Jake Novak fills in for Roger Stone on April 17, 2026, debunking false claims of a $20 billion uranium deal with Iran as a psychological operation while noting S&P 500 and NASDAQ all-time highs erased war losses. He clarifies Tyler Robinson shot Charlie Kirk, refuting foreign conspiracy theories, and details Education Secretary Linda McMahon's threat of federal investigations against Maine Governor Janet Mills for allowing biological males in girls' sports. Ultimately, the episode frames current geopolitical chaos and domestic policy conflicts as deliberate narratives designed to destabilize both international regimes and American social norms. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Uranium Deal Agreement00:15:17
This is Roger Stone for American Sovereign Bullion.
Since 2020, the US dollar has lost over 20% of its purchasing power.
Meanwhile, gold continues to rise.
Call 844-272-2428 or go to ASBGold.com now to get your free gold and silver guide and learn how to protect your wealth with physical gold and silver delivered to your door or held in a gold IRA today.
So go to ASBGold.com now.
Don't wait for the markets to drop.
That's ASBGold.com.
The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
And I'm Jake Novak, filling in for Roger Stone again this evening.
And I want you to remember this date.
Write it down, circle it if you have a calendar, whatever electronic device you have, if there's something you can use to highlight.
April 17th, 2026, may be, in all seriousness, one of the greatest days in American history, world history, because we are seeing now, I believe, to be a very peaceful moment.
Being used to undermine what's left of the Iranian regime and maybe, maybe completely unravel many, many decades of bad stuff going on in that region.
Now, I want to give you a little bit of a taste of what reportedly is going on.
A lot of this coming from credible sources that have never let me down, at least not since this war started several weeks ago.
But I want to let you know what's going on right now with Iran, with President Trump, and with the news media, because all three of those entities are playing an important role in what, again, I believe is a red letter in a good way.
Red letter day for American history.
Now, over the course of the last 12 hours or so, really less, President Trump's been making a lot of statements about Iran and what this, whatever's left of this regime, has agreed to do.
They include handing over what's left of their uranium, very well enriched uranium known as nuclear dust.
President Trump claiming no money is changing hands over this, but the left wing news media reporting that.
The United States has agreed to hand over $20 billion for that uranium.
There's no proof of that.
But that has been emerging in a number of reports and a lot of left wing news media outlets doing a little neutron dance, getting all excited about how, well, Obama didn't give them that much money and Trump's been so angry about the money that Obama and Biden gave them.
Ha, But you have to understand those news reports are playing a very, very important role in what's going on in Iran right now.
Because President Trump has done two things now.
And his helpers have done two things right now that are causing absolute chaos in Iran.
Again, according to many sources, among what's left of the regime.
Now, as for these reports that Iran has agreed to hand over the uranium, President Trump's also claimed that Iran has promised never to close the Straits of Hormuz again.
He said that Iran has promised to stop funding Hamas and Hezbollah.
It's starting to get to turn to what looks like a wish list of things that we've always wanted, decent people have always wanted.
Well before this war started, forget that.
These are things that people like me have been calling for and hoping for for 30 years.
And it's very likely that no one has actually agreed to this and what's left in the Iranian regime.
So why is President Trump saying it?
Is it just his usual boasting?
Again, according to many sources that I have found to be credible over a long time, not just since this war started, this was all deliberate.
What's left of the Iranian regime is now at each other's throats trying to find out who made these deals with President Trump.
And the money part of it also.
Some of them are saying, wait a minute, who agreed to take the money?
Now, I don't care what Your title is as a journalist.
If you were stupid enough to write a story that President Trump's handing over $20 billion and you figure, like, well, he's just being a hypocrite, all right, maybe you think President Trump's a hypocrite, but I have a question for you, Mr. Journalist and Ms. Journalist.
Who the hell is he giving that money to exactly?
And how the money is going to get there?
I mean, can you just think for a second?
There's no money going to Iran and it ain't $20 billion.
And if there's money that's going to go somewhere into that country, it's going to be well after that regime is gone.
Maybe to help rebuild an international effort.
Who knows?
But that's not happening right now.
What's happening right now is a major confusion operation, and we are hearing reports that there's even murderous activity among what's left of the leadership right now as they are accusing each other of making deals with President Trump, with holding off, holding back, holding out on the rest of them on the money that they supposedly got, and it's absolute chaos.
Oh, I just love it.
Talk about a PSYOP.
And I want to thank the left wing news media, the Trump hating news media, for playing this important role in this deception campaign.
The Iranian regime, again, what's left of it, and the sort of head honcho is this Mohammed Ghalabaf, the Speaker of the Parliament, who was the guy who represented Iran at the peace talks last weekend in Pakistan.
He's all over the place today, apparently, trying to figure out he's denying all the things that Trump has said, but he's not denying it to bash Trump, he's denying it to save his own hide.
Oh, this is a lovely situation, isn't it?
I'm really kind of enjoying it.
But just in case you're fixated, you think that it's true that the Trump administration is going to hand over $20 billion?
Where?
Where are they handing it over to?
Who's taking the money?
Are they going to put it in a bank somewhere?
I mean, it's such a ludicrous claim.
I feel sorry for people who believe it.
I understand why you want to believe it, because you want to believe that Trump just does everything wrong.
Which is a stupid assumption to make.
I mean, look, I don't understand how we're still at this point, 11 years after he started running for president almost, and you're still believing every crazy story about him on its face, every single time.
But I had a little fantasy of my own, speaking of the things going on in the Iranian heads.
Let's say the United States had at least agreed, basically, maybe on paper or just in a verbal agreement, to hand over $20 billion.
I'd like to play this scene from the wonderfully historically accurate Star Trek II when William Shatner, Captain Kirk, quote unquote, hands over something to the enemy.
Listen to this.
Khan, how do we know you'll keep your word?
Well, I've given you no word.
Keep it.
In my judgment, you simply have no alternative.
I see your point.
Stand by to receive our transmission.
Yeah, stand by, Uran.
Here it comes.
Soon, lock the phasers on target and await my command.
Phasers locked.
Time's up.
Here it comes.
Now, sir.
Sir, our shields are dropping.
Raise them!
I can't!
Where's the override?
The override!
There's no override, Mr. Speaker.
Fire!
Yeah, that's the transmission.
There's no $20 billion coming.
If there's any incoming from the United States, it's going to be more ordinance, but maybe it won't be necessary.
The chaos on the bridge of Khan's ship is very similar to the chaos going on in Iran right now.
You can bet on that, my friends.
Again, this is not a cheerlead Trump, he's always right kind of segment.
I'm just making it clear.
Stop believing every single crazy conspiracy theory.
It's not really a conspiracy theory.
That's really too high a categorization for what these reports are about the U.S. handing them $20 billion.
It just defies logic.
It's like saying President Trump stole a million trillion dollars.
There's no such thing.
There's no one to hand the money over to.
Who would the agreement have been made with?
We're not in direct talks with them right now.
The blockade is still in place.
The Iranians have ordered the straits open.
No more attacking the ships.
I mean, really, try to just be a little bit logical for a second and remove your hate.
Hate makes you stupid, by the way.
People who are consumed with hate.
Start to lose their ability to be logical and to reason normally.
That's why, as much as I can't stand so many people in politics and so many people, some of them my former colleagues in the news media, I don't fixate on them.
I was very disappointed in just about every policy that Barack Obama implemented as president.
I can think of a couple that I liked the surge in Afghanistan, but I didn't go to sleep every night obsessing about the man.
I didn't think about him all that much.
I really didn't.
Now, that just wasn't just for my mental health.
That was for my professional ability to continue to analyze events in both politics and economics and in our culture.
I didn't go to bed worrying that he was going to ruin my life.
We have millions and millions of Americans who do that every night with Donald Trump and have been doing it for going on 11 years.
These people are sick, and I don't know what the solution is for them.
I don't know what the cure is for them because.
In my experience since then with the mental health care profession in this country, most of the mental health care professionals in this country are similarly afflicted with Trump derangement syndrome.
Almost all of them.
Almost all of them.
So a lot of good they'll do.
This is a potentially wonderful day for America and the world.
The Iranian regime is turning on itself, according to many reports, based on all these boasts from President Trump, and it's all deliberate.
It's all deliberate.
And we could see a very interesting result over the next couple of days without us having to fire another shot, without Israel having to fire another shot.
And wouldn't that be lovely?
All right, I'm Jake Novak, feeling in for Roger Stone this evening.
We've got a lot more to talk about.
And by the way, I want to take your calls in the last half hour.
The number is 800 848 9222 on this Friday night.
Again, April 17th, 2026.
Could be one of the great days in American history.
And maybe you missed it if we didn't talk about it tonight.
We'll be right back.
The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
And I'm Jake Novak filling in again for Roger Stone.
As I said at the top of the program, this day, April 17th, 2026, it'll probably bleed over until tomorrow, April 18th.
But tonight is April 17th.
This could be really one of the great days in American history, a day where an enemy already deeply wounded by American and Israeli strikes turned on itself based on just a few comments from President Trump.
And for those of you who think that can't happen, just take a look at how much President Trump turns and twists the left in this country into knots on things he just says and how crazy they go over things he says.
And it isn't just, unfortunately, turning on themselves when President Trump says things, they turn on the rest of us sometimes.
A lot of us are really convinced that they opened the borders when President Trump left office in 2021, that they opened the borders simply because they knew this would hurt and anger President Trump and his supporters.
Even though it also took the country down almost, it certainly hurt us a lot.
But let's talk about the positive.
President Trump made a number of statements today that have confused and angered and caused homicidal activities, apparently, among what's left of the Iranian regime.
Some of them believe that there was a $20 billion agreement between the United States and Iran to hand over the uranium.
No such agreement was made, by the way, despite what you read in the Daily Beast or some other crazy left wing publication.
There's a couple of Iranian leaders in the regime who want some of that money that they think is real.
President Trump said that Iran has agreed to stop funding Hamas and Hezbollah, leading some of their leading advocates within the regime wondering what the heck happened and threatening to kill anyone who made that deal.
President Trump said that Iran has promised never to close the Strait of Hormuz again, leading to all more confusion, finger pointing, anger, and just an absolute scurrying of the rats.
In the Iranian regime, who spent apparently all their time today jitting up a phony demonstration.
They got a bunch of Iranian women to come out and pretend like they support the regime.
They probably have all their husbands and loved ones in a prison somewhere where they paid them off or just threatened to kill them.
It was also a really great day, April 17th, this day, because of what happened on Wall Street.
Really nice day on Wall Street.
Again, more all time highs for the SP 500 and the NASDAQ.
And the SP 500 is really the index that you need to pay attention to.
That's the broader index.
It's 500 because it's 500 stocks that are in that index.
When it goes up, that means really stocks in general are going up.
Some of the other indices, even the Dow and even the NASDAQ, which have a lot of stocks, and then the Dow has 30.
NASDAQ, you know, it's basically 100 stocks.
Doesn't matter.
It's not as broad based as the SP 500.
But of course, Those indices are up too.
The Dow was up 869 points today.
The NASDAQ was up 366 points today.
Major rallies for all three.
The NASDAQ and the SP at all time highs.
The Dow Jones now just about 1,000 points off its all time high.
But really, on a percentage basis, not much here.
We're talking about just over 2% away from its all time high.
And all time highs, again, on the more important SP 500.
So the losses from the Iran war.
Have been erased in the stock market.
Now, again, that doesn't mean the Iran war is good.
That doesn't mean everything is great and on and on down the line, although I do believe that the decision to go to war with Iran was correct and a good decision.
A lot of people don't believe that.
I'm not going to win an argument over with them, even if they're being intellectually honest, simply by pointing to the stock market.
But, my friends, please, a huge part of the left wing and Democrat Party pushback on the Iran war has been this economic complaint.
They all made videos this week.
They waited too long.
They should have done it.
Two weeks ago.
You got a Kamala Harris video this week.
She's standing in front of a gas station where gas prices are still significantly less than they were when she was vice president.
She has the chutzpah, the gall to stand in front of a gas station where it's still cheaper than it was when she was vice president and say, look how bad it is with gas prices.
Hypocritical Narratives Exposed00:05:33
What an, I mean, it's just incredible what people will swallow from these folks.
And you got all kinds of Democrats talking about, oh, this is ruining the cost of living.
Mamdani, the mayor of New York, going on CBS Sunday, uh, Thursday morning's program, CBS morning.
I don't know what it's called.
It's always been the third place pathetic morning news program, so what does it matter?
They've had Gail King on there because she's friends with Oprah.
I mean, I don't know what they were expecting out of that program.
But Mom Dhani goes on that program and says, This war is costing us billions of dollars and we're killing thousands of civilians.
No, we're not.
Where's the thousands of civilians?
I mean, this has been the most incredibly low number of civilians killed considering the massive amount of bombing Iran has taken of all time.
They haven't even been able to parade out the phony civilian deaths that they always do, like in Gaza and stuff like that.
That's almost all phony, also.
Well, over 80% of the people who died in Gaza in the Israel Gaza war, Hamas war, were.
Hamas combatants of all ages and sizes.
And even Hamas now admits that in their own statistics.
But they haven't even bothered to parade out a lot of dead civilians in Iran because there aren't any.
There are some, but a ridiculously low number, thank you, and a happily low number.
But nobody questioned Zorhan Mamdani on the CBS Morning ridiculous pantomime show they have there with hostesses and hosts who don't know anything.
No one said, hey, wait a minute, wait a minute, where are the civilians who have been killed?
What are you talking about?
Where are the thousands?
What are you talking about, mayor?
He goes on there and says that.
The narrative's already been broken.
Gas prices have been falling for more than a week.
The national average gas price for a regular gallon of gas, according to AAA today, is $4.07.
That's down $0.09 from the high just eight or nine days ago.
No, it's not falling like a stone, but it's falling.
You lost your narrative.
You waited too long to make your videos, Kamala.
All right, I'm Jake Novak in for Roger Stone.
We're going to take some of your calls in the next half hour.
800 848 9222.
We'll be right back.
The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
When the United States of America took out Osama bin Laden, I didn't have one minute of thought thinking, oh no, this is going to help Barack Obama.
Who cares?
We got a really bad guy.
When President Biden was turning out failing in his dealings with the Taliban and just handing over them billions and billions of dollars worth of weapons, I wasn't thinking, well, great, fantastic.
It's going to be bad for him.
I mean, I just can you please grow up, Thomas Friedman, and all these other people who have admitted that they hate Trump so much and they hate Netanyahu so much, mostly due to their own delusions?
Neither Trump nor Netanyahu are saints, but I'm sorry, they're not felons.
Can you please stop with the felon stuff and even worse that they've been accused of?
I mean, really, you called Benjamin Netanyahu a felon because he got a box of cigars from somebody?
I mean, get over yourself.
You know, it's so interesting the people who continue to hate on Trump and hate on Netanyahu.
They have a similar MO, almost all of them, whether it's George Conway or Thomas Friedman, some other people I don't want to name, but let me just give you a little bit of a pointer, something that I've learned in my life.
The one thing that an arrogant man hates more than anything else, even more than someone who, God forbid, would murder his family, the one thing that an arrogant man hates more than anything else is another arrogant man.
They hate the fact that someone else has the gall to be arrogant when I'm the one who has the right to be arrogant.
They hate.
And so Netanyahu and Trump trigger a lot of arrogant guys.
And Thomas Friedman and George Conway, people like that, are arrogant SOBs.
And some of them have the right to be.
They've made a lot of money, they've created great businesses, they've done.
Okay.
I mean, all right.
But, you know, humility means if you don't have humility, you're never going to really succeed that much again.
And President Trump may not have a lot of ingrained humility right now that you know of, but people who know him, especially people who are in policy meetings with him, say he asks a lot of questions that an arrogant person who's always arrogant would never ask.
He'd just go ahead with what he wants to do.
And of course, he's president of the United States.
And being arrogant all the time and being president, actually, it works for you on a campaign trail, getting you the oomph to go out there and campaign.
But you're going to be humbled several times a day as president of the United States.
I'm just telling you that right now.
Or you'll be frustrated.
You're not going to get what you want like you were running your company.
And I'm sure President Trump has learned that now after almost six years of being president between his first and second term, at least five and a half, I guess.
Anyway, this is a red letter day in a good way for the United States.
It's been a fantastic day.
It looks like we are absolutely turning the Iranian regime into knots.
And I want to personally thank the Trump deranged left wing news media for helping in this deception campaign with all those reports that they were doing today.
Dancing in the streets about how I think it was so great that President Trump handed over $20 billion to Iran, according to them, because this proves that Obama wasn't so bad for handing over a lot less and what a hypocrite Trump is.
Ha ha ha.
It didn't happen.
And you know it didn't happen.
Can you just think for a second?
Where exactly would the money have gone?
In a hollow tree in some park in Tehran?
There's no one to give the money to.
Maine State Reaction00:11:55
Please, just think for one second, but I guess that's too much to ask.
I guess it's also too much to ask for some of these outrageous conspiracy theorists.
To think for a second, also.
Another interesting development, and I think this is also good for the health of the country.
If people report it, please report it.
If you see this and tell your friends about it, if you've been following all the conspiracy theories and the horrible smears coming out of the murder of Charlie Kirk, everything from blaming his own family for killing him, which I've seen, blaming Israel for it, all these crazy things, because that's what people do who are bad.
Bad people use these kinds of horrible events to try to make them worse and to capitalize on them via more division.
And stuff like that.
Well, good news for the decency in the world today.
Because here's what prosecutors told us about what happened in the Charlie Kirk shooting.
It turns out it's all caught on camera.
No, I know you've already seen the Charlie Kirk, the vantage point that just showed him and that horrific, his horrific death.
I'm talking about we have cameras of the shooter, Tyler Robinson.
Listen to this.
He then leaves the campus.
UVU surveillance then captures him, return later.
He returns on foot.
Right before the Charlie Kirk event, he's wearing a disguise of sorts.
He's wearing a baseball cap, a different baseball cap, pulled low.
He's got sunglasses on, a different shirt, different pants, the same converse shoes.
That's all seen in the surveillance.
He's limping because there's a rifle down his pants.
The surveillance captures this individual.
Again, I don't want to overstate the evidence because the pictures of his face at this time are not as definitive as they were earlier because of the sunglasses and the hat.
But it captures his face, captures his appearance, his height, his build, all consistent with how he looks earlier in the day and how he looks today in court.
You hear that, Candace?
And all you other divisive liars, people who are literally accusing Charlie Kirk's wife and family of killing him?
There was video of Tyler Robinson all along.
And like smart prosecutors, they held that close to the vest.
Now, obviously, there are some aspects of conspiracy theories out there that are true.
The reason why I hate them is because the people who promote them as conspiracy theories, as opposed to here's a historic event, here's something we, there's nothing you can do about it.
You ever notice that about conspiracy theories?
It's some unnamed bad guys out there who we can never stop, who can't really be, there's nothing we can do about it.
We can just be angry and sit and stew.
It's, it's poor, it's, it's porn.
It's like, it's like pessimist porn.
And I hate that.
It's a big reason why conspiracy theories shouldn't be listened to because there's never anything really to do.
And if they try to do something about it, it turns out to be phony.
But there you go.
All along, Tyler Robinson was caught on camera throughout a long period of that day.
Good night, Irene.
Your case is over.
Okay?
We got you on camera.
Stop with the conspiracy theories.
I guess you can still say, well, someone gave him the gun.
I mean, that.
You're going to tell me that some major power in the world trusted some strange, disturbed kid with no real experience to go shoot Charlie Kirk?
And really, Charlie Kirk was worth it as a target for you?
Really?
I mean, he was an amazing person making major impacts at universities, but I really don't think that a foreign country was really challenged by Charlie Kirk.
That was your target?
Again, just use your brain for a second.
Just like I asked you to use your brain with this ridiculous report that Trump's handing over $20 billion to Iran.
Can you just use your brain for a second?
That makes no sense.
It doesn't make sense.
Who's the money going to?
It doesn't make sense that Israel or China or even Russia or Iran would want to kill Charlie Kirk.
I mean, they don't like him, but I don't really think they know who he is.
He had a huge impact on young people in this country.
I really don't.
He was a really, I think, again, a person who continues to be smeared.
I got all kinds of people telling me he was a terrible racist because they listened to left wing liars about him, and that's sad.
Even in death, they're still smearing him.
Good person, compassionate person.
Understanding person.
But no foreign power was trying to kill him.
It was a disturbed, once again, a disturbed person with a gun, and we've got it on camera.
So, good night.
That's it.
If I were Tyler Robinson and his lawyers, I would consider a plea right now.
And stop wasting our money on all your nonsense.
Please.
Please.
I also want to say another reason why I think this was a good day in America because.
We're getting closer to the moment when we have a very organized and coordinated pushback on this absolute insanity of having biological males playing in girls' sports and biological males going in girls' locker rooms.
I have yet to find one person in America, and I meet a lot of people every day.
I've lived in a lot of places in this country, and I know a lot of leftists, real radical leftists, and yet none of them have told me that they support that idea.
None of them.
And a lot of them are gays and lesbians, and some, and even, I've heard, even there are even trans people like Caitlyn Jenner, the former Bruce Jenner, who don't approve of this either.
Well, today we started to hear one of the states that's been making a big deal out of this.
The state I used to live in, Maine, their Governor Janet Mills, who's decided to go to war with the Trump administration over precisely this issue.
I mean, you're going to tell me, and I used to live in Maine, so remember who you're talking to.
You're going to tell me that the people of Maine really want boys and girls' locker rooms and really want boys competing in girl sports and that there's a critical mass of voters who really want this?
Of course there aren't.
And you're going to tell me that this is the quote, right thing to do?
Why is it the right thing to do?
It makes no sense.
Well, here's Linda McMahon, our education secretary, explaining how the Trump administration is going to go after Maine for this.
Listen to this.
We want to make sure that if you open women's sports or intimate facilities to males, you expose yourself to federal rights, federal civil rights investigations.
Governor Mills will definitely get her wish.
We want to make sure.
There you go.
Again, I used to live in Maine.
It was a long time ago, about 30 years ago.
But let me tell you something.
I kept up with it, and I can tell you a couple of things about the state of Maine that really are important to understand.
Maine is a poor state.
It's got a lot of land, not a lot of people.
Financially, that state has been in arrears for a long time.
It's also a really aging state.
So when Olympia Snow, who used to be a senator from Maine, a Republican, was one of the people who caved and allowed Obamacare to happen.
It was pretty obvious to me why.
Because what Obamacare really was for the most part and is for the most part is an expansion of Medicaid.
That's all it is.
It isn't an expansion of insurance, really.
Insurance heck isn't an expansion of health care.
And I wasn't at some liberal news organization when Obamacare was being debated.
I was at Fox News.
I was at the Fox Business Network.
I was a founding producer at the Fox Business Network and a founding contributor to the economic reporting on Fox News.
And I pounded the table in our editorial meetings with the big bosses, and I said, Can we please stop calling Obamacare health care reform?
It's got nothing to do with health care, it's health insurance reform.
And they wouldn't do it.
Because for all the arguments and all the people who pull their hair out, and I'm mostly bald, who go all upset about, oh, Fox News is so conservative, it's all these conservative ideologues.
Well, to be an ideologue, you have to have ideas.
Most of the people I work with, either in left wing news organizations, like when I worked at CNN, and there were a lot of left wingers when I was at CNBC, I was executive producer at all these places, also in editorial columns.
Just about everywhere I've worked, whether they were a so called right wing network like Fox or a so called left wing network like CNN, I could count on one hand the people who had any ideology at all.
They had no beliefs in anything.
None.
There's probably one or two true believer conservatives at Fox.
And if it weren't for people like me, they'd have no ideology to discuss at all.
And I'm not an ideologue.
I'm a thinker.
I'm at least aspiring to be a thinker.
I think of my, I try to aspire to be one.
My father, who's a great philosopher, told me that to be a scholar is amazing.
That means you've been well read, you've been educated, but to come up with the original ideas based on that education, that means you're a thinker, and that's the highest level of intellectualism, according to philosophers.
So I aspire to be one.
I don't know if I am one.
I know my dad is one.
There ain't a lot of thinkers in newsrooms Fox, CNN, CNBC.
There just aren't.
And I don't really mean that as an insult because a lot of them are much better at the production qualities.
Making graphics, running down live news events than I'll ever be.
So I don't really mean that as an insult, but I'm just telling you if you think that they're ideological in these places, don't, please don't.
And then you have the added problem of many of them not really knowing what the heck they're talking about.
So, to put this into the context of a state like Maine that has an aging population, has a shrinking population, is poor as sin, somehow going along with Obamacare, which was people thought, well, wait a minute, Obamacare is kind of a big expense for states.
Well, no, not for a state like Maine, where they were given federal money to expand Medicaid.
And that was something that Olympia Snow, even as a Republican, was willing to go along with as much as she did.
At first, I was shocked because she was a congresswoman when I was working in Maine in television news there, and she was a tremendous defender of Maine against what the big issue at the time for states like Maine was unfunded federal mandates.
When the federal government made a law about something, usually environmental in nature, and just expected the states to implement it and didn't give them any money to do it or not enough money.
Maine was getting crushed economically by the Clean Water Act, and almost all the water in Maine was absolutely pristine, but the inspections and the upkeep to prove that they were in Compliance with the Clean Water Act was busting the state financially.
And anything that was an unfunded federal mandate drove them crazy.
And at first, we really thought Obamacare was that.
It turned out to be this expansion of Medicaid.
And even that wouldn't have been so bad if Obamacare had included an increase in health care.
But it was not health care reform, it was health insurance reform or health coverage reform.
We gave millions more Americans the belief in their minds that they had access to health care that they didn't have before.
But we added no net new hospitals, no net new doctors.
And we expected young people to foot the bill for it by paying for major medical programs when they were in their 20s.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, it was a great program.
It was a terrible idea.
It made no sense from the very beginning, from a financial standpoint.
They called themselves the Party of Science, the Democrats.
Well, mathematics is a science.
And, you know, sorry, that's not the way it worked.
Folks, this is exactly our problem in this country right now.
Locker Room Problems00:04:05
We have people who.
Support policies that make no sense.
And we're trying to push back against illogical, totally unpopular policies.
There is no critical mass anywhere in any state that wants boys playing in girls' sports and biological males in girls' or women's locker rooms.
None.
And you have governors and people running for Congress and people running for president who are willing to die on that hill.
Why?
Are they just stupid?
I wish that were the case.
I think they're being supported by people who want to see this country fail and fall into these kinds of traps.
All right, I'm Jake Novak in for Roger Stone.
We got one more segment left on the Stone Zone.
Stay with us.
The Stone Zone, entertaining and informative on the Red Apple Podcast Network.
And I'm Jake Novak filling in for Roger Stone on this Friday night.
I've been telling you, April 17th, this date, April 17th, 2026, could be a great day in American history because it is chaos on ice in Iran right now as all that's left of the regime leaders are at each other's throats over all these claims that President Trump has made about deals made, money going, all kinds of stuff going on.
And they're all turning on each other and it's glorious to see.
I also think it's a great day in America because we're seeing a concerted effort now.
One by one, the Department of Education going after these incredibly horrific, immoral, harmful policies that some states are pushing, allowing males to play girls' sports and be in girls' locker rooms.
Sandra in New Jersey, you wanted to talk about this.
Sandra, welcome.
Yes, I wanted to share something with you.
When I was younger and I was on the swimming team, I remember the very first meet, I went to Pennsylvania, the girls came out, my competition.
They were huge.
They were big.
I jump into the pool.
I do my thing.
And I think I'm doing okay.
The next thing I know, they're all done.
They're done.
And that's when I realized that when you're bigger, you're more powerful and you do better.
So could you imagine if I was swimming with men?
It would have even been worse.
So that's my point.
I learned when I was younger that size has a lot to do with the outcome of a competition.
And I saw it with women, and they were twice my size, and I lost the race.
Yeah.
You know, it's not only about.
And so that's the first aspect of it.
It's not fair.
I mean, we have divisions for boys and girls sports in our high schools and men and women sports in college and pro because there is a different level of competition, and the sports are played slightly differently, in some ways, very differently, because of the biological realities and the differences.
And to have someone from one biological background coming into a different league to do this is not fair.
That's bad enough.
But of course, it leads to other things.
There have been injuries in these one on one sports, especially in sports like volleyball and in basketball.
And we have the locker room problem.
And the idea that a biological male should be next to a biological female in a locker room.
You know, we don't have to have like Sharia law where men never see women uncovered.
I'm not talking about that.
We're just talking about safety and smart, just being smart.
And our children have been put in danger.
And it's another form of what I believe is child sacrifice.
We're not necessarily throwing the children into the volcano or into fire like we did in pagan times, but we are sacrificing children for political gain just like we did in pagan times.
When I say we, I mean humans.
It's many thousands of years of evolution that we should have learned not to do this, but we haven't.
But good news Linda McMahon is in the Department of Education doing the right thing, not just going for a national policy, but specifically targeting someone who's doing the wrong thing.
Sacrificing Children For Gain00:00:36
I'm Jake Novak.
Remember this day, it's been a good one.
Thanks for listening to The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
You can hear The Stone Zone with Roger Stone weeknights at 8 on 77 WABC.
If you like the podcast, share it with your friends and listen anytime at WABCRadio.com and download the WABC Radio app.
Hit that subscribe button on all major podcast platforms.
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.