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Nov. 13, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
46:01
3497 Donald Trump: Past, President and Future | Roger Stone and Stefan Molyneux
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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio, back with a good friend Roger Stone, a well-known political operative and pundit.
He's a veteran of nine, count them nine, presidential campaigns and has served as senior campaign aide to three Republican presidents.
He's the author of some great books, New York Times bestseller, The Man Who Killed Kennedy, The Case Against LBJ, as well as The Clintons, War on Women, and Jeb And the Bush crime family inside the story of an American dynasty.
Check out his work at rogerstone.com and stonezone.com.
Roger, how are you doing, my friend?
I'm just now sobering up from the celebration of the greatest single election night I've ever had, and that takes in many, many election nights.
But, you know, like most reform-reminded Americans who want to snatch our country back from the globalists and Reestablish this as a country of civil liberties and economic opportunity and growth and peace as well as prosperity.
Obviously, I'm deliriously happy.
So, we're going to divide this interview into two major parts, up to now and into the future.
And what was the race?
For those who don't know, I mean, you've been Donald Trump's friend for many decades, you've been encouraging him to run for a long time, and you've been intimately involved in what he's been doing over the last year and a half and probably even before.
How did it go for you since the last time we talked to us, the last couple of months of the campaign?
What was your confidence level going in and how do you feel it rolled out relative to your expectations?
Well, starting in 1988, I began to think about Donald Trump for president of the United States because the man has a steely toughness underneath that I think you need to run a country like this, and particularly I began to think about Donald Trump for president of the United States because the man has a steely toughness underneath that I think Now, he did not come from the world of politics or the word of government or the world of the military.
He came from the entirely public sector, and it is hard to point to another businessman who had successfully become president, although he had nominated some, which was interesting in itself.
In 1988, we took an exploratory trip to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Trump spoke to the Portsmouth, New Hampshire Chamber of Commerce.
We had a record turnout, I think 1,200 people, for a venue that usually got 300 or 400 for their weekly or their monthly meeting.
Vice President Bush had spoken there the month before.
He had 500, which was considered a great turnout.
Interestingly, Trump talked about trade, the deficits, and the inequities of NATO.
This was 1988.
So he's been very consistent on a number of these issues.
And I must tell you, the very first Trump for President draft Trump for President committee was born.
A Portsmouth City Councilman named Mike Dunbar, I think is the first guy on the planet to produce Trump for President t-shirts and to publicly urge Donald to run, which was subsequent or actually contiguous with his trip to New Hampshire.
In 2000, I wanted him to seek the Reform Party nomination.
I looked at George W. Bush.
I looked at Al Gore.
And I saw two guys whose views were essentially identical.
Although they endeavored to sound different, they were pro-war.
They were going to erode our civil liberties.
They were spenders.
They were borrowers.
It was politics as usual.
Donald wasn't impressed with either one of them either.
And he did, for a brief period of time, listen to Ross Perot.
And Governor Jesse Ventura and others.
People don't remember this, but he not only won, he, Trump, won a straw poll at the Reform Party National Convention the year before their presidential nomination.
But Trump supporters put his name on the ballot in the Reform Party primaries in a handful of Western states where the party had permanent status and primaries just like the Republicans and the Democrats were And Trump won those primaries months after he withdrew from the race and said there was no way he was going to run.
In any event, I was the chairman of his presidential exploratory committee that year.
We did look at it seriously.
Four years ago, I wanted him to challenge Mitt Romney.
I made my case as persuasively as I could.
There was a time, as you recall, that he zoomed to the head of the polls in the race four years leading Mitt Romney.
Many people have forgotten that.
But in the end he elected not to run.
Now I would have to confess that what I realized over the last year was that even four years ago he probably would not have won.
This was a classic case of the man and the circumstances coming together at exactly the right time.
I would also say that Trump, taking a line out of Richard Nixon's playbook Peaked his campaign at exactly the right time, election day.
Not too early, not too late.
This is an art.
It's not easy to do, but if you can get your campaign to peak at exactly the right time, obviously you have the momentum going into the election.
Now, we can talk and we do want to talk about the great game that Donald Trump and his campaign and those who supported him played.
But let's just talk a little bit about some of the stuff that was outside of his control.
First of all, the DNC and the Hillary campaign, they just seem to run a really bad campaign, keeping her away from the limelight, keeping her away from interviews, not dealing with health issues until after they were outed by the alternative media, and all of the stuff that was coming out, this Podesta drip-drip of emails, the DNC, the WikiLeaks stuff, this Podesta drip-drip of emails, the DNC, the WikiLeaks stuff, which really wouldn't have been as available as powerful
four years ago, the media collusion that showed up, and then, of course, the great bomb that Comey dropped shortly before the election about the reopening of the investigation because of the emails found in Uma Abedin and Anthony Weiner's computer.
What about the stuff that was outside of his control, and to me at least how badly that was managed on the opponent's side?
That's what I mean by a concurrence of events all happening at the same time.
I mean, first of all, I think this has both a macro and a micro application.
Voters have never been as angry and as sour and disillusioned as they are right now, not even four years ago.
I think a lot of this has to do with the expectation level that rose eight years ago because all Americans, myself included, wanted Obama to bring us hope and change.
We wanted to revitalize the economy.
We wanted to have a foreign policy that was coherent and made sense.
We wanted to start avoiding foreign wars.
We wanted to stop the erosion of our civil liberties.
All these Excesses of the Bush administration.
We wanted breaks on federal spending, where Bush outpaced the Democrats by many miles.
And we were hopeful that that would come.
I think most Americans really wanted Obama to succeed.
And when he failed, and still got a second term, because we probably nominated the one man who couldn't beat him, that anger, I think, festered.
So Trump comes along as an outsider.
As a guy you can't buy, because the voters know special interest influence is the entire problem, that everything in Washington can be bought.
I mean, Stephan, I worked as a heavy-duty lobbyist in Washington.
Let me assure you, everything in Washington can be bought with the right amount of money, the right string of call girls, and the right lines of coke.
Trump is right.
It's a rigged process.
And influence peddling is rife.
And it has been under both parties.
And as Trump says, it's time to drain the swamp.
The first thing he must do is offer really stringent lobbyist and ethics reform.
That's step one in my view in terms of draining the swamp.
Well, you need to keep this predatory revolving door of being in government, lobbying for government, getting special.
You need to keep that at bay at least for a couple of years.
At least stop more bad things from happening.
Keep that stuff at bay for a while and then you can work to clean up the system without all of these special interests.
But this is what I found so frustrating, Roger, and amazing.
Is that the Hillary Clinton supporters and the Bernie Sanders supporters were all like, let's get the dark money out of politics.
Let's get financial influence out of politics.
We don't want all of our candidates bought by Wall Street and other special interest groups.
And as I made the case repeatedly, that's Donald Trump.
He's the only guy since the founding fathers who's come along without giant conflict of interest and these big NASCAR ownership deckles all over his forehead from whoever paid for his campaign.
If that's what you want, this is what you could get.
That's why I always thought that on the issues of special interest influence, war, and trade, that the Bernie Sanders voters should have a natural affinity to Trump.
First of all, Hillary's not a liberal.
Hillary's not a progressive.
Hillary's a crony capitalist.
She would steal a hot stove.
It's all about the money.
Put the women in Libya back 200 years under Sharia, stone them to death when they're raped, deny them the opportunity to drive a car, go to college, own property, choose their own husband.
No problem.
Where's the money?
Or Haiti.
Black Lives Matter.
Unless you live in Haiti, in which case she and her husband and their daughter loot all of the international rescue money, all of the U.S. rescue money, rebuilding money, and all of the charitable.
And the people of Haiti get nothing.
No roads, no hospitals, no schools, no housing above all because the homes are destroyed, but instead we take care of the multinational corporations and build superior ports.
And resorts for them on the one section of Haiti undamaged by the earthquake so they can extract all the gas and the oil and the minerals and rape the people of Haiti.
That's the Clintons for you.
So, yes, I would think knowing any of that, a Bernie Sanders supporter would look at this and see that they would have been more home with Trump.
And in fact, I think you will find three out of ten Sanders supporters ended up voting for Trump, which was the number I thought he always had to achieve.
Well, and this is, I think, Saunders and Clinton, relative to Trump, just did not understand what was going on out this little biosphere of liberalism and the media and politics outside of Washington and outside the New York Times.
They didn't realize how much the destruction of the industrial heartland of America had driven people crazy.
And I think people were willing to say, okay, well, the Democrats will give us bridge...
Unemployment and welfare and so on.
But after a while, you go, hey, these jobs aren't coming back.
We need another solution.
We've got people working two or three jobs just to support their families.
You've got massive jackups in healthcare premiums under Obamacare.
Massive economic insecurity.
People are freaking out out there.
You've got a quarter of Americans on these psychotropic drugs because they're freaking out.
There's this giant panic out of there in America that...
I don't think that any of the other candidates, even in the Republican contenders, got how bad it is for people out there.
And I think Trump really, really got that and tapped into that in a way that was very compelling.
Well, but again, the lagging economy, the financial insecurity, the anxiety of Americans, again...
Well, this is the worst it's ever been.
It didn't reach this peak four years ago.
It was headed in this direction.
So, again, Trump comes into the perfect storm.
He's the right candidate.
And the times, the circumstances, including the weak economy, the collapse of Obamacare, coupled with, as you point out, the arrogance...
Look, she spent a billion plus dollars.
God knows how many millions David Brock and his allies money laundered, mixing non-profit money with hard dollar money for the various Clinton front groups that were savagely attacking me personally and any other critic of Hillary Clinton.
Add all that together, Trump probably spent $250 million.
If there was super PAC spending beyond that, it was de minimis.
So he was outgunned financially.
They kept her away from the press because of her vulnerabilities.
She's not well.
I don't care what they say.
She's not well.
She has no program.
She was running on nothing but platitudes.
I'm an advocate for women.
No, you're not.
You're an abuser of women.
I'm an advocate for children.
What about the 18 children under 8 killed at Waco because you gave the order?
You, co-president Hillary, you gave the order.
According to both Senate and House investigations.
So her entire record was a fraud.
She'd accomplished nothing.
You had these glaring disasters in her emails, in the Libya incursion, in the missing money at the State Department, $6 million as I recall.
She's operating entirely off of focus groups and polls and roundtables.
Nothing, she says, is fresh.
Nothing is from her own brain.
Everything is practiced.
So when Trump actually finally confronts her and says her husband's a sexual predator and what she did to those women is even worse, notice the response is none of that's true.
And then she moves right along because she doesn't want to get into the details.
Why?
Because it's all true.
That's why.
It's all practiced.
And it came across to voters as stale and uninspiring.
Right.
I got a lot of messages after the election basically saying, thank heavens above that World War III has been called off.
And this aspect of Hillary's candidacy is still, I think, being underplayed.
I know in certain areas, right, Breitbart.com and other places it's being pointed out.
But, you know, we're going out to a bit of a wider audience sometimes here.
And I really want everyone to understand how incredibly dangerous Hillary Clinton was going to be as a president.
She threatened to nuke Iran.
She had threatened to view, what, untoward social media accounts that she thought might be associated with Russia as Cozabella for a war with a nuclear power like Russia.
This was an incredibly dangerous woman when it came to foreign policy.
And I don't think people understand just how close to the edge of a glowing, smoking, radioactive, human charcoal-filled crater we came as a planet.
Well, let's hope that Obama still doesn't pull the trigger in the next two months.
Look, this nation is hurtling towards war.
We had the Vice President of the United States chortling publicly about launching a cyber war to provoke the Russians.
It is the Clinton-Obama policies that have brought us to the brink of nuclear war.
We're going to fight over Syria?
Really?
Assad props up Hezbollah.
He's not our friend.
He's getting help from the Russians.
They're not our friends.
On the other side, we have ISIS. Created really by George Bush, strengthened by Obama, armed by Hillary!
And they're propped up by the Saudis.
Did anybody read the missing pages of the 9-11 report from Congress?
They are not our friends.
So why would we spend a single American life or a single tax dollar on a fight that is not our fight, in which regardless of how it comes out, the new power will not be friendly to the United States?
That is what Donald Trump has averted.
Trump is for detente.
But in the Clinton-created world, Stefan, if you are not for war with the Russians, you're a Russian agent.
Congressman Jerry Nadler, Congressman Elijah Cummings both accused me of treason, of working for the Russians.
I have no Russian conflicts.
I have no Russian clients.
I have no Russian influences.
I have no Russian money.
I've never taken a dime from any Russian interest or anybody connected to the Russians.
It's a lie.
It's the new McCarthyism.
If you're not for war, if you're not a neocom for war...
You're in the service of a foreign power.
And they accused me of it.
They accused Trump of it.
They accused Assange of it.
It's a lie there too, by the way.
He doesn't work for the Russians.
In fact, he's very smart.
He says, stop worrying about the Russians.
You guys better start worrying about the Chinese.
Now there's the sophisticated hackers.
It wasn't true of Paul Manafort.
This was a talking point.
And I point out to you that the heads of the intelligence services, they always say it's 16 or maybe it was 13, tell us that there's Russian influence.
Really?
Then why has no Republican on the House or Senate Intelligence Committee who are qualified to see top secret and classified documents, they have seen no proof.
Why?
Because there is no proof.
It's horseshit.
It always was.
And it really is.
Let's talk a Trump is literally Hitler, racist, sexist, misogynist.
I mean, they have set up this situation where crazy people can think they're heroes for opposing Trump, even to the point of violence.
And now they say, well, this nation is strangely divided.
And it's like, no, if you saw someone in half, you don't get to say they're strangely divided.
You got to look down at the saw.
In your hand, I mean, was there not any dirty trick that they pulled, any amount of verbal abuse that they could pour on, any unjust allegation they couldn't promote, that they didn't stop at anything when it came to trying to tear down this candidacy?
And these scars, I think, are going to be felt for a long time from this battle.
Well, never before have we seen the kind of public alliance between the mainstream media and the opposition.
They were marching in lopsteck.
The 13-year-old, the girl who claimed that she was raped by Trump when she was 13, notice how that fell apart and she withdrew her claim and disappeared?
That was set up by the Clintons as a firewall or by their operatives.
The women who came forward and said Trump groped them.
Now, of course, they couldn't remember where, what year, what day, what place, but it happened.
And then, of course, WikiLeaks showed us Newspaper ads in Craigslist soliciting people to come forward and bear false witness against Donald Trump in return for money.
So no, they pulled out all the stops and it all collapsed.
The voters, in their wisdom, saw through all of it.
But you're right about the fact that this is agate prop.
These are paid demonstrators, again funded by George Soros, probably run by the criminal David Brock, You know, James Carville, this entire group of thugs who refuse to give up on a fight they have just lost.
And it is, I was talking to Alex Jones early today, we may have to do some demonstrations for the new president around the country to support the reform agenda and to say we believe in democracy and we've just had an election.
Well, of course, that is the ironic thing, as everyone has pointed out, that the Democrats claim to be shocked, I tell you, shocked and appalled that anyone might contest a legitimate election.
But these are not peaceful demonstrations.
I saw demonstrators carrying a rape Melania sign.
Stefan, there are bands of teenagers wandering the streets on the Upper East Side of New York, 10, 15 kids chanting, Fuck Donald Trump!
Fuck Donald Trump!
I saw this with my own eyes.
So they're setting the stage for violence.
They're acting violently and provocatively in the hopes that good citizens will react and then they can blame us because we're the haters, as you know.
Right.
You rise to the bait, there's conflict in the streets, and then suddenly everything that they predict about the right has suddenly come true.
Just as Trump was blamed for the violence at Trump rallies.
We now know from WikiLeaks and James O'Keefe at Project Veritas, who's definitely an MVP in this election, as far as I'm concerned, that this was all paid for.
It was all instigated.
They had hoodlums.
They had professional agents provocateur wearing Bernie T-shirts.
Poor Bernie.
They're blaming him.
So it's the same playbook.
They're just doing it again.
So let's do our little pivot here and talk about what's coming up.
There do seem to be people who are like, oh, no, he's retreated on Obamacare.
This is all nonsense.
It seems to me entirely in line with everything he talked about in the lead up to the election, what's happening now.
But what's going on with the choice of the team?
I know that Pence is now in charge of the transition and all of that sort of stuff.
So what's going on that we can't easily see?
Of course, you're an inside guy.
But what's going on that might help people understand the integrity of the campaign?
First of all, traditionally, there's very little news in this period.
The transition committee is trying to get organized.
They've obviously had some leadership changes there, which I think are positive.
You have Jeff Sessions, who I have a very high regard for, and his man Rick Dearborn, another gentleman that I have a very high regard for in terms of capability and understanding who the Trump president I've also
been in two presidential transitions, Stefan.
I served in President Reagan's transition in 1979 or 1980 and 81, and I served in President Nixon's second transition.
So in 1972, now what you have is a series of boarding parties, establishment job seekers, people who had no role in your election whatsoever, some who may have actually quietly worked against you.
They show up, they send their resume, and they say, I was with you the whole time.
Anytime a person says that, take them off your list.
Because if they really were, they wouldn't need to say it.
You would know, first of all.
And then secondarily, because there's not a lot of news, the news media needs to create news.
And therefore, they and seeing this, those who wish to be in federal positions began dropping their own names to promote themselves.
So so-and-so is being looked at for secretary of state and so-and-so may be under consideration for chief of staff.
In almost all of these cases, anything you read today and tomorrow and yesterday is largely false.
I spoke to the president-elect the night before, last.
He has made no decisions on major positions.
He's still wrapping his head around the incredible national security information that he was briefed on since becoming president.
Things that you and I don't know.
Things that he can't discuss because they're classified.
Absolutely.
But he knows the real world situation, and I think that is the first thing you want him to get a grip on.
And then he will start staffing his own government.
When I said to him, how's the transition going?
He said, well, I guess they're over there making lists.
But believe me, he said, I'm going to have my own list.
Well, it's great that the presidential elect is finally getting all the security information that's long been available to everyone who hacked into Hillary's server.
It's good to get him up to speed with all of the foreign governments and all of the hackers and Romanian kids in their mom's basements who have all of the access.
I mean, it's great to get him up to speed to the average hacker around the world.
And it's also nice, you know, if he hasn't made any decisions yet, Roger, it's pretty cool, because everyone who floats their name out is probably someone you never want anywhere near your administration.
So it's a good way of sort of flushing out the ferrets, so to speak.
And the self-promoters within your own ranks.
So the President's keeping his own counsel.
The transition is coming together.
His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is a very able fellow, friend.
And I think he gives his father-in-law wise counsel.
He's got a bank of advisors.
I'm a big fan of Steve Bannon.
Bannon understands the new media in a way that few do.
The new media played a crucial role.
In Trump's election, we would never have been able to win if there was no Twitter, no Facebook, no Snapchat, no Instagram.
Particularly in an underfunded campaign, social media played a role beyond our wildest dreams and will be even more powerful in the next cycle.
I'm a giant fan of Bannon who understands the Trump constituency, knows who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.
Really helped the candidate forge, I think, a very eloquent message in the closing days against globalism, against the insiders, against the two-party duopoly, the entrenched Washington establishment that has failed across the board, failed on every issue, immigration, trade, our finances, our foreign policy, you name it.
The country's in retreat and decline.
So the president's going to change all that.
And he's going to surround himself, I think, with able men and women.
But right now, you've got this...
It's a little bit like Game of Thrones.
You have all these self-promoters.
And, you know, until the president makes up his mind, anything is possible.
He is, at the end of the day, the decider, as George W. Bush said.
He's had the most experience of just about anyone on the planet of hiring people who are great at what they do for a very large organization.
So I certainly can entrust him as that.
It's funny, you know, the social media thing, I actually made it to the front page of CNN by pointing out that it was radio that got FDR into power.
It was television that got JFK into power.
And it was social media that got Donald Trump into power.
And this allows him, of course, to bypass the mainstream media.
And Lord above, it is a glorious day under heaven when the mainstream media is starting to get sweaty about their own paychecks.
And that seems, I just saw this big sort of half apology, half promise to do better letter from the New York Times.
And there are other people who are like, well, you know, maybe we were a tiny bit wrong about Trump.
You know, he's going to be around for a while.
Maybe we can find a way to be his friend.
And it's like, oh man, you gross, gross people go back under your rocks.
Your time is done.
No, look, you're looking at a person who has been banned by the mainstream media.
Although CNN reporters constantly call me wishing me to be a source and help them, I'm banned on their network.
I'm banned on MSNBC. I think I'm de facto banned on Fox, which doesn't bother me much because, candidly, Infowars.com, you, Stefan, I have plenty of outlets if I want to let people know what I think.
They act like they still have a monopoly on information.
They don't understand the toothpaste is out of the tube.
That Breitbart, in your podcasts, and in Alex Jones, and Town Hall, and The Daily Caller, it's an alternative world.
And they just don't see that.
They're losing power.
They're losing viewers.
They're losing revenues.
It's a dying thing.
They won't exist in five years.
They just don't yet understand it.
And they went after Trump with a vengeance, with a vicious vengeance like nothing I've ever seen.
And I've been in this business 40 years. - Well, I think they knew that this was the winner take all election for the next generation.
And really, I've made that case before.
I'll just do it briefly here.
If Donald Trump – well, now that Donald Trump – I like not saying if Donald Trump gets him.
Now that Donald Trump is in, I believe he's going to execute on the things that he's talked about with immigration, with trade, and with other things.
Jobs are going to come back.
Things are going to get turned around.
I think he's going to lower – obviously, the taxes are going to get lowered.
The economy is going to grow.
deficit's going to shrink.
And the giant media conglomerate that was trying to give the jetpack to the ailing Hillary to get her over the fence, they're done.
So they're not going to be around to support the next candidate.
It's going to be social media, which is going to be, I think, more on the right.
And when the illegal immigrants start to drain southward, then the dangling out of citizenship, which has been the big thing that the liberals have been holding out for, as, you know, come vote for us and we get more people from the third world to come in If that all changes, they're done for a generation.
They don't have the media.
They don't have the illegal immigrants.
People have jobs and therefore don't want as big a government anymore because they're paying taxes rather than receiving welfare.
I completely understand why they did what they did, Roger, because this was win or take all for a generation or more.
Look, I don't need to tell you that the cornerstone to Trump's entire success is revitalizing the economy.
We need a boom economy.
This is why I hope he will look at Larry Kudlow for Treasury Secretary.
This is why I hope he will bring Steve Moore into the administration.
These guys know how to make the economy cook.
And if you have more jobs and more taxpayers, you will get more revenues.
And now you have money to spend on worthy projects.
And worthy endeavors like rebuilding our military strength.
And in Trump, because you have a president not beholden to any special interest, you really could get an OMB director under his direction to cut wasteful federal spending and actually get it done.
It's for the first time in my lifetime, it's possible because Trump is entirely independent.
He owes no one.
I am very optimistic that with that cornerstone and with the pro-growth policies that Trump favors in terms of cutting the corporate tax rate, in terms of an overall tax cut, his offshore program to bring dollars back, I think that these things could give us the boom economy we need, and then you can go correct all the other problematic areas of government and the failures in our foreign policy.
Well, and a boom economy, not a bubble economy.
And that is a crucial difference because everything that's been booming really since the 80s has been something that comes at the future cost of the bubble popping and things crashing back down.
We need something that's going to be sustainable.
Yeah, no more gimmicks.
This is fundamental.
You need a sustained growth over a long period of time.
Look, it worked for John Kennedy.
It worked for Ronald Reagan.
And then they lost their way.
In Kennedy's case, he was replaced and Johnson began spending like there was no tomorrow.
And in the case of Reagan, and this is the great danger.
Because I worked for Governor Reagan in three presidential campaigns, was in his transition, and worked for his re-election.
This is where the establishment that can't beat you tries to co-opt you.
And they co-opt you first with the boarding party, of people who will say they're for your agenda, but who are for their agenda.
I would suggest, just as a suggestion to the president-elect, and I would never presume to tell him what to do, If you supported the Iraq war, I would not have you as my Secretary of State.
If you supported NAFTA, I would not appoint you to a position in my administration.
I think the criteria has to be Trumpism.
We need people who believe in the Trump doctrine.
And I think he's laid it out in this campaign.
If you're not for sealing the borders, don't apply for a job here.
You're the wrong person.
If you're going to defend the broken veterans...
Health care system and you come out of it, you're not the person for the job.
We need somebody from the outside who can give our veterans the greatest, most accessible, quick health care you can find.
So if you were part of the problem, don't try to show up and say you're part of the solution.
What about Paul Ryan and Speaker of the House?
How do you think that's going to work out?
I mean, that is one vacillating mother person out there.
Look, I think here is the lead for this podcast.
Donald Trump would make an egregious error if he makes Reince Priebus his White House Chief of Staff.
Not only will it not sit well at the grassroots among the Trump supporters, but Priebus' political loyalty is to Paul Ryan.
I know he is sometime mistakenly viewed as a Scott Walker guy or perhaps even a Romney person because he was chairman of the RNC during our ignominious defeat in that election.
I shouldn't say our, I was for Gary Johnson, but there.
He's a Washington insider.
He is a party regular.
But more than any of those things, he's Paul Ryan's man.
So it would be an egregious mistake and I am hopeful That the President will reject that advice.
Now, I know that when President-elect was walking around Capitol Hill last week after his meeting with President Obama, I'm sure the House and Senate leaders put in a plug for Reince.
That's bad advice.
Trump needs a Chief of Staff who is a Trump person, who has no agenda other than Donald Trump's agenda, and who is 100% loyal to him.
Now, I'm sure Reince is not a bad guy, and he did some things to help Trump win, and Trump may even like him.
And I'm sure there's a position for him where he could serve the Trump administration with distinction.
But this isn't it.
No, and if I had my vote, it would be Bannon.
But now let's talk about some of the risks.
I concur.
Steve Bannon would be spectacular.
But, you know, I don't know the president's mind on this.
I don't pretend to, but I hope this is an error he does not make.
All right.
So let's talk about some of the risks going forward.
I mean, we're all, I guess, those who are pro-Trump, flush with the victory.
But of course, it is important to keep your sights going forward.
There are sort of three major risks that I see, and perhaps you can sort of comment on them and let me know if I've missed any.
But number one, of course, is...
Martial law, right?
I mean, if the rioters get their way and things escalate, then there may be a martial law which might prevent a transfer of power from moving forward.
And people, let me just remind everyone out there who's like, oh, that's outlandish.
It's only called a conspiracy theory if you don't know your history and you don't know what's gone on in these things in this way in the past.
That's number one.
Number two, of course, is that entrenched special interests might try to blow up the economy and cripple the presidency.
And number three, of course, is assassination.
Right?
Where do you think we stand with these risks and are there any that aren't sort of floating into my brain?
Let me address them one by one.
First of all, and I'll take them out of order, the globalists now crashing the economy to me is a real threat and a real possibility.
I also noticed that the Obama administration is really starting to squeeze and crack down on community banks.
Community banks are extremely well-heeled, they're solvent, and they're the only people lending today.
If you want to build a business, expand a business, whatever, you've got to go to the community banks.
Trump must reverse that as soon as possible.
That's an effort to purposely slow the economy.
Secondarily, as far as martial law is concerned, I believe that the Obama administration will do anything that they believe they can publicly get away with.
Now, is that a bridge too far?
I guess it depends on the level of violence in the country.
I think it is unlikely that anyone who attempted to delay a constitutionally mandated procedure that has been followed for now 100 plus years will really have a problem in terms of a national uprising and widespread civil disobedience unless, of course, they can close the internet down at the same time.
Which I think is unlikely.
So, I'm going to give our opponents the benefit of the doubt.
I don't think the paid-for demonstrations will rise to a level that they can sustain over two months until there's inauguration.
That's hard enough, but you can see through it.
It's so incredibly transparent.
And it's only a matter of time before we have video of the same demonstrator in Milwaukee, New York, and New Orleans.
And therefore you can prove that these are paid agitators moving from state to state.
Paid for by someone, most likely Mr.
Soros.
I'd feel a lot better if they were Look
at the rhetoric.
It is ridiculous that Trump is going to begin snatching people off the streets and deporting him.
That he is going to dissolve gay marriages.
Where does this crap come from?
This is a lie.
That the KKK is going to get federal funding.
I actually saw that today.
This is disinformation.
It's all nonsense.
And it's paid for.
And the paid vituperation out there on the streets is extraordinary.
But I still don't think it will succeed.
Now, I'm already called a conspiracy theorist, as you know.
When the left doesn't like your arguments and they can't refute them on any fact-based basis, they revert to calling you a conspiracy theorist.
As I think it was Gore Vidal who said, no, I'm a conspiracy realist.
And now I've just taken to calling myself a conspiracyologist.
The point, of course, is that I have written a book on the Kennedy assassination.
I've written a section on my book on the Bush family about the Reagan assassination, of which there are many, many strange anomalies and irregularities regarding the conduct of the Secret Service.
And therefore...
One thing I pray for every day is the safety of the President-Elect and his family.
I'm not going to talk about this at length other than to say he has really good personal security people.
I don't see them going anywhere.
They will work closely with the federal agencies.
I don't mean to demean in any way the individual men and women of the U.S. Secret Service or any other branch, but I like a double layer of protection because, yes, I think George Soros and others at this juncture particularly might wish the president-elect not the best.
So let's close off, Roger, with a lot of people, of course, are crashing a little bit after the struggle and the victory.
And of course, you know, much remains to be done, to put it mildly.
What is it that you would suggest that people can sort of pick themselves up, you know, shake off their hangovers and get back to work?
What is it that you think people should be focusing on over the next little while?
Well, I think they have to watch the makeup of this administration.
To ensure that faith is being kept with the Trump voter and the anti-globalist voter.
This has been a historic victory.
I realized after the third debate, in all the polling that I was looking at, that Trump was rising and rising quickly.
When the announcement of the 650,000 emails was made, that only accelerated the pace, which was already, he was moving at a point a day.
And it really became a question of whether he could crest by Tuesday or whether he wouldn't crest until Wednesday, whether he would fall just short.
The announcement by Comey did not have the desired effect of breaking Trump's momentum and changing the dynamic.
Mr.
Comey had worn out his credibility.
First it is, then he isn't.
Yes, it is.
She's a crook, but I'm not prosecuting her.
He burned out, and people saw it as raw Washington politics, and they figured, I think Obama leaned on him.
Let me say this.
I know members of Congress who have in their possession the 650,000 emails.
I know people at the New York Police Department who have in their possession the 650,000 emails.
Contrary to what Director Comey says, There's hard evidence of treason, pay for play, corruption, sexual misconduct, and worse.
This is a treasure trove of convictions.
And I favor a judicial process.
It's not up to the President of the United States to decide whether Hillary Clinton and her husband and her daughter are prosecuted.
It's up to a grand jury.
An experienced, completely honest, unbiased prosecutor...
I don't believe that this scandal can be covered up because there are those in Congress and those at the NYPD who will not let it be covered up.
So you're not going to have, as we saw, the Justice Department closing down investigations into the Clinton Foundation anymore.
Well, of course, there's a route to get the information out should all else fail, which is to go to the good friend of Liberty and Freedom, Julian Assange, in the Ecuadorian embassy, give him some emails and let him do his normal vetting and release them to the public.
There are ways, of course, of bypassing any political restrictions on these kinds of investigations now that are, I think, blowing past the gatekeepers that I think have been hampering some of these investigations in the past.
No question.
Look, if there are MVPs for this election, they would have to be Julian Assange.
They would have to be James O'Keefe.
They would have to be Alex Jones.
They would have to be yourself.
They would have to be Milo.
They would have to be thousands and thousands and thousands of grassroots activists who tweeted and Facebooked and posted On Instagram, on Snapchat, until their fingers hurt.
That was the army, and to me, those are the MVPs.
Obviously, I feel strongly that this is a personal victory.
Trump was so much better than Trump's campaign.
His campaign in the end turned out to be largely irrelevant.
It was him and a Herculean physical effort in those closing days.
Three major speeches a day?
Four on some days?
Nixon didn't do that.
Reagan didn't do that.
Bob Dole never did that.
The Bushes certainly never did it.
In our television-based politics, you wanted one big hit a day for the evening news, and that was your messaging.
Trump understood in the new media, you need constant contact.
You need constant content.
And therefore, you can have four big news stories a day.
There's no such thing as a saturated market in the new media.
I think that's really important to understand for people.
There's no question about it.
So he, more than anyone else, really deserves the accolades.
He crystallized the issues.
He hammered her.
He survived three debates.
I thought he did better than she did in all three of them.
He was a gentleman in the first, and he let a few softballs come over the plate, and he didn't hit them.
But he more than made up for it in debates two and three.
The third debate was probably the best in terms of convincing people that he's ready to be president.
And we're at a historic time.
I mean, I'm just happy to be alive and to see this country get one last chance at salvation.
This is it.
Either that or we slide into the abyss.
Yeah, it's first world or third world, next stop.
There's nothing in between.
Roger, thanks again so much for your time.
A great pleasure to connect again post-election.
Just wanted to remind people, Roger has fantastic books, articles, does a podcast, is a regular on Alex Jones' show.
RogerStone.com and StoneZone.com, well worth consuming.
Best of all, Stefan, best of all, StoneColdTruth.com, which coincides with my new syndicated radio show on the Genesis Communications Network.
So, Go to stonecoldtruth.com and you can see what I'm up to.
Beautiful.
Well, we'll put the links to all of that below as well as links to your books.
Roger, a great pleasure.
Have yourself a great day and thanks for all that you've done for not just America but the West as a whole.
Thanks, Stefan.
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