  We've had radical leftists before, but this, the president said, is getting a little ridiculous.
[00:03:13]  I find him terrible.
[00:03:15]  His voice grading.
[00:03:16]  He's not very smart.
[00:03:17]  He's got AOC plus three dummies all backing him.
[00:03:22]  And even our great Palestinian senator, Cryon Chuck Schumer, is groveling over him.
[00:03:28]  Yes, this is a big moment in the history of our country.
[00:03:32]  Taking away the hyperbole, I do think the president's right about the realignment that's taking place in American politics.
[00:03:39]  It is no longer about Republicans and Democrats.
[00:03:42]  It is about people with common sense, people who embrace capitalism, people who embrace free enterprise, people who embrace peace, people who embrace law and order, people who embrace free speech, and those who do not.
[00:04:00]  In a second post, Trump wrote, I have an idea for the Democrats to bring them back into play.
[00:04:07]  After years of being left out in the cold, including suffering one of the greatest losses in history in the 2024 presidential election, the Democrats should nominate low IQ candidate Jasmine Crockett for president, and AOC should respectively be vice president.
[00:04:25]  And then the three high-level members of her cabinet could be the so-called squad.
[00:04:33]  Those are the anti-Semitic members of the U.S. House, all of whom are Democrats.
[00:04:39]  The Democrat Party has certainly come a long way from the days of President Harry Truman, who was the American president who fostered the creation of the state of Israel.
[00:04:50]  Added along with our future communist mayor of New York City, Zoharan Miamdami, our country is in big trouble.
[00:04:59]  Well, perhaps not.
[00:05:00]  I take a slightly different view.
[00:05:03]  Assuming that he wins, and in the next half of the show, we're going to talk to Hank Shankoff, the premier Democrat political strategist in America today, to handicap the general election for us and to analyze the primary results.
[00:05:20]  But if he is elected this November, he will have three years to govern before the next presidential election.
[00:05:29]  American people will get a chance to see what his soft-on crime, defund the police, redistribute the wealth policies do to the city of New York.
[00:05:41]  This morning I said on X, if I lived in New York, the first thing I would do is move, and I got a record number of likes.
[00:05:48]  Hurts me to say that because I love New York City.
[00:05:51]  I think it is still the greatest city in the world, but I fear what is about to happen to it.
[00:05:59]  Ma'am Danny is proposing what economists call a war on prices, a plan that I think would devastate New York's economy through government takeovers of housing, retail, and labor markets.
[00:06:12]  His platform includes, as I say, city-owned grocery stores, rent freezes, fare-free buses, and a $30 minimum wage by 2030.
[00:06:24]  All of this funded by a $10 billion tax hike on businesses and the wealthy.
[00:06:31]  The wealthy is everybody, by the way.
[00:06:34]  He's also calling for universal child care for children under six and full government control of the housing sector.
[00:06:41]  Ma'am Downey's housing proposal calls for freezing rents for over 2 million tenants in rent-stabilized apartments for four years, while simultaneously raising the corporate tax rate to 11.5% and imposing a new 2% millionaire tax.
[00:07:01]  Does the prospective mayor not realize that there will be a flood of people leaving New York under these policies?
[00:07:11]  The rent freeze would make it difficult for landlords to maintain their properties and would discourage investment in additional or new housing since no one wants to invest in an asset with frozen revenues.
[00:07:24]  Rent control prices like these violate the basic principles of market efficiency and have failed every place they have ever been implemented, leading to housing shortages, reduced new construction, and deterioration of existing units due to limited maintenance incentives.
[00:07:42]  Perhaps Mamdani's most dangerous economic proposal is his plan to create a network of city-owned grocery stores that would buy and sell at wholesale prices and operate with the goal of keeping prices low and not making a profit.
[00:08:00]  Wow.
[00:08:01]  In practice, this means selling food below market rates subsidized by the working people's tax dollars.
[00:08:08]  The result would be higher taxes on all working Americans who choose to stay while conservatives flee and freeloaders move in.
[00:08:17]  Private grocery stores, unable to compete with subsidized pricing, would be forced to close, further increasing dependence on government-run shops and driving up the city's deficit spending as well.
[00:08:32]  John Katsmatidis has said publicly that if this guy is elected mayor, he's going to close his grocery stores in New York City.
[00:08:40]  So this is not just hyperbole.
[00:08:42]  History shows that every communist country attempting similar policies eventually limits access to government stores to only those who qualify, usually the poor, while the rest of the population pays for services that they're not allowed to use.
[00:09:00]  So to prevent black market reselling or hoarding, the government would also have to restrict how much food each person can buy.
[00:09:08]  Depending on how far the prospective mayor pushes this insanity, we could even see tip lines to report neighbors who are reselling goods or maybe even turning in people who gained weight since they're clearly consuming more than their fair share.
[00:09:25]  As I say, John Katzmatidis, who of course is the media mogul behind Red Apple Audio Networks, also CEO of the grocery store chain Gristidis, one of the largest in the city, said if the city is going to socialist, I will definitely close or sell or move to franchise all of my Grustides locations.
[00:09:51]  Katsmatidis is like Donald Trump, a man who says what he means and means what he says.
[00:09:56]  Conservative commentator John Podhoritz called Mamdani the globalized INFADA candidate.
[00:10:04]  Mandami's own Facebook profile features a video of him standing with members of Within Our Lifetime, a radical group that supports terrorism, holding signs saying there is only one solution into FADA revolution.

=== Natasha Bertrand Controversy (04:04) ===

[00:10:20]  Many Republicans are calling for the Republican candidate for mayor, my friend Curtis Lewa, to make his deal and throw his support to Eric Adams, the former, pardon me, the current mayor of New York City, who is running as an independent.
[00:10:36]  I'm not sure about the efficacy or success of such a profile or such a maneuver.
[00:10:42]  We'll talk about that when we interview Hank Shinekoff in the upcoming segment of the show.
[00:10:49]  Meanwhile, President Donald Trump had to correct the fake news regarding the bunker buster bombs that were used last Sunday in the surgical attack on the three nuclear weapons development sites in Iran.
[00:11:09]  A CNN report by the notorious congenital liar Natasha Bertrand and others claimed that the attack by the U.S. military on Iranian nuclear sites was not successful and that the capability of the Iranians to produce a nuclear bomb was not destroyed.
[00:11:32]  Now, this is the same Natasha Bertrand of CNN who told us about the Russian collusion hoax, insisted that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
[00:11:42]  Special Counsel John Durham concluded that was false in his report.
[00:11:46]  This is the same Natasha Bertrand who said that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation.
[00:11:54]  This is the same Natasha Bertrand who told me in an email, which I still have, that Congressman Eric Swawell shared my classified testimony with her, which both violates the United States law and also violates the House rules.
[00:12:12]  Why this person still has a job, I don't know.
[00:12:16]  But I do know that Tulsi Gabbard yesterday, the director of national intelligence, certified what the president had said, that our own sources, as well as the Israeli sources of intelligence, tell us that the message was successful and carried out with precision did, in fact, destroy Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities.
[00:12:40]  It was a total obliteration, to quote President Donald Trump.
[00:12:45]  This incredible exercise of American strength has paved the way for peace, in my opinion.
[00:12:50]  This is not a regime change war.
[00:12:52]  This is not a never-ending war.
[00:12:55]  This is not about endless foreign war where our inherent national interests are not clear.
[00:13:02]  This was a tough decision by the president.
[00:13:05]  There's no question about it.
[00:13:06]  But the fake news, CNN, along with the once great New York Times, have teamed up in an attempt to demean one of the most successful military strikes in American history.
[00:13:18]  The nuclear sites in Iran have been completely destroyed.
[00:13:22]  Both the Times and CNN are beginning to be slammed by the public.
[00:13:27]  We just caught the New York Times working with CNN cheating again, the president said.
[00:13:32]  They try to demean the great work of our B-2 pilots did, and they are wrong in doing so.
[00:13:38]  These reporters are bad and sick people, the president says.
[00:13:42]  I certainly agree with that.
[00:13:44]  You're tuned in to the Stone Zone.
[00:13:46]  I'm Roger Stone.
[00:13:47]  We have a lot more about the politics of the day.
[00:13:50]  Please, whatever you do, don't touch that dial.
[00:13:52]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:13:59]  If you're looking to create, grow, and sustain your wealth, download and subscribe to the Pain Points of Wealth podcast at bebullish.com with Bob, Ryan, and Chris Payne.
[00:14:09]  It's your podcast for market insights, money tips, and real talk on the economy.
[00:14:14]  Download and subscribe at bebullish.com.
[00:14:18]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:14:23]  Welcome back into the Stone Zone.

=== Neera Tandon's Autopen Control (03:20) ===

[00:14:25]  You know, it was right here in the Stone Zone only days ago that I identified an ex-Biden White House official, Neera Tandon, as the woman who was controlling the Autopen, which seems to actually have been the President of the United States during Joe Biden's presidency.
[00:14:46]  Tandon admitted under oath to the House Oversight Committee during a closed-door testimony this week that she controlled Joe Biden's Autopen.
[00:14:56]  House Oversight Chairman James Comer recently identified five Biden aides who were involved in the cover-up of Joe's mental decline and the Autopen scandal.
[00:15:08]  The director of domestic policy, Neera Tandon, was brought before the committee last Tuesday, and she admitted that she was authorized to use Joe Biden's AutoPen between October 2021 and May 2023.
[00:15:23]  Tandon testified that she was also authorized to direct the AutoPen.
[00:15:28]  However, she denied manipulation or abuse.
[00:15:32]  As staff secretary, I was responsible for handling the flow of documents to and from the president.
[00:15:38]  I was also authorized to direct those auto pen signatures be affixed to certain categories of documents.
[00:15:45]  We had a system for authorizing the use of the auto pen that I inherited from a prior administration.
[00:15:52]  We employed that system throughout my tenure as staff secretary.
[00:15:56]  However, Tandon claimed that she stopped overseeing the AutoPen after May of 2023 when she became the head of the Domestic Policy Council.
[00:16:07]  The Oversight Committee previously pointed out that Neera Tandon was the White House staff secretary when Joe Biden autopenned pardons from a golf course in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
[00:16:21]  Tandon was frequently mentioned in the leaked Podesta emails released by Wikileaks.
[00:16:27]  No, there is no evidence that I had advanced knowledge or any involvement in the obtaining or leaking of those emails, even though CNN and the New York Times insisted for two and a half years that that was the case.
[00:16:44]  The U.S. government could never produce any evidence that showed that because, well, simply was not true.
[00:16:52]  Tandon was one of the most vocal Russia conspiracy theorists pushing the Russian collusion hack idea and the idea that the steel dossier was real.
[00:17:06]  She not only attacked Republicans while she was working for Hillary Clinton, but she also went for the throats of Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters.
[00:17:16]  Early this year, the oversight committee revealed six criminals were pardoned by Joe Biden's AutoPen on December 30th, 2022, while Joe Biden physically was vacation and golfing in St. Croix.
[00:17:31]  So based on Neera Tandon's testimony, she was likely behind the AutoPen pardons while Joe was golfing and on vacations.
[00:17:43]  Nobody can be in two places at once.

=== Polls And Policing (15:32) ===

[00:17:46]  Coming up, the number one most preeminent Democrat strategist in the country today, Hank Scheinkopf, joins us to break down yesterday's mayoral primary at what lies ahead for New York City.
[00:17:59]  Whatever you do, stay right here in the Stone Zone.
[00:18:03]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:18:10]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:18:16]  And we're back in the Stone Zone.
[00:18:18]  Joining me now is the preeminent Democrat strategist in the country today.
[00:18:25]  Dr. Hank Scheinkoff has worked on an estimated 700 political campaigns on four continents and in 14 foreign nations, as well as in 44 American states over the last 35 years.
[00:18:39]  His clients have included President Bill Clinton, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Leonel Fernandez, the former president of the Dominican Republic, and the former president of Mexico, Vincente Fox.
[00:18:53]  Hank Shankoff's opinions are widely sought by the media, the New York Times, the Daily News, the New York Post, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many, many others, which is why we are extraordinarily fortunate to have a few minutes of his time today.
[00:19:11]  There is nobody who knows more about New York politics as well as national politics, a man for whom I have enormous respect, despite the fact that we're in different parties.
[00:19:24]  Dr. Hank Shankoff, my friend Hank, thank you so much for joining us.
[00:19:29]  Roger, it's a pleasure to be with you.
[00:19:31]  I'm grateful.
[00:19:33]  So you are a shrewd analyst of American politics.
[00:19:37]  You have an amazing ability to see the future based on data and trends.
[00:19:44]  Was there anything about the Democrat primary for mayor in New York City that produced Namazi Zoran Maamdani that surprised you?
[00:19:56]  Well, it was surprising.
[00:19:58]  I mean, surprising in the amount of organizing ability that Zor Mandami and the Working Families Party and the left wing brought to the event.
[00:20:06]  New York is now a case example of what happens when the left organizes, as it's known how to do very well.
[00:20:12]  And they did a great job.
[00:20:14]  They turned out a vote.
[00:20:15]  They've turned out voters who don't necessarily vote, which is kind of interesting.
[00:20:19]  And the other campaigns were very stupid.
[00:20:23]  Very simple.
[00:20:25]  Do you think that his victory reflects changing demographics of both New York City and of the Democrat Party in New York City?
[00:20:37]  I think it has a national impact, Roger, because New York is a petri dish, you know, for what goes on nationally.
[00:20:42]  What it tells you is that the New York that we knew no longer exists.
[00:20:46]  The blue-collar New York of Jews and Italians and Irish has now been replaced by an entirely different grouping.
[00:20:53]  The class struggle will be between those who voted for Mamdani, likely, and everybody else.
[00:20:58]  His electorate was better educated, richer, more professional.
[00:21:03]  The Corona electorate was poorer, blacker, less educated.
[00:21:07]  And the educated people chose to vote for Mamdani.
[00:21:10]  Now, what does that really mean?
[00:21:12]  It means that the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party now owns New York, at least in that Democratic primary.
[00:21:19]  And those folks are highly motivated to turn out again, which they will.
[00:21:23]  They are much more progressive, much more liberal, much less likely to be religiously engaged.
[00:21:29]  The very things that made American culture what it is are things that don't matter to them.
[00:21:33]  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.
[00:21:41]  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.
[00:21:48]  It makes sense.
[00:21:49]  You know, it's kind of interesting.
[00:21:52]  They're the new class of the Democratic 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.
[00:22:11]  We also see something important here as well, Roger, that people tend to forget.
[00:22:15]  This was a European derivative country where European institutions mattered.
[00:22:20]  The Magna Carta, you know, people don't say, well, I think about the Magna Carta, but the European institutions that created democracy were part of American culture.
[00:22:29]  We now have a society that is more than 50% non-European derivative.
[00:22:34]  And that tells you where we're going to be going.
[00:22:36]  We've got to create some democracy someplace and put it into people's brains, or we're going to lose this country.
[00:22:44]  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.
[00:23:10]  I just don't see how this can work in New York City, a city that already has very substantial problems.
[00:23:17]  Many of the Republicans that I know nationally who believe that in the end Mamdani 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.
[00:23:47]  Your thinking?
[00:23:48]  I couldn't agree with you more.
[00:23:49]  I think that this will be the case example, should he be re-elected, should he be elected, of how it doesn't work.
[00:23:56]  It will be a place of chaos where police will be, where police will be more significant, but less significant.
[00:24:04]  What do I mean by that?
[00:24:05]  They'll be more needed, but they won't be wanted, okay?
[00:24:08]  Because the people that elected Bandami don't think they need police.
[00:24:12]  And they also believe that others really don't need them.
[00:24:15]  What they need is something else.
[00:24:16]  But what the something else isn't working.
[00:24:18]  You know, even under David Dinkins, who was who didn't get enough credit for reducing crime, crime went up under Mayor Koch and went down on David Dinkins.
[00:24:28]  He knew that we needed more cops and he went and done them.
[00:24:30]  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.
[00:24:44]  And New York will change.
[00:24:46]  It's not going to be the melting pot that it was.
[00:24:50]  It's going to be something different.
[00:24:52]  What that difference is is not clear yet.
[00:24:56]  But it won't be the New York that we knew.
[00:24:58]  Cultural institutions will suffer.
[00:25:00]  Educational institutions will suffer.
[00:25:02]  And the people that paid the tab, they're not staying.
[00:25:06]  I mean, the Jews will start to migrate out, which when that happens in any society, Hannah Orange was right, is the beginning of totalitarianism.
[00:25:14]  Just simple fact of life.
[00:25:16]  You can't have chaos and presume that a society will function well.
[00:25:20]  And that's what this portends.
[00:25:24]  So I'm not hopeful about the future here.
[00:25:26]  Yeah, look, I think we both respect the extraordinary political talents of Andrew Cuomo.
[00:25:36]  The polling always showed him leading in this race, but of course he did not win.
[00:25:42]  He was carrying very, very significant negatives pertaining to the circumstances of his resignation and the attempt to impeach him before he resigned.
[00:25:55]  I candidly never thought that he could win this contest.
[00:26:00]  Now, of course, he did file and preserve the ability to run as an independent in the general election.
[00:26:10]  Do you think he will do that?
[00:26:12]  And the corollarily, do you think it could possibly be successful?
[00:26:17]  He will not run, is my hunch, because he's a New York patriot.
[00:26:20]  And if he were to run, he would lose.
[00:26:22]  Why?
[00:26:22]  He was the issue in the race.
[00:26:24]  He also ran a bad campaign.
[00:26:26]  Why?
[00:26:27]  Because the advertising arguments were bad.
[00:26:30]  And Madami's advertising arguments weren't great, but they were great ads.
[00:26:35]  They fit the tenor of the moment.
[00:26:37]  They were slick.
[00:26:39]  They looked like texts to EXTS.
[00:26:43]  They were the mailless accommodation 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, and hip-hop culture, the overblown graphics, the overblown everything.
[00:27:01]  He understood that.
[00:27:02]  Andrew Corba didn't.
[00:27:03]  The ad makers were just lousy.
[00:27:05]  And that goes back to the polling question you raised.
[00:27:08]  We're living with pollsters who I cautioned some people.
[00:27:12]  I said, stop looking at people who voted in four of the last four elections or three of the last four elections.
[00:27:18]  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.
[00:27:26]  And that's exactly what he did.
[00:27:27]  That combined with the understanding of social media and better advertising kind of sunk Andrew Cormo.
[00:27:35]  Plus his history.
[00:27:38]  These sexual harassment arguments had tremendous impact here.
[00:27:42]  And there's something you can't forget because they were all into the newspapers.
[00:27:45]  He's extensively covered for an extended period of time.
[00:27:51]  I concur with all of that.
[00:27:54]  I actually question at this point the efficacy of polling.
[00:27:59]  I think both between the way we communicate has changed and the extreme, extreme polarization in our politics.
[00:28:10]  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.
[00:28:28]  They don't want to be targeted.
[00:28:29]  They don't want to be harassed.
[00:28:30]  They don't want to be identified.
[00:28:33]  I think taking a legitimate scientifically based poll today to try to get a snapshot of voter opinions is increasingly difficult.
[00:28:47]  It is.
[00:28:48]  You know, we're not living, as I've noted before, in a communal society anymore, Roger.
[00:28:51]  And polling is kind of a communal thing.
[00:28:53]  You know, people call you.
[00:28:54]  It might be a neighbor.
[00:28:55]  They say, oh, I'm your neighbor.
[00:28:57]  I live in your community.
[00:28:57]  And by the way, I'd like to know how you're feeling.
[00:28:59]  Would you mind answering some questions?
[00:29:01]  And that'd be really good.
[00:29:02]  Nobody's doing that anymore.
[00:29:03]  They're streaming television.
[00:29:05]  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.
[00:29:21]  Our turnout numbers are kind of lousy when you think about it.
[00:29:25]  So why should people want to participate?
[00:29:29]  Why should they want to be polled?
[00:29:32]  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.
[00:29:47]  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 feared being targeted and harassed.
[00:30:04]  It's a sad commentary on where we are in our politics today.
[00:30:09]  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.
[00:30:29]  In your view, does Sliwa have a chance in the race under the current circumstances, or would those who fear a Mamdani Maroti be best served if Sliwa and Adams could join forces?
[00:30:47]  Sliwa is a decent man.
[00:30:49]  He loves the city.
[00:30:52]  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 re-elected.
[00:31:04]  Adams is not without flaws, but he is a former New York City police officer who served the city.
[00:31:10]  He cleaned up the act of that administration.
[00:31:13]  The police commissioner he's appointed, the fire commissioner's appointed, the deputy mayor he's appointed, are doing brilliant work.
[00:31:18]  He's got a lot to talk about.
[00:31:20]  And he ought to let he ought to protect your city from a Mamdani administration run by a guy who managed an office with a budget of $150,000 with three people.
[00:31:30]  You know, this is an extraordinary event to manage New York City.
[00:31:34]  It takes, I mean, it's urcuan by any measure.
[00:31:39]  What is this guy going to do?
[00:31:40]  Put Brad Lander, the former controller who supported boycott that was in the sanctions of Israel, in charge of the city as a deputy mayor?
[00:31:48]  What kind of people is he going to bring into government?
[00:31:51]  People who want to destroy the police department or change it radically so it doesn't function and people who really don't understand the gravity of the situation.
[00:31:59]  Look, maybe, Roger, the argument is that having, you know, it's just, it hits the Trumpian era, right?
[00:32:06]  Maybe the cities have lost their function.
[00:32:08]  Maybe we don't need them anymore because the melting pot has changed.
[00:32:12]  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.
[00:32:22]  Maybe this election reflects that.
[00:32:25]  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.
[00:32:41]  Maybe that's where this is.
[00:32:43]  And that's something we have to consider.
[00:32:45]  It may just be that we're a late stage of urbanization that has to change.
[00:32:52]  Well, as you pointed out, Maimdami's victory came by mobilizing a very substantial number of voters who hadn't voted before or had voted sparsely in the past.
[00:33:03]  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?

=== Voters Mobilized Crisis (04:55) ===

[00:33:19]  I think that's not an impossibility, but it depends on the argument.
[00:33:22]  I mean, he is very, very clever, extraordinarily good to the CABRA.
[00:33:27]  His credit to the past has been, you know, to globalize the empty father, which does not mean let's have lunch with Jews.
[00:33:34]  It means kill them.
[00:33:36]  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.
[00:33:47]  It's not going to go away.
[00:33:49]  But they don't understand that.
[00:33:50]  And they don't understand that the city's changes are not reflected necessarily the populations that he serves, the very wealthy west side of Manhattan, where people have never really suffered a bad day.
[00:34:03]  I mean, he doesn't understand this.
[00:34:05]  So who knows what could happen?
[00:34:08]  It is, because I think we've entered into a realm where all possibilities occur, even the most irrational.
[00:34:15]  And we proved that at Election Day in New York just a couple of days ago.
[00:34:19]  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.
[00:34:31]  So please don't touch that dial.
[00:34:34]  Well Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:34:40]  The Stone Zone on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:34:46]  And we're back in the Stone Zone.
[00:34:48]  We're talking to Hank Shankoff, to me, the preeminent and I think most brilliant Democrat strategist in the country today.
[00:34:58]  I remember a very specific interview right here on this show where Hank Shyinkoff 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 misconceptions that would lead to Trump's probable reelection.
[00:35:26]  Most of my other Democrat friends were still talking about the election of Kamala Harris, but not Hank Shankoff.
[00:35:34]  Hank, you were right.
[00:35:35]  I want to acknowledge that.
[00:35:37]  And I want to ask you, how do you think you're a Democrat, but how do you think Trump is doing so far?
[00:35:45]  He's got significant problems because of the fissures with his own party.
[00:35:50]  And I think that he's been, you know, moved away from my own political ideas.
[00:35:55]  I'm still, I was selecting a Clinton Democrat, but I think that shift has sailed.
[00:35:58]  I don't think we have a centrist Democratic party anymore.
[00:36:01]  But I think the measure of Donald Trump's success, if they're in the early one, will be whether this budget bill gets passed and what shape it's in.
[00:36:10]  If he can be the guy like Clinton was who has cured the debt, he will be a great man.
[00:36:17]  But I don't know that that's going to happen.
[00:36:19]  That's problem one.
[00:36:20]  Internationally, the crisis, the international crisis where America's strength is being challenged by our enemies throughout the world is maybe unmanageable by anyone.
[00:36:32]  And I think Trump is doing the best he can to manage that crisis.
[00:36:37]  But the Ukraine issue alone makes it appear that he is weak.
[00:36:42]  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.
[00:36:52]  And these are very difficult things that he's walking into.
[00:36:54]  I think he inherited these problems.
[00:36:57]  And frankly, he's right for attack because they may not be solvable.
[00:37:02]  And that is a very difficult condition to be in for the United States of America.
[00:37:06]  We believe we can solve almost anything.
[00:37:08]  And Donald Trump, no matter his skill, may not be able to solve those two problems.
[00:37:12]  Final question.
[00:37:14]  The decision he made to strike the nuclear weapons development sites in Iran last Sunday.
[00:37:21]  Do you think he made the right decision?
[00:37:24]  The world depends on the United States to save it, to save the world from insanity.
[00:37:29]  The United States should have done this or taken out Iran or gone after Tehran in 1983 after the attack, the murder of 200 and that close to 300 Marines and French troops were there in a Beirut peacekeeping mission.
[00:37:45]  What Donald Trump did was to let the world know, and this was not just for the Iranians, 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.
[00:38:00]  And for those reasons alone, I think that was the only move he could make.
[00:38:03]  It was brilliantly executed.
[00:38:05]  And we owe the president a great deal of gratitude.
[00:38:08]  All right, we have to wrap it there.
[00:38:10]  The great Hank Shankoff, I want to thank him for joining us today in the Stone Zone.

=== Protecting Patient Care (01:36) ===

[00:38:14]  And until tomorrow, God bless you and Godspeed.
[00:38:20]  Thanks for listening to the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
[00:38:24]  You can hear the Stone Zone with Roger Stone, weeknights at 8 on 77 WABC.
[00:38:30]  If you like the podcast, share it with your friends and listen anytime at WABCRadio.com and download the WABC Radio app.
[00:38:39]  Hit that subscribe button on all major podcast platforms.
[00:38:42]  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.
[00:38:54]  Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our nation has to offer, especially health care.
[00:39:00]  Across every state and every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
[00:39:09]  No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
[00:39:12]  They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
[00:39:17]  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.
[00:39:30]  Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
[00:39:38]  Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
[00:39:40]  They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
[00:39:43]  But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
[00:39:47]  Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.