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This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
People love him and respect him.
Roger Stone.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
And I'm Jake Novette filling in for Roger Stone again this evening.
And I thought I was going to break in with some major breaking news, but I got to throw some cold water on what you may have heard in the last hour or so, or two or three hours or so.
We heard a number of reports that Kurdish ground fighters, thousands of them, have streamed over into Iran from Iraq and started a significant ground defensive in this war.
We've had a few things that have happened on the ground, and I'll talk about that a few minutes later into the show.
But this would have been a huge difference in the way that this war is being conducted, a huge new leg achieved there.
But now we are getting a lot of who I consider to be credible sources saying not so much.
That's the first story right now.
Could be true, obviously, still, but I am not willing to go and break the news and say this is happening and this is all changing now.
At some point, you do expect to see ground forces, and it would be the Kurds who have been involved inside of Iraq for a long time, but they would be the big players in all that.
But I think that right now we cannot say this is confirmed.
We'll find out more probably in the morning.
Second story, though, that is confirmed, that war powers resolution vote that Senator Tim Kaine and the Democrats were hoping to get passed today.
They were hoping to get a couple of rogue Republicans, wishy-washy Republicans to join them and to basically denounce with the vote.
It only would have been a denouncement.
It wouldn't have been anything to stop President Trump because it wouldn't have been veto-proof.
But the Democrats were hoping to get a big win over President Trump from a moral standpoint.
Well, they didn't get it.
They lost right along party lines.
There was one defector from each party, John Fetterman, as I'm sure you're not surprised, defected from the Democrats and voted with the Republicans on this.
Rand Paul, the Uber libertarian, although sometimes he's not an Uber libertarian, depends on the issue.
He defected from the Republicans and went to the Democrats.
So that didn't work.
And another story that, again, I'll be telling you more about later in the program, 2,500 layoffs at Morgan Stanley, a major layoff, despite the fact that Morgan Stanley had massive profits in 2025.
I'm going to tell you what's likely behind these big job cuts.
Also, at about 36 minutes after the hour, California Governor Gavin Newsom, presumptive Democrat candidate for president 2028, made a major, major turn in his campaign messaging and his overall image messaging just in the last 36 hours.
And you got to hear what he had to say.
And I want to analyze that as well.
But right now, let's get into, this is, we are in a rolling breaking news environment, folks.
If you're listening to talk shows or watching TV news shows right now where they immediately just start talking to people who don't really know about what the operations in an operational hot war is, you're wasting your time.
But I've decided to remedy that problem.
Joining us right now on the phone, Colonel Rob Manus, retired U.S. Air Force, a man who has extensive experience in these kinds of theaters and these kinds of situations.
And Colonel, thank you so much for joining us.
First of all, give me what your assessment is right now.
How has this been going from your standpoint, from what you've been able to observe?
I guess we're in day four or day five of Operation Epic Fury.
I think it's going exceptionally well based on the evidence.
It's as clear as the nose on an objective person's face.
Look, we spent the first 48 hours taking down the integrated air defense system, destroying their command, control, and communications and hitting the leadership targets and decapitating the regime.
That's what you do in the first phase of an air and naval campaign.
I forgot to mention, destroyed their Navy fleet.
We just had the first torpedo shot from an American attack submarine since World War II that sunk one of their most modern ships out about 1,100 miles off of Sri Lanka there, which is by Sri Lanka, which is about 1,100 miles from Diego Garcia, where that ship could have easily been going to try to attack the airbase there.
And other activities that we have going on there that are critical to this operation.
So from that perspective, it's going very well.
And how do I know that?
Well, I know that because we are now putting B-52s with loads of J-DAMs and B-1 bombers, neither one are stealthy bombers and they're high-value assets, deep into Iranian territory to go after the ballistic missile production and storage and launch creation capabilities.
And those targets are very far away from any nations that would be a threat.
So we're putting those assets in, and they are not stealthy assets.
So there is no integrated air defense system.
There's no command and control of communications.
They're not even shooting artillery rounds, anti-aircraft artillery rounds at these aircraft because they can't do it.
And their leadership had to admit that their military units are on last stand orders because they have no communications with them when they had to admit that when they had to apologize for sending missiles and drones at the Gulf Arab states and the other Arab states in the area.
So they're firing indiscriminately at pre-planned targets, which are civilian targets, intentionally targeting civilians.
So that's the situation the Iranians are in today.
And we continue to range this airspace and range this battlefield.
They no longer have a Navy fleet.
I haven't seen any of these so-called hypersonic anti-ship missiles yet.
Where are they?
I think that maybe they've been destroyed or at least damaged to the point where it's going to take a while to get them out because we haven't seen any of those.
And as each day has gone by, there have been less and less drone and ballistic missile firings.
Now they are trying to fire on things like energy targets.
I just heard some reporting about an energy target that they fired towards Turkey, fired missiles towards Turkey, that it's an energy supply that goes into Israel.
So they are still trying, but they are in really, really bad shape.
And the news of this Kurdish effort, it could be anything.
It could be the northern Iranian Kurdish party, the KDPI, which are nationalists too.
They're kind of center left and everything.
They're not Marxists, as I was accused of supporting Marxists when I said, hey, it's a good idea.
The Kurds are good fighters.
Well, that group may be trying to link up with the other resistance groups that have been in the country for a long time that have been active, but they don't have that many people or arms.
It would be good to see all these groups linked up together and start working together.
And it'd be great if the Pershmurg, Northern Iraqi Kurds were involved because they're exceptional fighters and very well equipped and very nationalist too.
But I haven't seen any direct evidence, like you said.
I mean, I've seen the reporting on Fox and stuff like that, but I haven't seen any direct evidence on it.
But I fully support it.
Yeah, yeah.
That's the kind of boots you need.
That's the kind of boots you need is Iranian boots backed up by some group like Kurds who are probably relatives with some of the Iranian Kurds.
That's right.
I mean, that's the kind of groups and unity you need in order to overthrow the IRGC.
The other thing that would be great about that is the IRGC ground forces are going to try to mass and attack that force.
And maybe that's the idea is to pull them out into the open so they'll mass and we will just obliterate them with our with our uh precision-guided uh munitions dispensers that are intended to go after tanks and armored personnel carriers and trucks and people.
Uh, we will just it would it would obliterate those guys.
Yeah, come out, come out wherever you are.
Colonel Rob Manis On IRGC Strategy00:03:12
Uh, you're listening to Colonel Rob Manis here.
Where you listen to Colonel Rob Manus here on the stones, and we're going to take a break in a second, but I just want to, for those of you who live in urban settings, I just want to give you a metaphor to help you understand what I thought was one of the most important things the Colonel just said about how we're now rolling out the B-52s.
They don't have stealth capacity if they're if they're like they cannot fly over a country where there's a decent amount of anti-aircraft facilities still available.
So it's kind of like putting back the fur coats on and turning around those diamond rings because now you're in a good neighborhood.
That's kind of what's going on here.
That's my best analogy.
For those of you who grew up in New York in the 70s and 80s, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
But we got to take a break.
We're going to come back with Colonel Manus and I want to talk for a second and get his assessment of something that you may think are two things that don't have anything to do with each other.
Why the year 1989 is playing a crucial, crucial role in this war?
No, it's not because that's when Taylor Swift was born.
We're going to be right back with the stone, with the stone zone.
This is the stone zone with Roger Stone.
He likes politics and he's a professional at the highest level.
Roger Stone.
Where's Roger?
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This is The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
Roger Stone, who's the very, very, one of the smartest political minds.
Roger Stone was persecuted.
People forget he's actually a brilliant, brilliant political analyst.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
Make no mistake when you are.
Oh, the great Kenny Lygans, 1981.
I thought this is it.
This is it.
When I saw those reports of the Kurdish army, Kurdish armed forces, militias marching into Iran, I was going to say, this is it.
We finally got this uprising on the ground in Iran.
Something we didn't see, by the way, when the Shah fell in 1979.
There was really not much of a conflagration at all.
But folks, as Colonel Rob Manus, who rejoins us now and I have said, there are enough doubts about these reports now that we got to hold off.
Could be true, could be true tomorrow, could be true in a couple of days, but trying to get all the accuracy that you deserve here on the stone zone.
I'm Jake Novak, filling in for Roger Stone.
At about 8.54 in this program, I'm going to tell you about the death of a great American today and why he was a great American.
And you'll hear about that.
Hey, Colonel Rob Manis is rejoining us.
He's U.S. Air Force retired, an expert on all these kinds of things.
You heard.
I hope you aren't just joining us.
If you are, that's great.
But I hope you were here just a few minutes ago to hear the Colonel's excellent assessment of everything going on.
I want to get his take on something.
Betting On Conflict00:14:20
I'm going to set it up, though, with this comment by Pete Hegseth about a major, major target that was taken down just the other day in Iran.
Listen to this.
The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed.
Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh.
Now, this is not a mission-accomplished situation.
This is simply a reality check.
The combination of U.S. and Israeli intelligence and combat power will control Iran and will control it soon.
Combination of U.S. and Israeli military and intelligence powers together.
And I can tell you, based on my own sources, the trigger person, because this was not a drone attack.
This was not an air raid.
This was somebody on the ground who took out this IRGC guy in close contact.
And my sources say this was a Mossad operative who did this.
And as we bring back Colonel Rob Manis here, I want everyone to understand about how the technological advances have made opportunities available to us now to get rid of this rogue regime, this very evil regime that weren't there in the past.
We've talked about, I've talked about for years about the F-35 Adir, which is the stealth jet that Lockheed Martin made, but the Israelis very quickly doubled its stealth capacity, which was a huge game changer in the Middle East.
And I also want to say something else.
1989, not the year that Taylor Swift, I understand Taylor Swift was born that year, but I'm not talking about that.
1989, the Iron Curtain truly opened.
Mikhail Gorbachev, he had sort of opened it up a crack in 88.
89, he opens it wide.
And a lot of really smart Russian engineers and software people leave.
Most of them come to places like the United States, but a lot went to Israel.
And you might have heard things about stereotypes of smart Jews.
There's smart Jews and then there's smart Russian Jews.
And these technological advancements that you see in Israel are largely due to that large emigration from Russia to Israel that started 37 years ago.
Colonel Manus, you've seen all these technological, amazing things that have happened.
Obviously, a lot of Americans involved too.
But without the technology, we can't do this, can we?
Oh, I mean, all you got to do is think back to Operation Grim Beaver to realize where we're at in technology and not just technology, but the professional military and intelligence planning and operations that goes with it.
The technology enables it, but it's the professionalism of the American and Israeli armed forces and intelligence operatives that below the political level, okay, that keep politics out of stuff and are just grunting out getting their jobs done that have made, I mean, this is amazing.
Look, I planned air operations and air campaigns against Iran when I was a captain in training, wargaming and exercises and those kind of things.
This is a massive target set, Jake.
I mean, you're talking about 20,000 plus targets that are known, that are known.
It's a massive set of geography that goes from sea level to the highest mountains.
And then you count all of the different groups that live in this country.
And then, of course, the Persians and these occupiers, I call them occupiers, the Islamic Nazis that are controlling the government and the IRGC and the Kuds force.
And you think about the success that we've had in four and a half days that they are completely overcome.
And when Secretary Hegseth was talking about we will control Iran, look, we control the airspace.
We control their communications.
We knew where this guy was enough to where a person, a human being that's armed could get close enough to him to kill him in the right amount of time and get away so that they could fight another day.
That is an incredible thing to see happening.
And soon the ground will be controlled just like the airspace is.
And we're on our way to doing that.
This is another good piece of evidence, factual evidence.
You don't have to have classified information to know how successful these operations are being.
And it's a combined operation between the Israeli Air Forces intelligence and American Air Forces intelligence and the Navy's, all of it together.
I keep referring it to combined because a lot of people don't think the Americans are in charge.
But you know what?
It's obvious that we are in a combined allied operation.
And now the Gulf Arab states have joined us too.
And Lebanon's getting in on the act.
I love what I'm seeing from the leadership of Lebanon going after Hezbollah.
And it's an incredible thing to watch these professionals get this job done.
And of course the technology enables it, but it's their professionalism and their training and their expertise that's really making it happen.
Yeah, I mean, like I say to the referee in a bad football game, when I'm looking at the people watching these mainstream media reports and even the folks on Fox, the first thing that comes to mind is you're missing a great game, folks.
You don't have to be a cheerleader.
We're not cheerleading here.
Colonel Manus and I are not cheerleading.
We're just stating objective facts about incredible technological and tactical advances that are going on before our eyes.
You're seeing the building of the pyramids.
You're seeing the building of the Grand Canyon.
The building of the Panama Canal.
Although I think the building of the Grand Canyon would be interesting too, but just kidding about that.
But I mean, this stuff is incredible, and you're missing out on it if all you're hearing is reports about political infighting, war resolution votes, doom and gloom stuff, and even some happy talk.
It's not based in what you should be impressed by.
Colonel Rob Manis, thank you so much for joining us for this first half hour.
Real expertise by a man who actually knows what he's talking about.
We're in a shooting war right now.
It's not time for all the other little sideshow stuff that's dominating everyone else's Iran coverage.
I'm Jake Novak in for Roger Stone.
This is the Stone Zone.
And come back.
I'm going to talk about what we've learned from these midterm elections and also what's the real stuff behind the whole Morgan Stanley layoff.
We'll be right back.
This is the Stone Zone.
Now, get him a zone.
It's the Stone Zone.
A man who's gone through hell, but he's kept going and he's smart and he's strong and people love him.
Not everybody, but people love him and respect him.
Roger Stone, where's Roger Stone?
Here's Roger Stone.
And I'm Jake Novak in for Roger Stone tonight on the Stone Zone.
Of course, the rolling breaking news is just where you are.
American troops are in a shooting war at the moment.
It's really tough to kind of pivot to other topics.
But then you got people like Gavin Newsom who make it easy for me because he decides on day three or day four of the war to make a major, major pivot in his messaging and his imaging.
Listen to what he says about why the United States is in this war right now.
And a lot of Democrats have looked at the Netanyahu regime and felt like, you know what, we don't like the trajectory he's on.
It's time to rethink the U.S. relationship with Israel, especially military support.
He's making that easy right now.
Let's talk about that.
But the issue of Bibi's interesting because he's got his own domestic issues.
He's trying to stay out of jail.
He's got an election coming up.
He's potentially on the ropes.
He's got folks, the hard line, that want to annex the West, the West Bank.
I mean, Freeman and others are talking about it appropriately, sort of an apartheid state.
They couldn't even, I mean, we're talking about regime change.
For two years, they haven't even been able to solve the Hamas question in Israel.
So this is, I mean, you know, I want to be careful here, but, you know, in so many ways, that influence in the context of the conversation of where Trump ultimately landed on this is pretty damn self-evident.
Yeah, except it's not self-evident because just about everything that Gavin Newsom said there is not true.
Bibi is not really that much in danger anymore of any kind of legal problems.
They're trying to, they've been trying to trump up, and I use that word on purpose, lawfare against Bibi for years.
Love or hate the guy.
They've basically been trying to put him in jail over accepting some cigars.
I mean, honestly, this is such a joke.
And that's one thing.
Then Newsom says he's got an election coming up.
There's always an election coming up in Israel, you moron.
Always.
And Bibi keeps winning him.
Love or hate him, he just keeps winning them.
And then this whole idea that they didn't solve the Hamas problem.
Hamas is pretty solved.
I mean, we keep knowing that they could rise up again and there could be some serious problems.
But have you seen a rocket fire from Gaza during any of these last few days, which was part of their standing orders if Israel and Iran ever got into a real shooting war?
No, you haven't.
I mean, the issue here, though, the big news, what is different is that Gavin Newsom uses words like apartheid, which is just, what an insult to the people who suffered under the real apartheid in South Africa to accuse Israel of that.
And everything else on down the line, here's what Gavin Newsom is doing.
So a bunch of people who think that they got the whole story are reporting that Gavin Newsom is now betting on an anti-Semitic wave within the Democratic Party to help him get over his two big problems.
What are Gavin Newsom's big two problems as a candidate, as a Democrat candidate for president?
Can you guess what those two things are?
He's white and he's a man.
That's a rough one for a party that keeps going to the left and keeps issuing even the white men within the party, people like Tim Walz, who can't say enough bad things about white men all the time, even though a lot of them are white men.
So people think that's the end of the story.
He's just trying to find some way to overcome his whiteness and the fact that he's a male by going far left and trying to get some of these Israel haters on his side.
That's what he's quote-unquote betting on.
No, that's not what he's betting on.
That's what he's doing right now.
What he's betting on is America losing the war.
Hundreds and thousands of American soldiers coming home in body bags.
That's what he's betting on.
What's the point of blaming Israel and the Jews for leading us into this war if we win it in a few weeks and we have very minimal casualties?
Then you look like an idiot.
Don't make no mistake, folks.
That's what he's betting on.
He's betting on and presumably hoping that we lose this war and that a lot of our people die.
I'm not being overly dramatic here.
I'm really not.
Wish I were, but I'm really not.
And shame on him.
Shame on him for that.
And by the way, it's not going to work.
It's not going to work.
Either he's going to be successful in these primaries based on who he is or he's not.
And it's a long way to go.
And by the way, it's only 2026 and we're only in the third month.
This is not the time to be the frontrunner for any presidential election, no matter what party you're in.
You don't want to be the frontrunner now.
You don't want to be the frontrunner a year from now.
You don't want to be the frontrunner a year and a half from now.
The earliest you want to be the frontrunner is about two years from now.
You don't want to be a frontrunner anytime before March or so of the actual election year.
You don't believe me?
Look up the history of all the frontrunners.
Paul Tsangas, Howard Dean, George Bush, the original George Bush, and on and on down the line.
You don't want to be an early frontrunner in the presidential election.
You have a 100% chance of losing in that case, based on all the historical knowledge.
So it's just a stupid bet on his part, but don't be confused about what he's actually betting on.
Now, speaking of people who, I think, want America to lose this war, because as soon as the war started, he was immediately making statements against the United States.
While probably tens of thousands of New Yorkers are part of the fighting force, there are a lot of people from the Bronx and Staten Island and Queens and places, not just Manhattan, who are in our armed services, by the way.
And Mayor Mamdani immediately came out with a statement, a written statement, basically saying the U.S. is committing genocide.
He said killing civilians, which is just incredible for him to say that.
But he kind of changed his tune yesterday.
And here's what he had to say now about what's going on over there.
I've said before that the Iranian government has engaged in systematic repression of its own people, even killing thousands of Iranians who were seeking to express the most basic forms of dissent earlier this year.
It is a brutal government.
Oh, nice try, Mayor Mamdani.
It's just that I've been paying attention to you and your supposed, I've said that Iran is killed.
No, you didn't.
You made no independent statement about the tens of thousands of Iranians who were being killed in the protests.
You only did this.
And I know the exact date, so don't try to hide it.
On January 24th, you were asked in a news conference about what you thought about all the deaths of all the innocent protesters, the tens of thousands of them that the Iranian regime admitted.
The Iranian regime didn't say, oh, we didn't kill these people.
They said it.
They said we killed them.
Estimates of anywhere between 20,000, 30,000, and maybe even 100,000 people.
And they asked him, a reporter asked him, what do you say about that?
And all you said, Mayor Mamdani, is, well, I certainly don't support that.
No, you'd, so that's a condemnation?
That sounds like an abstention to me.
Midterm Elections Drama00:07:54
Nice try.
But can you imagine what the internal polling must have been for the Mamdani team, for him to make a 180 and claim that he had been condemning the Iranian regime?
There must have been some real stark numbers in there that didn't look too good for him, for him to change his tune about that.
So, my goodness.
Look, Mayor Mamdani is, in my opinion, a complete, you know, complete knafe.
He doesn't understand what he's talking about most of the time.
And that's true of a lot of politicians.
But to come out, again, this is something that I don't think he even considered.
Did he realize that there were likely tens of thousands of New York area people and maybe even tens of thousands of people just from the five boroughs in New York City?
Certainly more than a thousand.
I'd bet a lot of money on that.
Who are in harm's way right now.
And he's calling them civilian killers?
I mean, are we back to the era of Vietnam where we call our soldiers baby killers when we don't know what we're talking about?
That's what the kind of people, that's what immature people in colleges were doing 60 years ago.
And now we've got Mamdani doing the same thing.
What a shame.
What an absolute disgrace.
I do want to talk a little bit about the midterm elections.
Of course, Texas was the central playing ground, the central field in the playing field for the midterm elections yesterday, the midterm primaries.
And I want to talk about a couple of them, two of them, obviously the ones that I think most people are talking about.
The Texas Senate primaries that were both in the Republican and the Democratic Party.
Democratic primary was one.
And by the way, they were both close.
The Democratic primary was won by Steve Tallarico.
And sorry, James Tallarico.
James Tallarico, very, very close race against Jasmine Crockett.
And they're turning him into an absolute Jesus figure right now.
I'm actually looking in the corner of my eye on MS Now.
They've turned this guy into their great savior.
But it's not looking too good for them.
First of all, a Democrat hasn't won a senator, been a senator in Texas since Lloyd Benson.
Most of you probably don't even remember who that is.
Been a long time.
And every time they have a Senate election in Texas, the news media, especially the left-wing news media, absolutely tries to canonize the nominee, whether it's Betto O'Rourke, whether, I mean, I can give you a lot of names.
Most of them are not worth mentioning because you won't remember them.
And that'll tell you how great they ended up actually being.
But boy, the stuff that's come out about James Tallarico just in the last 24 hours.
Sound bites where he talks about how Jesus and the New Testament are very pro-abortion.
Okay.
Tweets where he talks about how, because it was still Twitter back then, tweets in May of 2020 where he talks about how white people can't get COVID, but we can spread the disease of hatred.
Really?
They can't get COVID?
Tell that to all the people who died of COVID, who were white.
I mean, the guy's bonkers.
And just another great white hope for the Democratic Party in Texas.
They do this every time.
They do this every time when there's a nominee, Senate, you know, someone wins the Democratic primary and they just think they're going to become the next senator.
Now, there was obviously a lot of drama on the Republican side.
Also, John Cornyn just barely in a really close race got came in first among three candidates.
He beats just barely Ken Paxton, the attorney general, but not by enough.
So there's going to be a runoff election.
And I think that almost everyone who voted for the third party candidates probably going to go to Ken Paxton.
So you got to say, Ken Paxton's probably the favorite to win that runoff election.
There were a lot of polls months ago that showed Paxton ahead by 20 points.
I mean, I never really quite believed them, but I did believe he's in the lead.
They got a third-party candidate there to muddy the waters in this first round.
In the second round, I'm putting my money on Paxton.
And of course, we have a lot of people, I think, rightfully saying this is an example of what happens when you have Republicans who are not really on board with their Trump agenda going up against capable Republicans who are.
If you have some kind of wacko who says he's more MAGA than the established candidate, it's not going to win.
But Ken Paxton has a long record in the state of Texas.
He's been attacked for a long time.
He's the attorney general for crying out loud.
And I think he's going to pull this one out.
I get the feeling that he's going to do that.
So that's what's going on in Texas.
You also have, sorry, one more race, the Steve Toth, who was, again, this is another example why people are basically making this conclusion.
Steve Toth defeating Dan Crenshaw, who was a media celebrity.
This is the guy who was on SNL, the guy with the eye patch, for those of you who don't know who he is.
The guy who distanced himself from Trump once in a while.
The guy who's on MS Now, not just SNL, but on all the mainstream media channels all the time, clearly trying to create a brand out of himself.
And, you know, it's hard to do that in Congress.
Not easy to do that.
You can sort of do it as a senator.
You can definitely do it as a governor.
But carving out some kind of personal brand for yourself when you're up for election every couple of years and you're going to get charged with not representing your district enough is dangerous territory.
And that's over and above not being on board with President Trump as much as some of the voters in that district wanted him to be.
So the writing was on the wall for Dan Crenshaw.
He'll try to, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised.
I'm sure he's running to all the media networks now to be a paid contributor, which is a great way to get really big money on the speaker circuit.
I don't know how much he's going to make.
The whole I'm a Republican who isn't always with Trump angle of the business world, I think has kind of been exhausted by now, hasn't it?
There's so many people who have just decided that this is their winning financial brand.
It sure as heck isn't a winning political brand.
It's not winning anyone any elections.
But that's what's going on with Dan Crenshaw.
I know there's a lot of people listening who really can't stand the guy.
I just think he made foolish choices from his own political standpoint.
And it's a big part of why I have always said the following: all political consultants are bad at what they do.
They're terrible.
They just don't do well.
If you think that they do well, because, well, they, you know, they win maybe 60% of their elections.
We are a split-down-middle country right now, folks.
Any idiot can go 50%, can go can have a 500-winning percentage in elections right now.
To have a little bit better than that is nothing to be proud of.
Political consultants, whoever sat down with Dan Crenshaw, gave him bad advice, and that doesn't surprise me in the least bit.
Now, I want to talk a little bit about these layoffs at Morgan Stanley real quickly because this is a big now.
You might think this is a CNBC story at Bloomberg story.
It's not.
It's not.
Of course, they'll report on it.
But 2,500 people getting laid off at Morgan Stanley, just blocks from where I'm speaking to you right now in Midtown Manhattan, despite the fact that Morgan Stanley had a blowout 2025.
I'm not talking about like juiced up numbers here.
They did really well in 2025, okay?
So why are they getting rid of all these people?
Well, it's got a lot to do with AI and mortgages.
AI is making, no matter how wealthy and in the green your company is, is making a lot of jobs redundant and unnecessary.
And in the good times and the bad times, they're going to cut these people.
That's what they do.
Cold, hard decisions.
But it also has something to do with mortgages.
A lot of these layoffs had to do with the mortgages division at Morgan Stanley.
And no, this isn't the big short kind of thing where they're expecting a big crash in mortgages.
No, what they're expecting is a political environment where big-time brokerage investment in mortgages and in housing is going to become very, very hostile.
President Trump has made it clear he wants to get Wall Street out of the big-time mortgage business and the home ownership business and make it a little bit less crowded so that prices can have some downward pressure.
And I think Morgan Stanley's seeing that writing on the wall and getting out while the getting's good.
All right, we come back.
Notre Dame's Legacy00:05:16
I'm Jake Novak in for Roger Stone on the Stone Zone.
We come back.
I want to talk about a really great American who passed away today and why he was a really great American and deserves a little bit of our respect today.
We'll be right back.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
He likes politics and he's a professional at the highest level.
Roger Stone.
Where's Roger?
Is the Stone Zone.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the Stone Zone.
A man who's gone through hell, but he's kept going and he's smart and he's strong and people love him.
Not everybody, but people love him and respect him.
Roger Stone, where's Roger Stone?
Here's Roger Stone.
We had one bedroom for my sister, myself, and my parents.
We had a half bath and a kitchen.
Seven and a half years we lived in that place.
There was no welfare.
There was no food stamps.
There was no safety net.
But I always had plenty to eat.
Because every time I asked for sections, my dad would say, no, you had plenty.
That is the great Lou Holtz who passed away today at the age of 89.
And a lot of people think, well, you know, Lou Holtz had a little bit of a mixed record as a head coach.
Obviously, he won a national championship at Notre Dame.
He had some success revitalizing the South Carolina program, but he was lousy in the NFL and he had some other.
Please.
First of all, let me tell you a little bit about his career at Notre Dame.
He took over Notre Dame at a time when that school's program was at an Adir.
Really, really suffering from a horrible, horrible string of losing seasons.
Jerry Faust, who was a good guy, but was a high school coach that they brought in to be the head coach at Notre Dame and was in the wrong element.
He really had to revitalize that program.
And it was not easy to do that back then.
That was before Notre Dame was getting involved with conferences and with the whole college football playoff thing, which has solved that problem for Notre Dame.
They were always an independent school, hard to recruit there.
Harder, I should say, than it was for earlier times in the history of that school.
And he really turned that program around.
And it's not easy to do that in college.
Very, very hard to do that.
And he turned the program around at South Carolina as well, turned it into a contending program after years of it being more abundant over there.
And he did that as well.
But more importantly, you heard in that speech, Lou Holtz grew up very, very poor in America.
And there are so many stories like that.
And we've become a country now where we're more interested in the continuing victimhood of people.
For so many people in America, being a victim is more important than being a hero.
Listen, we respect victims.
We want to help them if you're truly a victim.
I'm not talking about pretend victims.
But we don't want to make being a victim the best status that you have in our society.
For the left, it really is.
Victimhood is the thing that they search for more than anything else.
And Lou Holtz wasn't, I wouldn't call him a victim for growing up in the poverty that he just described.
But my goodness, he picked himself up from very, very humble beginnings and made himself a big success.
Now, he turned out to become a very big supporter of President Trump.
You know, there were two college sports legends of coaching who became big supporters of President Trump.
One was Bobby Knight, who also has passed away years ago.
The other is Lou Holtz.
Bobby Knight, definitely a more problematic figure.
Lou Holtz, much more beloved by America.
But Lou Holtz's support of Donald Trump absolutely cost him.
It cost him some support.
It cost him some speaking engagements.
It cost him some endorsements.
You better believe it did.
But he spoke out for what he believed in.
Again, you can disagree.
You don't have to like President Trump.
You don't have to like Lou Holtz.
But Lou Holtz was someone who learned from his failures.
Yes, he was terrible as a coach of the New York Jets.
But have you seen who was on the roster of the New York Jets back then?
I mean, honestly, it's amazing.
It's amazing they actually came out after halftime.
Forget about winning or losing games.
They were losing by so much at the halftime.
The fact that they came back onto the field and continued to play is a moral victory, in my opinion, for those of you who have long New York Jets history memories.
But Lou Holtz, dead today, an amazing American life, a unique American life, and someone who really does deserve all the accolades that you hear.
It wasn't so easy as we leave with the Notre Dame fight song.
Wasn't easy as you think to win at Notre Dame back in the late 80s, early 90s, believe it or not.
I'm Jake Novak.
I was in for Roger Stone here on the Stone Zone.
Thank you so much for listening.
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