The StoneZONE - Roger Stone - The Stone Zone | 03-02-26
Aired: 2026-03-03
Duration: 38:48


=== Protecting America's Strength (13:29) ===

[00:00:00]  Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our country has to offer, especially health care.
[00:00:05]  Across every state, 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.
[00:00:18]  They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
[00:00:23]  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.
[00:00:35]  Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
[00:00:42]  Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
[00:00:45]  They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
[00:00:48]  But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
[00:00:52]  Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
[00:00:56]  Don't cut rural health care.
[00:01:01]  The Stone Zone.
[00:01:02]  Entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:01:08]  And you're diving headfirst into the deep end of the Stone Zone.
[00:01:13]  I had dinner with the President of the United States at his palatial estate, Mar-a-Lago, on Saturday night.
[00:01:22]  The dinner is, of course, off the record, but he appeared arrested, confident, somewhat somber, but very talkative on a day in which he totally, dramatically reshaped global power.
[00:01:39]  Donald Trump delivered one of the most forceful demonstrations of focused American strength in modern history.
[00:01:46]  So within two weeks, you have two major anti-American strongmen who have fallen from the world stage.
[00:01:54]  First, Venezuelan dictator and narco-tart terrorist and trafficker Nicholas Maduro was captured.
[00:02:02]  And Iran's long-standing supreme leader, Ayatollah Al-Khomeini, not to be confused with the Ayollah Khomeini, who had that nation when they took 54, I believe it was, American into become hostages until Ronald Reagan essentially freed them.
[00:02:24]  This guy is with us no more.
[00:02:26]  Iran itself confirmed the supreme leader's death and declared national mourning.
[00:02:32]  For decades, of course, Iran openly called the United States the great Satan, fundered terrorism across the Middle East, and pursued nuclear weapons.
[00:02:41]  President Trump called their operation a matter of justice and said it offered the Iranian people their best chance in generations to reclaim their history.
[00:02:53]  I think their brutal murder of their own citizens, which they were brazen about, mass executions, the brutality of their regime helped hasten its end and their record of killing Americans, carrying Americans all the way back to the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, the World Trade Center, and elsewhere.
[00:03:17]  But it is also not inconsistent with Trump's the fact that he was elected as an anti-war president.
[00:03:25]  Trump is still at heart, I think, a non-interventionist.
[00:03:29]  And what we've seen in Venezuela, what we saw the first time in Iran, what we now see again in Iran is measured, limited, lethal, effective use of America's strength without troops on the ground, without massive increases in defense spending, without hundreds of thousands of U.S. casualties, essentially endless foreign war.
[00:03:57]  Yes, it may temporarily excite Senator Lindsey Graham, who, let's face it, never saw a war he didn't like.
[00:04:05]  Mr. Shoot first and ask questions later.
[00:04:08]  But the president is not in the neocon camp of endless foreign war that finances the major defense contractors because war is extraordinarily profitable, but you see the focused use of American power.
[00:04:23]  This puts Trump in the tradition of Dwight Eisenhower, who believed in peace through strength, a policy followed by Ronald Reagan.
[00:04:33]  I had Rod Martin, Rod D. Martin of the Rod Martin Report, find him at rodmartin.org on my program this weekend, and he spoke about the many parallels between the Gipper, Ronald Reagan, and President Donald Trump.
[00:04:47]  And this is Trump, I think, projecting peace through strength.
[00:04:52]  Now you have Russia and China, long backers of any anti-U.S. and Western regimes, who can really do a little more than protest, show exactly who is now the top dog on the global stage.
[00:05:05]  Trump destroyed China when he took control of Venezuelan oil output, 80% of which was going to the communist Chinese.
[00:05:15]  The rest of it was going to Cuba.
[00:05:17]  And now he has deprived both of those regimes.
[00:05:20]  Some experts think that China's overall access to cheaply priced oil, because they were paying a little for it, now they can get oil, but the price will drive them wild.
[00:05:33]  So when people say it's about oil, yes, Trump has usefully used our control of oil to both thwart the brutal regime in Cuba and also to deal a blow to the Chinese.
[00:05:49]  Moscow condemned the strike, but they offered no real protection to their allies in Iran as they're bogged down in their own conflict, of course, with Ukraine.
[00:05:58]  Trump from the station clearly picked an opportune time to strike.
[00:06:01]  The thing about Trump is, of course, that he'll always negotiate.
[00:06:04]  He has sent good faith negotiators.
[00:06:07]  Before long, his negotiators figured out that they were just being played for time, that those they negotiated with had no intention of coming to any reasonable agreement.
[00:06:16]  Trump's demands were clear.
[00:06:18]  They had to abandon any thought of nuclear-powered weaponry.
[00:06:23]  They had to be able to restrict any nuclear development to clearly domestic purposes, like creating electricity.
[00:06:30]  Most of the country doesn't have, much of this country doesn't have running toilets.
[00:06:34]  Never mind electricity.
[00:06:35]  We lose sight of that fact.
[00:06:38]  The White House says the campaign ahead of schedule for Trump is going to something that, well, let me say the White House says the campaign ahead of schedule, targeting leadership networks rather than launching other endless nation-building warfare.
[00:06:54]  Yes, this is from their statement.
[00:06:55]  Regimes that threaten America, I think, understand, however, that there are consequences, and those consequences with Donald Trump is real.
[00:07:02]  General Michael Flynn was on my program this weekend.
[00:07:07]  And Flynn not only was the, of course, Donald Trump's national security advisor, like me, framed in the Russian collusion hoax where he did nothing wrong, but he was also the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, also served as the head of Central Command J-12.
[00:07:24]  He was the head of intelligence of Afghanistan and the head of intelligence for all special operations in the Middle East during both the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.
[00:07:33]  He was deeply involved in planning and the operations for multiple Iran constituencies.
[00:07:39]  He was with me on Sunday and commented about the decisiveness of Donald Trump, the decisiveness at which he makes decisions, as he did in these three instances.
[00:07:54]  Yet we don't find ourselves bogged down in yet another expensive foreign war.
[00:07:59]  What's interesting, also, David Shoan points this out, is the way Trump uses not only his military power in a rebuilt military under Pete Hegseth, but also his economic power against the Chinese.
[00:08:14]  As we play catch-up ball going after rare earth minerals, he's strangling the communist Chinese over their lack of oil.
[00:08:22]  So it is nothing short of brilliant.
[00:08:27]  A point that, again, Rod Martin made on Sunday's show.
[00:08:31]  I think that the broader doctrine of peace through strength, not apologies like it was during Obama and Biden, is being proven right here.
[00:08:38]  The Trump foreign policy really is a game changer.
[00:08:43]  He's not a neocon.
[00:08:44]  He's not an interventionist, but he will use the moral authority and limited and measured American power if necessary.
[00:08:56]  So, for example, in Iran, where, let's be very clear, we may have taken out Khomeini, although I saw that they found his ring, which would be a grisly thing to own, and 40 others.
[00:09:09]  They don't tell us if those are high commanders of the regime.
[00:09:12]  We're not sure from what I've read, we know who those 40 people are, but how disabled is the regime?
[00:09:19]  How are they wounded?
[00:09:21]  They continue to fire rockets at their Arab neighbors, and they continue the use of drones.
[00:09:27]  So, this war is not over.
[00:09:30]  On the other hand, the people will turn against them.
[00:09:33]  There is no food.
[00:09:35]  The quality of life has come to the point where people are driven to protest openly against a government that is famous for its brutal putdown of any peaceful protest or free speech event.
[00:09:52]  This is a country where they literally have had mass public executions of political critics of the regime.
[00:10:00]  As I said months ago, I was scheduled by a former U.S. Senator who's actually going to join us tomorrow, Senator Bob Torricelli, former member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, deep experience in the Middle East, knows all of the key pro-democratic forces in Iran, going to join us to talk about that extraordinary event.
[00:10:24]  But Trump has demonstrated that he can get between the raindrops of the neocons left in the Republican Party, and there's still many, those who refuse to do away with the filibuster.
[00:10:37]  Today, the Save America Act, which the president has correctly called the Save Act, which the president has correctly called the Save America Act, to paraphrase Trump himself on social media, has 50 votes in the U.S. Senate and therefore should proceed to a vote.
[00:10:54]  But because of the filibuster rules, even though it's at 50 votes, it cannot be voted on unless Leader Thune breaks the filibuster, in which case it would come to the floor and JD Vance would cast the tie-breaking vote.
[00:11:08]  And you would require to limit U.S. federal elections to only to those who were qualified U.S. citizens and to show ID when voting in federal elections in order to do so.
[00:11:23]  I don't understand why the Democrats find that so objectionable.
[00:11:26]  It's not racist.
[00:11:27]  It's entirely reasonable and logical.
[00:11:33]  My guess is at this point that perhaps the president regrets not supporting Rick Scott of Florida, who has been a true leader, certainly in this hemisphere particularly, against the narco-terrorists and the Marxists over John Thune for the job.
[00:11:51]  Of course, Thune is right out of central casting, as the president would say.
[00:11:56]  He looks like a senator.
[00:11:58]  But Thune is, you know, he was in favor of dumping Trump as the nominee when the famous Billy Bush grabbed them by the controversy went on.
[00:12:10]  There was a 48-hour period in which Reince Priebus, the Republican national chairman, vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, and he plotted depriving Trump of the nomination, having the Republican National Committee dump him and select a successor.
[00:12:30]  That successor designed to be Mike Pence.
[00:12:33]  Pence avoided Trump's direct phone call for more than 24 hours during the controversy.
[00:12:39]  Of course, the effort failed when the American people cared less about that than the prospect of Hillary Clinton getting into the presidency, and he essentially came bounced back as a candidate.
[00:12:54]  The other thing that Flynn said on Sunday's show that I really agreed with is his deep concern about the number of potential terror cells, Islamic terrorist cells in this country.
[00:13:07]  In a country in which I think, according to military experts and others who are expert in this area that I respect, we may have as many as 36 million illegal immigrants in the country.
[00:13:20]  We know that some, I believe it is 213 or maybe 312 of them are known terrorists.
[00:13:26]  I would venture that it's obviously far more.

=== Events and Toys (15:57) ===

[00:13:29]  We've all seen these events, the events of Austin, Texas, smell very bad.
[00:13:36]  A former senior FBI counter terror official is actually warning Americans not to let their guard down after the U.S. and Israeli strikes crippled Iran's leadership.
[00:13:46]  Chris Schwecker, who previously served as an assistant director of the FBI, says Iran and its terror proxies may be activating cells in the days to come.
[00:13:56]  This is exactly what General Flynn was saying on Sunday following the military coup known as Operation Epic Fury.
[00:14:05]  I'm about to post my online story on that.
[00:14:09]  It is an amazing use of and a wise use of American power.
[00:14:14]  These Hezbollah-linked networks are already clearly inside the United States and could be used for more terror attacks against Americans.
[00:14:21]  I agree with General Flynn on this point.
[00:14:24]  It is a very huge concern.
[00:14:26]  And we will be covering that right here in the Stone Zone.
[00:14:31]  But once again, Donald Trump looking fit and trim, actually, looking confident and jovial and looking healthy for those who would like to think otherwise.
[00:14:40]  And I wish I could end a very funny, but of course, the conversations are off the record.
[00:14:47]  You've been listening to the Stone Zone.
[00:14:48]  I'm Roger Stone, and we'll be right back.
[00:14:53]  Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our country has to offer, especially health care.
[00:14:58]  Across every state, every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
[00:15:07]  No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
[00:15:11]  They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
[00:15:16]  Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
[00:15:28]  Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
[00:15:35]  Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
[00:15:38]  They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
[00:15:41]  But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
[00:15:44]  Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
[00:15:49]  Don't cut rural health care.
[00:15:53]  Greg Kelly here.
[00:15:54]  Donate Now to ToysforTots.org, working year-round, delivering hope to children at Christmastime and beyond.
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[00:16:06]  Donate Now, please.
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[00:16:21]  That's toysfortots.org.
[00:16:25]  The Stone Zone.
[00:16:27]  Entertaining and Informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:16:32]  You know, I have to say, in all my years in American politics, I've never seen a political misstep than that by Governor Gavin Newsom, who appears before a group of African Americans and says, I can identify with you because I have very low test scores.
[00:16:48]  I'm dumb and I can't really read, which is an outrageously racist, pandering thing to say.
[00:16:56]  But even worse than that, of course, is his disastrous record in California.
[00:17:02]  California, which has a horrific homeless problem, has horrific crime rates, has horrific tax rates, where the cities have become outdoor sewers for those who are drug addicted and the homeless.
[00:17:20]  And the environmental regulation doesn't allow the state to survive.
[00:17:25]  The taxes are off the charts.
[00:17:28]  So I guess he would run for president like Mike Dukakis.
[00:17:32]  He'll do for America what he did for California.
[00:17:35]  That would be the end of his candidacy.
[00:17:36]  And of course, there are millions of dollars disappearing.
[00:17:40]  One of my oldest friends out there told me that millions would disappear from homeless programs and other programs, and millions and millions of dollars are missing.
[00:17:56]  So I think AOC is now moving very quickly, ramping up the pressure on her to jump into the contest.
[00:18:05]  She sees her and many others on the left see her as the rightful successor to Bernie Sanders.
[00:18:12]  She's speaking to media outlets.
[00:18:15]  She could, according to credible sources, land among the top five Democratic tenders.
[00:18:21]  She could raise $100 million online almost immediately without any of the traditional fundraising events.
[00:18:30]  It's the fact that she demonstrated her incoherence in her speech in Munich.
[00:18:37]  It was literally incoherent.
[00:18:41]  But she makes one hell of a martini from what I've heard.
[00:18:44]  Anyway, supporters want her campaign to center on sweeping federal programs like government-rent health care and the support of Palestinians, which is going to be a hot button in their primaries, and some candidate will benefit from it, most likely her.
[00:19:01]  Some on the left say she's positioned herself for a win-win, meaning she could run for president, build that machinery, but then pivot to challenge Chuck Schumer for the leadership.
[00:19:14]  I think that I hear that option is very, very much on the table.
[00:19:18]  He's viewed in the Democratic Party as too accommodationist of the old ways, too much beholden to big business interests and his are limited.
[00:19:29]  AOC takes him out in a primary.
[00:19:31]  You're listening to the Stone Zone will be right more with Inside Scoop.
[00:19:40]  The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:19:46]  We were talking about AOC.
[00:19:49]  I just point out that the New York Congressman closed 2025 over $13 million sitting in her campaign coffers after investing very heavily in low-dollar, multiple donor, social media driven grassroots fundraising.
[00:20:04]  But she's also backing left-wing candidates herself in upcoming midterm races.
[00:20:09]  Remember, her husband is, of course, a political consultant.
[00:20:14]  So she's involved in contests in Michigan, hoping that a stronger socialist wing emerges nationwide.
[00:20:21]  Her growing national profile includes the fact that she has had many, many joint appearances with that old socialist, Bernie Sanders.
[00:20:30]  You know, it's funny.
[00:20:31]  Bernie, who I really think is a blowhoward and a loudmouth, and now I think he's a hypocrite because he used to attack the millionaires and the billionaires.
[00:20:40]  Now he only attacks the billionaires, but that's because Bernie and his wife, I think quite legally, but I'm not sure ethically, took enormous media placement fees from Bernie's extremely well grassroots-funded two presidential campaigns, and they became a millionaire.
[00:20:58]  So Bernie is driving a top-of-the-line Mercedes.
[00:21:02]  He has three homes, including one in Washington, one in Vermont, and one, I believe, in a ski resort.
[00:21:11]  But so it's kind of socialism for thee, but not for me.
[00:21:18]  But my sources tell me the AOC has expressed some hesitation about running president, but others suggesting that she, because her age, time may not be right.
[00:21:30]  But Sanders himself keeps praising her.
[00:21:33]  I noticed that he stopped short of a formal endorsement, but you don't do joint events if you're not trying to pass the baton.
[00:21:40]  That's what I say as someone who's been in this business a long time.
[00:21:46]  Republicans who take her candidacy laughable should not take her lightly because the far-left socialist wing of the party can be extraordinarily formidable when that power is harnessed.
[00:21:58]  We saw that the rise of Zoran Mamdami, who is dabbling in foreign affairs when he should be trying to figure out how to collect the garbage and clean snow off the streets.
[00:22:09]  The only sure way to thwart these leftists, I think, is doubling down on the president's agenda, and that starts by putting as many America first candidates on the ballot during the midterms as possible.
[00:22:21]  These upcoming 2026 Republican primaries are going to be extraordinarily important, which is why one of the things I'm involved in is a Flynn PAC, General Flynn's PAC, to try to support men and women who have a good chance to win in intra-party contests.
[00:22:39]  Joe Biden, shockingly, back in the news, I've read multiple credible reports that his friends are worried that his cancer has spread to his bones.
[00:22:50]  People I know who have seen him tell me he looks particularly frail.
[00:22:54]  But the former president resurfaced this past Friday in South Carolina at a Democrat Party event.
[00:22:59]  He kind of mumbled the speech, but it was much of it was ununderstandable.
[00:23:05]  It seemed like half-baked campaign rhetoric.
[00:23:08]  Speaking in Columbia, Biden actually accused Donald Trump of trying to steal an election ahead of the 2026 midterms, which is, of course, laughable, months before a single vote has even been cast.
[00:23:22]  His claim centers on Republican-backed election integrity proposals.
[00:23:26]  You see, Biden is opposed to the SAVE Act.
[00:23:29]  He calls it a barrier to voters.
[00:23:31]  The Democrats insist that this is somehow voter suppressive or unfair or racist when there's no evidence to prove that.
[00:23:41]  In fact, the polling shows a very different story.
[00:23:43]  Poll after poll consistently shows an overwhelming public support for voter ID.
[00:23:49]  Roughly four in five Americans, including majorities of Democrats and minority voters, say so.
[00:23:56]  And these are in CNN's polls.
[00:23:58]  It's in their own polling.
[00:24:01]  So even the folks at CNN, and look, I don't get my news from CNN for the same reason I don't drink out of the toilet.
[00:24:08]  But in other words, according to CNN, Biden's own party backs President Trump's alleged election theft.
[00:24:17]  That's in their polling.
[00:24:18]  Former president also defended in his mumbled remarks his immigration record, claiming broadcourt crossings were lower than when he left office when he entered, which is laughably false.
[00:24:30]  It was on his watch that some 36 million illegals entered the country.
[00:24:36]  People, do they?
[00:24:37]  I don't know that people need to be reminded, but the Biden-White House insisted repeatedly that they needed new legislation or new authority to seal our southern border.
[00:24:46]  And Trump and the Republicans argued from the beginning that the laws necessary were already on the books.
[00:24:51]  They simply needed to be forced.
[00:24:54]  And then, of course, Senator Lankford, a rhino from Oklahoma, came along with their fix bill.
[00:25:01]  If you read the small print, grandfathered two million illegals a year with the wave of a baton, and the president wisely said no.
[00:25:16]  So to try to make these claims is really evicted of the fact that we're really talking in this case about, let's just say, a jello-brained imbecile.
[00:25:29]  I mean, this guy was a diaper-wearing vegetable in and out of Lucina.
[00:25:37]  I think it many times, according to many Democrats I know and written reports, deeply medicated, it's not clear who's operating the autopen, who's making the decision to pardon murderers and drug dealers and rapists and child pornographers and violent criminals.
[00:25:59]  Who's making those decisions?
[00:26:02]  We to this day don't know.
[00:26:04]  It's also clear to me that despite the fact that it's abundantly clear based on the House Oversight Committee's excellent work that Joe Biden and his family enterprises, including his son and his brother, once Joe realized particularly that Hillary, not he was going to be the nominee, started taking multi-million dollar payments from Russian interests, Chinese interests, Ukrainian interests, Romanian interests,
[00:26:35]  Russian interests, all of which they appear that they will do with impunity.
[00:26:40]  There'll be no, this is at a time when Joe's actions would not be protected by the Constitution because it was during the time he was vice president.
[00:26:49]  But from what they tell me, I think the Grim Reaper may sadly get to Joe Biden.
[00:26:57]  This idea, I think it was Lindsey Graham who once said, you've got to say one thing for Joe Biden, sure he is a nice guy.
[00:27:06]  Nobody I know who knows Joe Biden, including Democrats who served in the U.S. Senate with him, but who are friends of mine, would describe him as a nice guy.
[00:27:14]  They would all describe him as somewhat of a sanctimonious, well, it's a family show, but and a guy who would do nothing for you as a fellow senator unless there was a fundraiser or some quid pro quo to his benefit.
[00:27:30]  He always kind of saw himself as a Kennedy.
[00:27:34]  He had been elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, despite the fact that Nixon was carrying Delaware by a landslide.
[00:27:42]  He was at 29 years old, the surprise winner over veteran senator Caleb Boggs, one of the most respected members of the U.S. Senate.
[00:27:51]  Boggs had grown old and Biden had outworked him.
[00:27:55]  And then, of course, Biden's wife was tragically killed and several children, as I recall, tragically killed in a car accident very briefly after his election.
[00:28:09]  He would then, for the rest of his career, blame the driver of a tractor trailer for being drunk on the job, which the investigation never proved.
[00:28:21]  This was just an accident.
[00:28:22]  It was not caused by any impairment, but he destroyed that poor guy's life.
[00:28:28]  And the Bidens are very well known in Delaware for not paying their bills, not paying grocers or hairdressers or landscapers or fence builders or dentists or doctors.
[00:28:44]  They kind of thought that they were Bidens and they were just extraordinarily entitled.
[00:28:50]  And now you see the left screaming that Trump is covering up for pedophiles.
[00:28:58]  Trump rapes children, all of which is ludicrous since he's the guy who turned Epstein in.
[00:29:04]  But they ignore the creepy behavior of Joe Biden, a lot of it in public, but much of it detailed in such detail in his daughter's diary that the FBI conducts an illegal raid on James O'Keefe to try to get a diary, which O'Keefe has no intention of even publishing, but has acquired quite legally.

=== FBI Spies on Wiles (08:19) ===

[00:29:27]  This is almost as chilling as the news this week that the Biden administration FBI actually spied on, surveilled a telephone conversation between President Donald Trump's then co-campaign chairman, but really the de facto head of his campaign, Susie Wiles, now the first woman chief of staff to the president and a longtime friend of mine.
[00:29:56]  But he also was very, they also spied on a phone conversation.
[00:30:04]  This was a conversation from Wiles and her attorney, which they, I would say, eavesdropped on.
[00:30:10]  The FBI source said that this was done with the attorney's acquiescence and approval.
[00:30:16]  The attorney has said through spokesman that that is false, that that would be unethical, that he never agreed to anything of the kind.
[00:30:24]  This is very chilling.
[00:30:26]  They also evidently surveilled communications from Kash Patel, who was a private citizen in that same period.
[00:30:38]  This interests me because it's in that period that the FBI approached my attorney to tell me, this was reported at the time, that my email had been penetrated, had been compromised.
[00:30:52]  And it was particularly my communications with Susie Wiles and I guess others in the Trump orbit, which are extraordinarily limited because it's not my choice of communication, but that had all been compromised.
[00:31:07]  And I was told it was done by the Iranian Republican Guard, specifically, by the helpful FBI agents.
[00:31:15]  I wondered at the time whether it was Iran or whether it was a rogue element under Joe Biden in our own FBI who had gotten, in this case, I don't think they learned anything of great import, but they ultimately, my three working email accounts at the time, the FBI told us that they had penetrated two of them.
[00:31:38]  They specifically said that they were done for the purpose of sending outbound emails with phishing links in them to people of importance in the hope that they would open on it and they could then get access to their computers.
[00:31:56]  The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
[00:32:04]  I saw today how independent journalist Nick Shirley, the guy who gained national attention after blowing the lid off the extensive Somali fraud scandal in Minneapolis, says he's now found what he believes is a voter registration loophole while visiting the San Diego County Elections Office.
[00:32:23]  This is not surprising to me.
[00:32:24]  I think voter fraud is very widespread in California.
[00:32:28]  This is a state, of course, where governors can be removed.
[00:32:32]  Gray Davis was famously removed in a referendum creating a new election, which was won by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
[00:32:40]  But when I saw that a referendum got on the ballot to remove Gavin Newsom and that it failed in every single county in California, including some counties so right-wing that they have overwhelmingly passed resolutions to secede from the state of California, I knew something was afoot.
[00:33:01]  In this case, Nick Shirley said that on his podcast that voters in San Diego don't necessarily need a photo ID to register.
[00:33:11]  They only need a signed affidavit affirming that they're telling the truth.
[00:33:16]  So when he asked whether someone could falsely sign another person's name and vote, the Board of Elections employed knowledge that would require lying, but said that people just didn't believe that people would abuse the system.
[00:33:29]  Shirley himself points out that this assumption exposes the very weaknesses, a system built on trust rather than actual hard verification.
[00:33:39]  This is the argument for the Save America Act.
[00:33:43]  You know, whether it is a birth certificate, whether it is a passport, or whether it is some, and driver license is, I think, quite manipulable.
[00:33:52]  So I'm not sure that's the idea that I would prefer.
[00:33:57]  Certainly, those signed up for Real ID, a program that I'm not all that fond of, but one that ultimately will be required before one can get on a plane or check into a hotel or do anything.
[00:34:09]  So I really like the idea of a government having a central data base on every American.
[00:34:16]  I understand the arguments that it helps cut down on welfare fraud.
[00:34:20]  It helps cut down on illegal voting, but I think it is too ripe for abuse.
[00:34:28]  And I have opposed the advocacy of it.
[00:34:31]  Some form of ID, California, the idea that California, even with its weakened Republican Party, there's no way that Gavin Newsom won that recall.
[00:34:47]  But Newsom, in my view, here has made the largest single mistake I've seen in politics, as I say earlier.
[00:34:52]  I mean, just the pandering, saying to a minority audience, I'm stupid, makes an assumption that they're stupid, that they have low scores, that they can't read, which is insulting and untrue.
[00:35:05]  Will it end his candidacy?
[00:35:06]  I mean, he's a Getty.
[00:35:10]  He has unlimited access to resources.
[00:35:14]  He has great hair.
[00:35:15]  And he has a glib manner.
[00:35:18]  I think lately he's been coming across as way too hot and I think hitting Trump too personally and too hard.
[00:35:25]  But that's kind of just an old prose look at it, kind of an old warhorse's look at it.
[00:35:32]  But I think he will be formidable.
[00:35:35]  He needs Kamala not to run because they, from terms of resources, funds, and people, they very much pull from the exact same base of California.
[00:35:46]  Kamala this week announced that she might run, meaning she made no announcement at all.
[00:35:50]  That's always been clear.
[00:35:51]  I do think she dodged her bullet by not running for governor of California.
[00:35:55]  She could have easily won that primary.
[00:35:57]  She could easily have been elected governor of the Golden State.
[00:36:01]  She wisely sidestepped that.
[00:36:03]  It was a mistake when Nixon did it in 1962.
[00:36:06]  It would have been a mistake for her now.
[00:36:08]  Because of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on her campaign, her poll numbers among the radical left Democrats are still very, very strong.
[00:36:17]  I guess they liked all that giggling and her making those word sallies that she pumped up and the fact that she looked like she was bombed half of the time.
[00:36:29]  But she would be formidable.
[00:36:31]  AORC cannot be underestimated.
[00:36:34]  J.B. Pritzker hanging in there at the polls around 1, 2, 3%, far less than he weighs.
[00:36:43]  This is a party with no bench whatsoever.
[00:36:49]  And they know it.
[00:36:52]  Meanwhile, the Republican Party has an extraordinary bench.
[00:36:54]  You've got J.D. Vince, you've got the superstar Marco Rubio, you have Director of National Intelligence, Tosi Gabbard, even CIA Director John Radcliffe, looks like he came from Central Casting.
[00:37:10]  He was a Texas congressman.
[00:37:12]  He could be a future president.
[00:37:14]  This is a team of all stars.
[00:37:17]  And that's the central difference, I think, between Trump in the first term and Trump in the second term.
[00:37:24]  Those years in the wilderness, he got a real understanding of the deep state and the lengths that they were willing to go to try to destroy him.
[00:37:32]  And what we got was a battle-hardened leader.
[00:37:36]  So thanks for joining us today in the Stone Zone.
[00:37:39]  Until we meet again, God bless you and Godspeed.

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