Speaker 1: Hm. I'm Robert Evans, and this is the introduction behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards, my podcast where talking about terrible people and
Speaker 1: all the things you don't know about them with me today.
Speaker 1: My guest for this episode is Tamara Katan, host of
Speaker 1: They Tried to Bury us UH podcast about immigrants coming
Speaker 1: into the United States that exactly every week is a
Speaker 1: different American origin story. So we have a different immigrant
Speaker 1: every week. Awesome, it's been great. Well today we're not
Speaker 1: talking about an immigrant, but we are talking about someone
Speaker 1: who has done a lot of damage to immigrants, not directly,
Speaker 1: but just through the people he's supported. Sure. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking about Roger Stone. What do you know about Roger Stone, tamer.
Speaker 1: I know a little bit about him. I know that
Speaker 1: he is uh. He lives in the upside down. As
Speaker 1: I think a phrase I said to you outside, I
Speaker 1: think he is a white Malcolm X to me, a
Speaker 1: political version of aid any means necessary, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like before Malc come went to Mecca and
Speaker 1: and got balanced in his life without principle, without principle,
Speaker 1: by any means necessary. I don't care who I hurt.
Speaker 1: I don't care how often I have to lie. I
Speaker 1: think that lying is good. I think if you believe
Speaker 1: in doing things that are virtuous, that you're a chump.
Speaker 1: It's a cancer in our political system. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: is a human cancer. Absolutely. Now, listeners will note that
Speaker 1: we did a two part episode on Paul Manafort months ago.
Speaker 1: I recommend checking that out too, because they're there are
Speaker 1: two halves of the same coin. So we talked about
Speaker 1: one coin back. Today we're dropping the other side. So
Speaker 1: let's get into it. On August ninety two, little baby
Speaker 1: Roger Stone was born to Gloria Rose and Roger J. Stone.
Speaker 1: His mother was a journalist who followed local politics. His
Speaker 1: father drilled wells. Roger grew up in Louisborough, New York,
Speaker 1: and described his family as middle class and blue collar.
Speaker 1: So so far, we're doing fine. It's a normal middle
Speaker 1: American by way. Roger was eight years old when he
Speaker 1: got involved in his first political election. He campaigned for
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy, and even at that tender age, he
Speaker 1: knew that honesty was not the way to achieve his
Speaker 1: political goals. That's right, he later recalled to the Washington
Speaker 1: Post quote, I remember going through the cafeteria line and
Speaker 1: telling every kid that Nixon was in the favor of
Speaker 1: school on Saturdays. That was my first political trick, which
Speaker 1: is cute. It's fun, it's so unner. It's like an
Speaker 1: origin story of a villain. Yeah, yeah, where he learns
Speaker 1: the the disinformation. I think he was quoted about that story.
Speaker 1: He said, that's why I learned the power of disinformation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that you can just if you just And it's speaking
Speaker 1: as a tall white guy. This is something I battle
Speaker 1: with my whole life. I really like telling a good
Speaker 1: lie to people, like like a like like a joking,
Speaker 1: like like I'll make up a fact about history or something,
Speaker 1: and like and and I love seed it to a
Speaker 1: friend and you hear him tell it in like a
Speaker 1: party or something, and it's it's a really funny joke
Speaker 1: for just you. Not a great thing to do, but
Speaker 1: if you're confident and you have the right sort of
Speaker 1: look in this society at least, because it works particularly
Speaker 1: well in the United States. The same reason why. I like,
Speaker 1: if you've got a mixed race group of people and
Speaker 1: someone has to go talk to the cops, you picked
Speaker 1: the guy who looks like me, I go talk to
Speaker 1: the cops, and I it's it's it's fine. I think
Speaker 1: roger Stone had that realization and decided to make that
Speaker 1: his whole life, rather than be like, what if I
Speaker 1: just made some jokes at parties. Yeah, it's it's such
Speaker 1: a bizarre thing. Like you, if this was a show
Speaker 1: about a nice, normal, responsible family, there would be a
Speaker 1: massive teaching moment that was missed. Yeah, where like Andy
Speaker 1: Griffith sat down young roger Stone and was like, well,
Speaker 1: I know you won that classroom election, but you know,
Speaker 1: here's why it's bad the light to everyone. You know exactly,
Speaker 1: it's like winning a beauty pageant by going topless, Like
Speaker 1: it's against the rules. You can't do that. Yeah, oh
Speaker 1: Roger Okay, So uh it is entirely possible that that
Speaker 1: anecdote is a lie. I do want to note that
Speaker 1: because we're talking about Roger Stone, and every time we
Speaker 1: talk about it, literally, of the things in this there's
Speaker 1: multiple versions of So I have tried to call the
Speaker 1: versions of reality that coincide the most with what I
Speaker 1: can back up with like objective facts and what multiple
Speaker 1: people have said. But like, if you do your own
Speaker 1: research on Roger Stone, you'll run into different variations of
Speaker 1: everything here. Because I think he's just been lying consistently
Speaker 1: for about seventy years. Agree Y, Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: a negative version of one of my favorite Maya Angelou
Speaker 1: quotes where she says, people may not remember what you
Speaker 1: do or say, but they'll always remember how you made
Speaker 1: them feel. Yeah, And he he'll make people the right
Speaker 1: people feel the right way, regardless of that if if
Speaker 1: the afformission is true or false, or damaging or hurtful,
Speaker 1: or even leads to violence, he just doesn't care. He
Speaker 1: just does not care. So Roger did start out supporting JFK,
Speaker 1: which basically everyone did. It's an interesting note nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: one that we do surveys like p and want to
Speaker 1: do surveys on like people's level of trust and government.
Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty one is the peak in American history of
Speaker 1: people trusting the federal government. So it's not weird that
Speaker 1: like everybody's on board with JFK in this election now.
Speaker 1: Roger Stone claims that his personal political ideology took a
Speaker 1: right word turn for the first time at age eleven
Speaker 1: when he read Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative.
Speaker 1: Barry Goldwater, for those of you who don't know, was
Speaker 1: the kind of the Trump before Trump I think he
Speaker 1: was a better at appealing to like intellectual conservatives than
Speaker 1: Donald Trump was. Um, but he uh, you know the
Speaker 1: reason that like you're not supposed to as a psychiatrist
Speaker 1: psychoanalyze the presidential candidate. It's called the Goldwater rule because
Speaker 1: like so many people thought he was crazy when he
Speaker 1: was running. So this guy's book is what like lights
Speaker 1: a spark in Roger Stone's brain at age eleven. The
Speaker 1: next year, he started volunteering for the Goldwater campaign at
Speaker 1: age twelve. So he's like a very young volunteer for
Speaker 1: this hard right presidential candidate. And while he's doing all that,
Speaker 1: he comes across a book called a text and looks
Speaker 1: at Lynden. Now, this bok was self published by a
Speaker 1: self described ultra conservative named j. Evett Haley. Haley argues
Speaker 1: that lb J was a lifelong criminal and a murderer.
Speaker 1: Roger Stone would go on to write his own book
Speaker 1: about lb j's role in the Kennedy assassination, accusing the
Speaker 1: former president of at least eight murders. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a nutsell book. Not that I don't think lb J
Speaker 1: had some people murdered because he was lb J. He
Speaker 1: definitely did. But this is you see the start of
Speaker 1: like two things that are going to be through lines
Speaker 1: in Roger Stone's life here. One of them is, of
Speaker 1: course hard right conservatism, and one of them is he
Speaker 1: really likes conspiracy theories, which is probably how he's going
Speaker 1: to wind up in the Info Wars orbit a little
Speaker 1: bit later in this story. So young Roger spent a
Speaker 1: lot of his childhood alone. In reading this period of
Speaker 1: time seems to have crystallized the ideology that would carry
Speaker 1: him through to the rest of his life. Quote from Roger, Well,
Speaker 1: you have to understand there were no kids my age,
Speaker 1: male or female, for twenty five miles. I suppose I
Speaker 1: could have thrown a football with my dad. But my
Speaker 1: old man left at five am and came back at
Speaker 1: nine pm. But he ate his supper and fell to bed,
Speaker 1: and he was with Greece from head to foot, and
Speaker 1: he never complained a day in his life. You have
Speaker 1: to amuse yourself. This is the way Roger tells a story.
Speaker 1: Um kind of how yeah, yeah, my dad never talked
Speaker 1: to me because he was working all the time. And
Speaker 1: this is good. He never complained that he didn't have
Speaker 1: time to raise a child. How can you tell that
Speaker 1: story and not be like, maybe that's not a healthy culture,
Speaker 1: that's not ideal. Anyway, Stone amused himself by engaging in
Speaker 1: politics as often as possible. He volunteered for the Goldwater
Speaker 1: campaign at age twelve, as I said, but he also
Speaker 1: stayed active in his school's political process. Here's the New
Speaker 1: York Times. As a junior then vice president of his
Speaker 1: Northern Westchester High school, he manipulated the outster of the
Speaker 1: president and his own succession running for re election as
Speaker 1: a senior. I left nothing to chance, he said. I
Speaker 1: built alliances and put all my serious challengers on my ticket.
Speaker 1: Then I recruited the most unpopular guy in the school
Speaker 1: to run against me. You think that's mean, No, that's smart.
Speaker 1: So yeah. When he was thirteen, Roger Stone started taking
Speaker 1: the train into New York City on weekends to volunteer
Speaker 1: for the mayoral campaign of William F. Buckley Jr. That
Speaker 1: campaign did not work out, but the experience of traveling
Speaker 1: from small town America into its largest city to work
Speaker 1: in politics had an impact on young Roger as well. Quote.
Speaker 1: The key thing I remember about Louis Borrow, his small
Speaker 1: hometown is that it was just across the border from
Speaker 1: New Canaan. So early on I saw myself as living
Speaker 1: in a kind of bridge between two cultures, the right
Speaker 1: white working class and the white upper class. Very specific
Speaker 1: about white there. Yeah, now, Stone believed both groups fundamentally
Speaker 1: hated the government, so they were natural bedfellows. Should all
Speaker 1: be able to get on board this whether or not
Speaker 1: we're poorer rich white people, but white people is pretty
Speaker 1: clearly who's traangling towards now. In nineteen seventy, Stone senior
Speaker 1: year of high school, he attended the Connecticut State Young
Speaker 1: Republican Convention. The Young Republicans were more conservative than the
Speaker 1: mainstream of the party at that time. They're kind of
Speaker 1: trying to push the party further to the right. Roger
Speaker 1: hadn't been able to afford to book a hotel room
Speaker 1: for his trip, so he'd showed up just sort of
Speaker 1: assuming he could meet someone and convince them to take
Speaker 1: care of it. Still his best friend at the time,
Speaker 1: a guy named Dolan introduced him to another teenage young
Speaker 1: Republican named Paul Manaford. Yeah, it really is, yeah, villain origins.
Speaker 1: Ye crazy, these young guys meeting. They're both wearing ill
Speaker 1: fitting suits. Nobody's got a lot of money. Yet I
Speaker 1: knew he was involved in politics really young, but my god,
Speaker 1: seven from the age of seven off, you know, his
Speaker 1: family had to be involved in this, like to kind
Speaker 1: of like directionally at least push him in a direction
Speaker 1: at seven years old. He doesn't talk about that, not
Speaker 1: that I found. So, yeah, I think you got one
Speaker 1: of two possibilities. Either his mom and dad were both
Speaker 1: way more political than he lets on and he was
Speaker 1: pushed in that direction, or he didn't have much supervision
Speaker 1: at all, and and way more white collar by the way, yeah,
Speaker 1: and way more white collar. Changes his story makes him
Speaker 1: a little bit less likable, especially if there's more money
Speaker 1: in the picture. And then he wants to talk about
Speaker 1: how many guys that work at oil rigs while he's
Speaker 1: in a farm miles wells miles and miles away from
Speaker 1: neighbors where his family is going. You should get into politics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there's holes in the stone story and making mythology.
Speaker 1: He's definitely making a mythology. And again this is the
Speaker 1: picture he wants to Maybe didn't do anything, maybe he
Speaker 1: was never involved in young, like I don't know. We're
Speaker 1: we're trusting Roger here, and it's well I've seen pictures
Speaker 1: of him as a young Republican. Yeah, this stuff is
Speaker 1: definitely real once we get to where he's in high
Speaker 1: school and he's with like man that stuff. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of people, but like when he's talking about being eleven,
Speaker 1: twelve years old and stuff like who knows, Yeah, this
Speaker 1: might just be the image he wants to sure you
Speaker 1: know anyway. Uh, Here's how The Washington Post wrote about
Speaker 1: the first meeting of Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna say, the greatest friendship of all time. Hey, kid,
Speaker 1: how you doing? Stone recalled Manafort, saying, before getting down
Speaker 1: to sessing him out, why are you supporting Weaker? Manafort
Speaker 1: was referring to low a Weaker, a moderate Republican candidate
Speaker 1: for U S. Senator. Manafort clearly was testing the kid,
Speaker 1: you think I give a funk about Weaker? I'm here
Speaker 1: to elect Mescal, Stone shot back, meaning Thomas Mescal, a
Speaker 1: conservative gubernatorial candidate admired by youthful Republicans. So that's like
Speaker 1: how they get started as like Maniforts like you like
Speaker 1: this fucking rhino Republican in name only and only in
Speaker 1: Stones like no, I only like the crazy people like,
Speaker 1: that's where I want to go is like the furthest
Speaker 1: right we can possibly be. Yeah. So Roger Stone and
Speaker 1: Paul Manafort were instant buddies and would be not quite
Speaker 1: inseparable but frequent collaborators over the next like thirty some
Speaker 1: odd years. How old were they at this point? They
Speaker 1: would have been like seventeen eighteen. They're just just babies.
Speaker 1: Their babies be at their personalities held firm. I have
Speaker 1: too strong opinions here. One of them is that you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be able to join the military unless you're thirty,
Speaker 1: and the others that you shouldn't be allowed to participate
Speaker 1: in any kind of politics until you're thirty. I like
Speaker 1: it a lot. You start doing drugs when you're twenty
Speaker 1: one a man? Yeah, yeah, let's give them nine years
Speaker 1: of experimenting without ingredients. You know what I mean? To
Speaker 1: make people make these huge moral decisions before they've lived life.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right. You look at the stuff Been Shapiro
Speaker 1: is writing when he's seventeen. He's like advocating war crimes
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. It's like, don't let a seventeen year old
Speaker 1: right about politics. Do you know how funked up? That
Speaker 1: it's yeah. I mean, that's how we get Paul Manafort
Speaker 1: and Roger Stone. So in addition to the Young Republicans,
Speaker 1: Stone joined the Teenage Republicans, the College Republicans, and Young
Speaker 1: Americans for Freedom. I might have noticed a theme there.
Speaker 1: He became tightly wound up in Republican Party politics, enough
Speaker 1: so that in nineteen seventy two, the year of President
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon's re election campaign, nineteen year old Roger Stone
Speaker 1: was selected to be one of Nixon's henchmen. Now Stone
Speaker 1: was the youngest member of the committee to re elect
Speaker 1: the president, literally known by the acronym CREEP, which does
Speaker 1: nobody like checked on this stuff Nixon just as like
Speaker 1: sight of yeah, create that's good, that's what we call it,
Speaker 1: go commit crimes. Stone recommended that creepire a guy named
Speaker 1: Theodore Brill, who was a college classmate and friend of his.
Speaker 1: He recommended that Creep pay Brill hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 1: to spy on radical groups. Stone claims that his work
Speaker 1: for CREEP was all kids stuff, none of which was
Speaker 1: illegal at the time, and all of which would have
Speaker 1: been done with or without him. Unfortunately for Roger Stone,
Speaker 1: but fortunately for the concept of truth. The FBI was
Speaker 1: keeping tabs on him back then too. There exists on
Speaker 1: this hellish Internet of ours a website called Property of
Speaker 1: the People. They host government documents retrieved by Foyer requests
Speaker 1: and the like. They have a super fun article titled
Speaker 1: FBI Documents on Roger Stone Reveal Sabotage, espionage, and the
Speaker 1: life of a serial bagman. Oh my god, I'm going
Speaker 1: into an Internet death spiral right after this episode. It's
Speaker 1: a great website. Yeah, well, check him out, please do. Now.
Speaker 1: My favorite thing about that title is that Roger worked
Speaker 1: for Nixon as a literal bagman, at one point taking
Speaker 1: a sack containing a jar of money to donate on
Speaker 1: behalf of Republican presidential candidate Paul McCloskey to the Young
Speaker 1: Socialist Yeah, yeah, just a jar of change in a sack.
Speaker 1: So he donates on behalf of this Republican presidential canon
Speaker 1: at Paul McCloskey to the Young Socialist Association. Stone claimed
Speaker 1: that he was the Young Socialist Association's treasurer. Now this
Speaker 1: was all a lie, obviously designed to make McCloskey look
Speaker 1: bad and torpedo his chances of primarying Nixon. The original
Speaker 1: FBI documents about this dirty tricker interesting because they give
Speaker 1: us some insight into the precise nature of young Roger
Speaker 1: Stone's moral compass. Quote. Stone met with Porter in his
Speaker 1: office at Creep, where Porter asked him if he would
Speaker 1: be willing to travel to Manchester to make a cash
Speaker 1: contribution to the McCloskey campaign headquarters. Porter wanted Stone to
Speaker 1: disguise himself as a member of the gay liberation movement
Speaker 1: when making this contribution. Stone flatly rejected this proposal. However,
Speaker 1: he concurred with the basic theme of this tactic. So
Speaker 1: basically that's Roger Stone's line at age nineteen, because I
Speaker 1: I'll pretend to be a young socialist but not a
Speaker 1: member of the gay liberal I mean, you see the pattern, right,
Speaker 1: you see the pattern, Like from such a young age,
Speaker 1: he's like, I see the power of disinformation. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then forward a decade later and he's still doing the
Speaker 1: same He's still doing the same thing, doing the same ship.
Speaker 1: Did you ever see Seven Up, the British documentary. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: It was like one of the first reality shows and
Speaker 1: they interviewed kids at seven years old, and then at fourteen,
Speaker 1: and then at every seven years Now they're in their sixties.
Speaker 1: They've been doing it the whole time. But it was
Speaker 1: a study on social classes. And the interesting thing they
Speaker 1: found is when wealthy kids were seven years old and
Speaker 1: they asked him what do you want to be? They
Speaker 1: were really specific. They're like, I'm going to Cambridge, I'm
Speaker 1: being a barrister, blah blah blah and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: And they did whereas the kids and the poor neigh
Speaker 1: birds were like, I'm going to be a spaceman yeah,
Speaker 1: or like I'm gonna be a truck I don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm gonna be like. So he's one of those
Speaker 1: kids where they knew at such an early age they
Speaker 1: were just and he doesn't pick I want to be
Speaker 1: in politics. He picks I want to be a dirty
Speaker 1: tricks guy in politics, Like I want to be like
Speaker 1: the filthiest version of a political guy. It's remarkable that
Speaker 1: that's his only ambition in life ever. Now, a researcher
Speaker 1: named Emma best Uh found ten separate document releases from
Speaker 1: the FBI, all of which mentioned roger Stone. According to
Speaker 1: Property of the People's Rite up quote, the documents to tail,
Speaker 1: roger Stone's role was a bagman for the Nixon campaign,
Speaker 1: in which he funneled over twenty five thou dollars equivalent
Speaker 1: to a hundred fifty thousand dollars in twenty eighteen to
Speaker 1: fund political intelligence gathering and other dirty tricks, including mole
Speaker 1: embedding and a mysterious payment related to the Watergate break in.
Speaker 1: The documents include a copy of the FBI's interview with Stone,
Speaker 1: as well as other statements to the Bureau about Stone
Speaker 1: and Jason Renier, the alias Stone used for his anti
Speaker 1: Democratic spy operations. So Stone paid another operative the modern
Speaker 1: equivalent of sixty grand to surveillance sabotage the campaigns of
Speaker 1: Nixon's Democratic rivals. After the Watergate break ins, he put
Speaker 1: together a payment of almost a hundred grand and modern
Speaker 1: dollars for an oil executive and Nixon fundraiser named Darius Keaton.
Speaker 1: Far from being minor acts of political mouthfeasance as Stone
Speaker 1: sort of presented them, Roger Stone seems to have been
Speaker 1: an enthusiastic and prolific dirty trickster, happy to do almost
Speaker 1: anything for Richard Nixon. Quote in one case, Stone sent
Speaker 1: two Democrats invitations to a non existent primary campaign breakfast
Speaker 1: and another Stone directed Democratic campaign literature intended for the
Speaker 1: black community to be sent to union workers, and literature
Speaker 1: intended for union workers to be sent to the black community.
Speaker 1: And he had another stone saw to it that phone
Speaker 1: lines used by a Democratic primary campaign were tampered with.
Speaker 1: This resulted in Democratic failure to connect with many potential voters.
Speaker 1: Well other, uh so this is the way he works.
Speaker 1: This is the way he works at age nineteen. You
Speaker 1: know what's so interesting about him too, is he never
Speaker 1: as big as his ego got. For a guy whose
Speaker 1: dad never talked to him, right, he always looked to
Speaker 1: another man to please. Yeah. He never said I'm going
Speaker 1: to be president. No, he never chased it himself. He
Speaker 1: was always I'm gonna please dad. Yeah, he all. And
Speaker 1: he's always picked a bigger man Tolize, which for most
Speaker 1: of his life has been Nixon, a bigger than life man.
Speaker 1: And even now he imitates Nixon with the peace signs
Speaker 1: that he always throws up with his weird ass wanky arms.
Speaker 1: It seems like he's a case study for like a
Speaker 1: broken brain, like a father's son fracture. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: to get real here, this podcast Behind the Bastards, because
Speaker 1: just as well be called daddy issues. But almost a
Speaker 1: hundred percent of these guys had real fucked up times
Speaker 1: with their fathers, Like why don't they just strip like
Speaker 1: everybody else? You know, Roger Stone actually might have been
Speaker 1: able to do that. He's a bodybuilding self proclaimed Well no,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've seen I've seen shirtless picture him
Speaker 1: when he's young, he was reasonably swollen even even in
Speaker 1: his late forties, really fit looking guy. And if you
Speaker 1: see the modern pictures of his back tattoo, you can
Speaker 1: see in the building shoulders, he's got a really broad build.
Speaker 1: He could have he could have stripped, which is a
Speaker 1: noble and honest career. I just mean I worked out
Speaker 1: with real bodybuilders that called Jim. His cemeteries all off.
Speaker 1: He's got like baby calves and weird well on his
Speaker 1: face is weird faces, weird as hairs. Everything's weird. They
Speaker 1: all have weird hair. It's like Paul Manaford where spending
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars on suits that look like hundred
Speaker 1: dollar suits just to just to know that it's I
Speaker 1: don't know, they're all weird guys, And that's fine unless
Speaker 1: you're ruining the world, which case it's exactly yeah. Now.
Speaker 1: All the unfathomable shadiness of Richard Nixon's reelection campaign led
Speaker 1: to congressional hearings in nineteen seventy three. During those hearings,
Speaker 1: Roger Stone's secret identity as Jason Renier, young Socialist became public.
Speaker 1: Knowledge was also revealed that Stone had hired someone to
Speaker 1: spy on the McGovern campaign. At the time of the hearing,
Speaker 1: Stone had gotten a job on Bob Dole's staff. He
Speaker 1: was fired for this and seems to have taken the job.
Speaker 1: Losses a sign that a man of his temperament was
Speaker 1: better served by working as a consultant than working for
Speaker 1: the government. In a two thousand and eight interview with
Speaker 1: The New Yorker titled The Dirty Trickster, Stone reminisced about
Speaker 1: his time with Creep and justified his actions by saying
Speaker 1: the Democrats were weak, we were strong. He was, by
Speaker 1: the way, the youngest person caught up in the Watergate
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, which is a They had him on
Speaker 1: one of the charts in the court show that he
Speaker 1: had taken money. Yeah yeah, that's how he starts his career.
Speaker 1: So in the mid nineteen seventies, after Nixon's impeachment, the
Speaker 1: Republican Party was most assuredly not strong. Uh Stone seems
Speaker 1: to have elected not to waste his time on the
Speaker 1: doomed presidency of Gerald Ford, History's greatest monster. Instead, he
Speaker 1: worked to insinuate himself ever deeper into the right wing
Speaker 1: organizations that clustered around the GOP. Paul Manaford, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, made the error of backing Gerald Ford in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy six elections. When Ford lost, it did
Speaker 1: serious damage to Manaford's reputation as a political strategist. Prior
Speaker 1: to Ford's lost, he'd been the clear prick for president
Speaker 1: of the Young Republicans. I'm glad that you did. You
Speaker 1: know what that works? Yeah, yeah, no, it's yeah. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna talk about what happens after Gerald
Speaker 1: Ford's fall from grace is the wrong word. I don't
Speaker 1: think he was ever quite there. Yeah, well, we'll get
Speaker 1: into that. But first, are you a fan of some
Speaker 1: products service or two? Sure? Well that's what is happening. Now,
Speaker 1: let's pay the bills adds time. We're back. We just
Speaker 1: uh produced some products and serviced to few services. I'm
Speaker 1: feeling good. We're all ready to dive back in here.
Speaker 1: I love the economical energy. It's perfect. Man, I'm I
Speaker 1: got I got three things to say about economics. Let's
Speaker 1: get back to this podcast. So, with Gerald Ford's fall,
Speaker 1: Manfort was suddenly persona on grata amongst the Young Republican intelligencia,
Speaker 1: whatever you wanna call him, showing either a surprising amount
Speaker 1: of loyalty to his friend or just confidence that Manafort
Speaker 1: would eventually wind up on top. Roger Stone worked with
Speaker 1: Congressional aid Charlie Black on a scheme. Stone ran for
Speaker 1: president of the Young Republicans, winning and basically acting as
Speaker 1: a stand in for Paul Manafort to preserve his access
Speaker 1: to the halls of power. So you see Roger Stone
Speaker 1: basically agreeing to become a figurehead leader of this party
Speaker 1: so that Paul Manafort can continue to have influence, which
Speaker 1: is you don't run into a lot of things that
Speaker 1: Roger Stone doing something for someone else. It's so true.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting his career. There's been so many times
Speaker 1: where he's been fired but kept as an advisor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so outside of all the trickster stuff, he really is
Speaker 1: a legit political strategist. Well, that is actually the question
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to answer over the course of both
Speaker 1: parts of this podcast is whether or not he's actually
Speaker 1: any good Because it's kind of a mystery. He certainly
Speaker 1: has managed to stay in contact to a lot of
Speaker 1: powerful people over the years, the question of whether or
Speaker 1: not he actually did very much is really hard to answer.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna we're gonna dig into that here. So Manafort,
Speaker 1: Black and Stone all worked on Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: presidential campaign. Roger Stone managed the Northeast United States and
Speaker 1: earned a claim for successfully turning much of that region
Speaker 1: against the Democratic Party during that election. He did so
Speaker 1: by appealing to groups who were committed Democratic voters, black
Speaker 1: and Hispanic people, Jewish people, and Catholics. Stone had stayed
Speaker 1: in touch with Richard Nixon because he just loved the
Speaker 1: guy so much and he was success slip, bringing the
Speaker 1: former president and definite criminal in as a strategist for
Speaker 1: the Reagan campaign. Nix And is purported to have put
Speaker 1: together the Ohio Strategy, which is less impressive than it sounds.
Speaker 1: It boiled down to spending a shipload of money in
Speaker 1: Ohio for its twenty five electoral votes. Stone would later
Speaker 1: make a big deal out of this essentially as a
Speaker 1: way of reinforcing his reputation as a political kingmaker. But
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan won forty nine states in that election, so
Speaker 1: it's kind of doubtful that the Ohio strategy and specific
Speaker 1: did that much. He didn't really need Ohio. It was
Speaker 1: kind of a blowout. Still, Roger Stone had performed well
Speaker 1: in a winning presidential campaign. He was offered a sweet
Speaker 1: gig in the Reagan administration but turned it down, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: I would never take a job in government. I'm interested
Speaker 1: in politics. That's what pieces of ships say. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty Roger Stone and his first as the game
Speaker 1: we think that they play is not the game that
Speaker 1: we recognize now. It's not about beliefs. It's about winning
Speaker 1: and preserving access to power and money and stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: And I'm sure every one of them. Sure Roger one
Speaker 1: or two things he believes in. But to call him
Speaker 1: like ideologically or republican or anything else. Now he believes
Speaker 1: Roger Stone should be influential libertarian. Now he's been claiming
Speaker 1: that for a while fairness, and that is a vague
Speaker 1: enough ideology that I might say that's fair for Roger Stone.
Speaker 1: It's it's open ended enough, like, yeah, you probably are.
Speaker 1: Roger probably also the one party that hasn't rejected him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that need him more than any other party. Probably, No,
Speaker 1: I mean they he and John McAfee could make a
Speaker 1: powerful presidential combo. McAfee Stone pulled enough hair out of
Speaker 1: my head in the last two years combined twitty indictments
Speaker 1: between us. I don't need more nightmares. Oh god, it's
Speaker 1: it's crazy that that would almost be an upgrade, you know,
Speaker 1: you know what it would be. It would be at
Speaker 1: least I'm pretty sure they can both spell. We don't
Speaker 1: need to get political in this political podcast about politics. Remember,
Speaker 1: we're not interested in government, We're interested in Wait, you
Speaker 1: know what Roger Stone said. Trump doesn't govern. He's still campaigning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he's he's never stopped campaigning. Although, in a
Speaker 1: little bit of fairness, that's kind of how being president
Speaker 1: works now, like you're always running until I mean he's done,
Speaker 1: I've seen Yeah, but I feel like it just gets
Speaker 1: escalated every single election, like the fundraising that starts the
Speaker 1: year after the election or anything like that. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to say about, you know, the compromises
Speaker 1: Obama made and the Affordable Care Act in order to
Speaker 1: not get a shipload of insurance industry money thrown against
Speaker 1: his campaign, in which is like at least more principled
Speaker 1: than anything Trump's done. But like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: gross problems in politics. Speaking of which, Roger Stone, it's
Speaker 1: a perfect In nineteen eighty, Roger Stone and his friends
Speaker 1: formed Black, Manifort and Stone, a lobbying organization Spy mag
Speaker 1: Zene would later declare the Torturer's lobby. You'll want to
Speaker 1: listen to our two partner on Paul Manafort if you're
Speaker 1: interested in that story. Because while Paul instantly abandoned Beltway
Speaker 1: politics to work for dictators, Roger State burrowed deep within
Speaker 1: the warm, cash rich bosom of the Republican Party. So
Speaker 1: Stone makes money off of these. We talk a lot
Speaker 1: in the Manifort episode. There's guys like Marcos Regime Mobutu
Speaker 1: says Seco, Uh and Zaire and Uh. There's a bunch
Speaker 1: of different dictators that Paul Manafort worked directly with during
Speaker 1: this period of time. Roger Stone is making profits off
Speaker 1: of that. And I'm sure he has some degree because
Speaker 1: they're having meetings regularly and stuff. So I'm sure, he
Speaker 1: has some input here, but it really is Manafort who's
Speaker 1: doing the direct work with these dictators, and Stone and
Speaker 1: Black are more involved in domestic politics in the United States.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so he's profiting off of murderers, but he's
Speaker 1: not working with them to the same extent that Manafort is.
Speaker 1: For whatever it's worth, Manafort is an objectively worse person.
Speaker 1: Roger Stone, now Rogerstone, became known during the nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: as the gatekeeper to Richard Nixon, which is a debatable honor.
Speaker 1: He hosted a series of dinner parties and interviews with
Speaker 1: a now elder statesman right up until the president's death
Speaker 1: in nine In that New Yorker interview, Roger made what
Speaker 1: I think is an unintentionally hilarious statement, quote the reason
Speaker 1: I'm a Nixon it is because of his indestructibility and resilience.
Speaker 1: He never quit. His whole career was all built around
Speaker 1: his personal resentment of elitism. He was the poor me syndrome.
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy's father bought him his house seat, his
Speaker 1: Senate seat in the presidency. No one bought Nixon anything.
Speaker 1: Nixon resented that. He was very class conscious. He identified
Speaker 1: with the people who wait TV dinners watched Lawrence Welk
Speaker 1: and loved their country. I love this because literally the
Speaker 1: most famous thing Nixon did was quit being president exactly
Speaker 1: Nixon quit and also saying no one ever bought him
Speaker 1: anything when it was your job to buy people for
Speaker 1: Nixon during the Reaction campaign. That was literally what you did, Roger.
Speaker 1: And isn't he like the creator of the superpacks, like
Speaker 1: he's one of the he's he's one of the of
Speaker 1: that and of lobbying, like black Man Offorton Stone was
Speaker 1: the first really modern lobbying first made a cancer in
Speaker 1: our political system because in addition to helping dictators lobby
Speaker 1: the US government for foreign aid, they kind of invented
Speaker 1: the idea of working with both sides and an election,
Speaker 1: so well, no matter who wins, we've got someone who
Speaker 1: we can then sell access to. Like yeah, we go
Speaker 1: into a lot of detail about in the Maniford podcast
Speaker 1: Anti American. It's anti everything but the couple of dozen
Speaker 1: people who make money off of it. I don't know
Speaker 1: why the Republican Party attacked so many people and who
Speaker 1: isn't isn't made in America? But the Democratic Party doesn't
Speaker 1: enough attack people who isn't made of America. It's so
Speaker 1: un American what he's doing. It's against the policies of
Speaker 1: the people that founded this country. Well, I mean, the
Speaker 1: only correction I might say is that, like, it's what
Speaker 1: you and I don't want to be American, but there's
Speaker 1: a lot of people who want it to be American.
Speaker 1: And that's like the great conflict of our time. Well,
Speaker 1: if all of us voted, I think they vote more
Speaker 1: like us the number. I think the numbers are on
Speaker 1: our Democratic side. I would agree, but taught us the
Speaker 1: numbers ain't nearly everything they ought to be. Like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And Roger Stone is probably one of those people who,
Speaker 1: like Mitch McConnell, does not want there to be a
Speaker 1: federal voting holiday. Yeah. Amen, you're easy terrified of that.
Speaker 1: God people vote. Yeah yeah. I also love Roger Stone's
Speaker 1: embrace of like how down to earth Nixon is, considering
Speaker 1: that Roger Stone is a man so infamous for his
Speaker 1: love of expensive clothing that he calls suspenders braces, which dude, dude,
Speaker 1: you know, he swept chimneys when he was five. He's British.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I got a whole rant about waistcoats
Speaker 1: and vests. But that's not this is not the place
Speaker 1: for that. By Roger Stone's reputation as a serious politic
Speaker 1: players seemed to be fairly solid. I found a New
Speaker 1: Republic article from December of that year that referred to
Speaker 1: him as the Enfant terrible of Northeastern politics. Yeah uh quote.
Speaker 1: Stone is widely credited with making the difference in Thomas
Speaker 1: Keane's narrow victory in the nineteen eighty one New Jersey
Speaker 1: governor's race. This was achieved by portraying the liberal Republican
Speaker 1: contender as a conservative supply cider. Stone convinced Keene to
Speaker 1: campaign on the promise of a tax cut on selected
Speaker 1: keen raised taxes. He also convinced prominent friends like Kemp
Speaker 1: to do television spots for Keene, assuring him victory and
Speaker 1: the Republican primary. I don't advocate candidates changing their positions,
Speaker 1: just trimming their sales, Stone says, I do have principles.
Speaker 1: That sounds like Roger now. Stone bragg that he had
Speaker 1: created a plan to basically build a permanent Republican majority
Speaker 1: in New Jersey back in Night five. You may note
Speaker 1: that that did not work out. Entirely. But as the
Speaker 1: New Republic article made clear, Stone's greatest and perhaps only
Speaker 1: real gift was in dropping negative dirt on his rivals.
Speaker 1: To the press, quote, he is an expert at dropping
Speaker 1: stuff unfavorable to his opponents as a political writer who
Speaker 1: has used and been used by Stone for years, and
Speaker 1: he is very accurate. You don't last long at that
Speaker 1: game if you leak bullshit. So this does seem to
Speaker 1: be one of the through lines of his career that, like,
Speaker 1: outside of the dirty tricks and stuff, the thing he's
Speaker 1: really good at is figuring out dirt on people and
Speaker 1: getting it to the right person you could. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's the intel inside of the Trump campaign. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a Penteum processor. All the stuff he says is
Speaker 1: a stuff. Trump's repeat the Berther thing that was Roger Stone,
Speaker 1: Well it was Jerome Corsi who was a Roger Stone contact.
Speaker 1: Didn't Roger Stone advise Trump to use that language? It's possible,
Speaker 1: I mean very he definitely what we'll get into some
Speaker 1: more later about like what he did with Trump, But
Speaker 1: like one of the guys really responsible for kicking off
Speaker 1: the birth of thing was Jerome Corsi, who was probably
Speaker 1: Roger Stone's contact with Wiki leaks and who Roger Stone
Speaker 1: had a job at info wars and so it's very
Speaker 1: likely that that that that was one of the anyway,
Speaker 1: but it's also possible it all goes back to the
Speaker 1: same little jacuzzi. Yeah, it's eight or nine. It's a
Speaker 1: small all apartment in New York's worth. Yeah, so bizarre
Speaker 1: that are responsible for fucking this democracy. So yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really remarkable. Roger was not particularly loyal to the people
Speaker 1: he worked with, which is perhaps not surprising given Black
Speaker 1: Manafort and Stone's reputation for working both sides of the
Speaker 1: political aisle. In nineteen eighty four, he wound up working
Speaker 1: for Mary Mochurry in a New Jersey senatorial race. One
Speaker 1: of his colleagues recalled quote, Roger was characteristically bad mouthing
Speaker 1: his clients, saying she wasn't up to it. He was
Speaker 1: being paid to say she would do well, and already
Speaker 1: who was working to dissociate himself from her in Washington Now.
Speaker 1: The article noted that Stone was also famous in the
Speaker 1: belt Way for bragging about the work he'd done for
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon's campaign. David Keene, a lawyer and lobbyists said quote,
Speaker 1: Roger likes the aura of having done something bad in
Speaker 1: his past. You get the feeling that he's sorry it
Speaker 1: was so minor. He likes to say, watch me, I'm
Speaker 1: a tough guys. One of the truer things I've run
Speaker 1: into someone saying about Roger Stone. In nineteen eight six,
Speaker 1: during another interview, Roger Stone listed Roy Cohne, Richard Nixon,
Speaker 1: and the Duke of Windsor as his biggest political idols. Now,
Speaker 1: roy Cone was a former McCarthy aid and famed political
Speaker 1: dirty trickster himself. The Duke of Windsor was a literal Nazi.
Speaker 1: It was roy Cone who would later proved to be
Speaker 1: Roger stones liaison the infamy. While working for President Reagan's
Speaker 1: reelection campaign, Roger was given roy Cone's contact information on
Speaker 1: a list of President Reagan's friends in the city. Since
Speaker 1: virtually all of Ronald's friends were dead, and since Roger
Speaker 1: was a big Cone fan, he reached out to the
Speaker 1: elder Creepsman for some advice. What Cone told him would
Speaker 1: set into motion a series of events that have irrevocably
Speaker 1: altered the course of all life on this planet. Roy
Speaker 1: Cone told Roger, you should talk to this guy. Fred
Speaker 1: Trump and his son Donald now Trump had met Cone
Speaker 1: at a member's only Manhattan club called Creatively the Club
Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy three. According to Washington Monthly quote,
Speaker 1: he Trump asked Cone, the government has just filed suit
Speaker 1: against our company saying that we discriminated against blacks. What
Speaker 1: do you think I should do? Cone advised him to
Speaker 1: tell them to go to hell and fight the thing
Speaker 1: in court and let them prove you discriminated. So Donald
Speaker 1: had hired Cone to represent him, and Cone became something
Speaker 1: of a mentor to Trump as well. He taught the
Speaker 1: future president a number of things, including his lessons on
Speaker 1: legal conflict. Lessons like this, no matter what happens, no
Speaker 1: matter how deep in the muck, you get, claim victory
Speaker 1: and never admit defeat. Yeah. Now Stone met with Donald
Speaker 1: and wound up getting a hundred thousand dollars out of
Speaker 1: him for Ronald Reagan's reelection campaign. Christine Seymour, who worked
Speaker 1: for Cone as a switchboard operator, wrote in her notebook
Speaker 1: at the time about how Stone referred to Donald Trump quote,
Speaker 1: Roger did not like Donald Trump or his new house.
Speaker 1: Told me they were losers, but if Roy used them,
Speaker 1: he would too. So this depiction of events put forward
Speaker 1: by Washington Monthly is not consistent with other descriptions of
Speaker 1: the beginning of the Trump Stone relationship. Is one of
Speaker 1: the many things there's debate about. An NPR interview with
Speaker 1: Morgan Peemy or Paim, one of the directors of the
Speaker 1: documentary Get Me, Roger Stone, put forward this version of
Speaker 1: events instead. Quote. Roger was the very first person to
Speaker 1: suggest to Donald Trump that he should run for the
Speaker 1: presidency back in nineteen eight seven. Then he spent the
Speaker 1: next twenty nine years cultivating Trump's candidacy until he was
Speaker 1: ultimately triumphant. I think he believed from day one that
Speaker 1: Trump was a legitimate candidate. Now certainly Trump's previous flirtations
Speaker 1: with running for the president, it's hard to look at
Speaker 1: vis anything other than publicity stunts. But Roger was always
Speaker 1: dead serious about the effectiveness that Trump could convey as
Speaker 1: a candidate. Now Stone himself put forward this version of
Speaker 1: events as recently as two thousand sixteen, when he was
Speaker 1: interviewed on the floor of the Republican National Convention. Isn't
Speaker 1: true what people say, you convince him to run for presidents? Yes,
Speaker 1: you convince run for presidents. Started you were there. I've
Speaker 1: been trying to do I've been trying to get him
Speaker 1: to run for a long time. Try to get Hi
Speaker 1: run in eighty eight, try to get him run into
Speaker 1: two thousands, try to get a run in twty twelve.
Speaker 1: He could have bed Romney, although Romney got a long
Speaker 1: head start. Push that for a long time. I'm happy.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to say where the truth lies here.
Speaker 1: To my thoughts, I think the Cone switchboard operator it's
Speaker 1: probably closer to accurate that all this stuff about Roger
Speaker 1: Stone recognizing Donald was a perfect presidential candidate is a lie.
Speaker 1: It was kind of like everything else in his career,
Speaker 1: he just sort of went with things as they rolled in.
Speaker 1: Certainly in nineteen eighty four when he met Donald, I
Speaker 1: don't think he had much respect for the guy. And
Speaker 1: there's evidence that Trump didn't like him very much either
Speaker 1: until pretty recently. But we'll get into more of that
Speaker 1: later now. In nineteen ninety six, the National Inquirer published
Speaker 1: an expose on Roger Stone. Stone had been posting ads
Speaker 1: in a number of swingers magazines and websites. I heard
Speaker 1: about he and his wife, Yeah, yeah, yeah, he and
Speaker 1: his wife were looking for single men and couples to
Speaker 1: join them in group sex, don't describe himself as a bodybuilder.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of detail on Stone's love life that
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get into here because I don't
Speaker 1: really care. I don't think that's anybody's business, Like just
Speaker 1: that that they weren't like molesting kids or anything. They're
Speaker 1: just doing weird sex. That's fine. But the uproar overall
Speaker 1: this forced Roger Stone to retire from Bobdell's presidential campaign.
Speaker 1: Roger initially denied the rumors, claiming first that they'd been
Speaker 1: placed to frame him, and then that some help at
Speaker 1: his house, like basically like a cleaning lady or something
Speaker 1: had like leaked this stuff to the press too, you know,
Speaker 1: discredit him or whatever. But he later admitted that the
Speaker 1: ads were his and that he'd only denied them because
Speaker 1: his grandparents were still alive at the time. He cheerfully
Speaker 1: admitted from nine to being a libertarian and a libertine.
Speaker 1: In an interview about all this, He also said some
Speaker 1: very strange things about famous homosexual and AIDS Victim Roy
Speaker 1: Cohne quote. Roy was not gay. He was a man
Speaker 1: who liked having sex with men, gays, were weak, effeminate.
Speaker 1: He always seemed to have these young blonde boys around.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't discussed. He was interested in power and access.
Speaker 1: He told me his absolute goal was to die completely broken,
Speaker 1: owing millions to the I R S. He succeeded in that. Wow.
Speaker 1: I just want to note that Roger has reiterated several
Speaker 1: times that Roy Cone is his idol and the person
Speaker 1: he aspires to be, Like, did you think he's gay?
Speaker 1: I doubt that he's bisexual. Yeah, maybe maybe, uh, maybe
Speaker 1: he's dipping toe. It's such a bizarre I'm always fascinated
Speaker 1: by people who are hardcore Republicans, staunch Republicans who don't
Speaker 1: live the life at all. But then you go, okay,
Speaker 1: well he's just doing whatever he needs you to win. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it doesn't matter. You've got that staunch economic
Speaker 1: wing of the party. A lot of whom you know,
Speaker 1: are super socially like whatever. Like you can meet him
Speaker 1: at like a kinky eyes, wide shut funk party and
Speaker 1: never know that they're like supply side economics guys. You
Speaker 1: know what. It confused me because I thought he might
Speaker 1: have empathy. No, No, that's what a normal human being has,
Speaker 1: and it would be hard with someone with empathy to
Speaker 1: participate in in a gay lifestyle and then do things
Speaker 1: that hurt gay people. Well I don't. I don't know
Speaker 1: that Stone ever did, but that's certainly good criticism of
Speaker 1: roy kone because he was a big back of of
Speaker 1: the Reagans, which the worst presidents in history for gay people.
Speaker 1: You know, and uh Cone died in the AIDS epidemic. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but when we get back, we're gonna talk about Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's first presidential campaign and how Roger Stone helped make
Speaker 1: that a reality. But first, the only reality listeners of
Speaker 1: this podcast need is the reality of the wonderful products
Speaker 1: and services that support this program and or content module.
Speaker 1: We're back. So a little bit earlier, we were talking
Speaker 1: about sort of the competing theories about when Roger Stone
Speaker 1: wanted Donald Trump to run for election and the guy
Speaker 1: who did, to get me Roger Stone documentary was like
Speaker 1: he saw him as a serious candidate from from the beginning. Always,
Speaker 1: even though the first campaigns weren't all that serious, Roger
Speaker 1: believed in him. This story is why, I think that's bullshit.
Speaker 1: So in n Roger Stone got another chance to help
Speaker 1: a Republican presidential candidate and finally make use of his
Speaker 1: friend Donald Trump. That year, Pat Buchanan announced that he
Speaker 1: would be running for president under the Reform Party ticket.
Speaker 1: This worried Republicans because third party candidates are always scary.
Speaker 1: We're dealing there with at right now, with Schultz and
Speaker 1: the you know, the Democratic primaries and stuff. So Roger's
Speaker 1: strategy was to neutralize Pet Buchanan by using Donald Trump
Speaker 1: to run against him. From the left. Roger had Trump
Speaker 1: embraced gun control and universal healthcare, as well as accused
Speaker 1: Pat Buchanan of being a hitler lover, which is actually
Speaker 1: kind of fair. Trump dropped out soon after, but the
Speaker 1: campaign did its job. As the Weekly Standards Matt Labosh
Speaker 1: wrote a week in, Buchanan went on to help the
Speaker 1: Reformed Party implode, and Republicans suffered no real third party threat.
Speaker 1: So it does seem that in nine at least, Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was just a convenient tool for Roger Stone, not
Speaker 1: a serious presidential candidate. He represented a good way to
Speaker 1: deal with a third party candidate who might have threatened
Speaker 1: George W. Bush's election. Roger Stone would go on to
Speaker 1: play another major role in the election of the man
Speaker 1: the world would come to know as w Bush too,
Speaker 1: electric boogaloo and a literal war criminal. Uh Stone's first
Speaker 1: job to the Bush campaign was helping them win in Florida.
Speaker 1: He did this by buying advertising at a number of
Speaker 1: Spanish language radio stations. He in his Cuban American wife
Speaker 1: would show up and push a conspiracy theory quote from Roger.
Speaker 1: The idea we were putting out there was that this
Speaker 1: was a left wing power grab by Gore, the same
Speaker 1: way Fidel Castro did it in Cuba. We were very
Speaker 1: explicitly drawing this analogy al Gore to make it a
Speaker 1: violent power grab Algor the dictator. I have trouble imagining
Speaker 1: al Gore, like even shooting a three pointer, Like that's
Speaker 1: too aggressive for al Gore. Like I don't. Al Gore
Speaker 1: is such a like he's such a lover. I feel
Speaker 1: like he's just made to hug, Like he was born
Speaker 1: without bones. He's a real hugger. Like if a dog
Speaker 1: bit him, he wouldn't even pull his hand away. He
Speaker 1: would just would just be like al he would just
Speaker 1: be like, how you stretched my legs? This is a problem, Oh,
Speaker 1: al Gore, only you'd had any charisma at all. Poor guy,
Speaker 1: Poor guy, poor guy, who would have really helped us
Speaker 1: avoid some problems. Now, during the infamous two thousand election recount,
Speaker 1: Roger Stone claims to have been the organizer of the
Speaker 1: infamous Brooks Brothers riot. This was essentially a bunch of
Speaker 1: Republican operatives swarming South Florida and Miami to protest the
Speaker 1: ongoing recounts. It's called the Brooks Brothers Riot because they
Speaker 1: all wore Brooks Brothers suits. Here's that New Yorker article quote.
Speaker 1: At one point on November twenty two, Stone said he
Speaker 1: heard from an ally in the building that Gore supporters
Speaker 1: were trying to remove some ballots from the counting room.
Speaker 1: One of my pimply faced contacts said two commissioners have
Speaker 1: taken two or three hundred ballots to the elevator. Stone said,
Speaker 1: I said, okay, follow them. Half you guys go on
Speaker 1: the elevator and half go in the stairs. Everyone got
Speaker 1: sucked up in this. They were trying to keep the
Speaker 1: doors from being closed. Meanwhile, they were trying to take
Speaker 1: the rest of the ballots into a back room with
Speaker 1: no windows. I told our guys to stop them. Don't
Speaker 1: let them close that door. They're trying to keep the
Speaker 1: door from being closed. There was a lot of screaming
Speaker 1: and yelling. In fact, the New Yorker notes the Gore
Speaker 1: official and the elevator Joe Geller was carrying a single
Speaker 1: sample ballot. Now, the dual scenes of chaos, both inside
Speaker 1: and outside the building prompted the recount officials to stop
Speaker 1: their work. The recount in Miami was never restarted, depriving
Speaker 1: Gore of his best chance to catch up in overall
Speaker 1: state tally. So, the Brooks Brothers riot is pretty consistently
Speaker 1: across the board, considered an important fact in Bush's winning election.
Speaker 1: You know, didn't they eventually get to the numbers like
Speaker 1: months after people prove the Gore won the popular vote.
Speaker 1: Never entirely, but it's pretty like yeah, basically in essence. Now,
Speaker 1: Brad Blakeman, a lobbyist and political consultant for the Bush campaign,
Speaker 1: claims that Roger Stone is lying about his involvement in this.
Speaker 1: You know, obviously the Brooks Brothers ryan happened, But Blakeman says,
Speaker 1: Rogers just taking credit for something he didn't do. Do
Speaker 1: you think he'd be sued for that? Like, you know,
Speaker 1: that's not it should be. That's his whole career. Is
Speaker 1: that not illegal? The Roger Stone story. You interfered with
Speaker 1: the democratic process. You interfered with a voting process. I
Speaker 1: have some issues with the Get Me Roger Stone documentary,
Speaker 1: and I do think a better title would have been
Speaker 1: is that not illegal? Is that really? That's what? Stop
Speaker 1: for a second every time? How does he know the
Speaker 1: law better than I don't think he does. I think
Speaker 1: he's gotten lucky enough in the past that because I know,
Speaker 1: maybe he was illegal what he was doing, but like
Speaker 1: nobody charged him with it, and like I think he's
Speaker 1: he It's called the first mover advantage in essence, like
Speaker 1: if you're willing to take that, you've got like two
Speaker 1: animals and there's like a food resource in between them.
Speaker 1: The animal that's most likely to go for it. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes he might get challenged by the other animal and
Speaker 1: he might get beaten up, but it's more likely that
Speaker 1: that other animal will back off and not want to
Speaker 1: have a fight, and so it's good to just try
Speaker 1: and lunge for the food, which Roger Stone always does. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Brad Blakeman says, Uh claims he was the guy
Speaker 1: in charge of the Brooks Brothers riot and says quote,
Speaker 1: Roger did not have a role that I know of.
Speaker 1: His wife may have been on the radio, but I
Speaker 1: never saw or heard of him, which again reinforces one
Speaker 1: of the most common patterns when you talk about the
Speaker 1: life of Roger Stone. It's really hard to tell if
Speaker 1: he's a legitimately influential operator or just a prolific liar.
Speaker 1: I doubt most of the people who have hired him
Speaker 1: can truly tell you. Ed Rowland's former political director for
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan, told The New Yorker and Too thousand eight,
Speaker 1: Roger was a fringe player around town. He always had
Speaker 1: this reputation of being a guy who exaggerated things, who
Speaker 1: pretended he did things. Roger was never on Nixon's staff,
Speaker 1: was never on the White House staff. I don't think
Speaker 1: you'll find anyone in the business who trusts him. Roger
Speaker 1: was always a little rat. In a two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight interview, Donald Trump echoed that sentiment. Roger is a
Speaker 1: stone cold loser. He always tries taking credit for things
Speaker 1: he never did. Everyone who writes or talks about Roger
Speaker 1: Stone winds up dealing with this issue. Eventually, no one
Speaker 1: can seem to agree on whether or not he's any
Speaker 1: good at his job. Even people who's talk about him
Speaker 1: being good at his job at one point, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about him being a liar and a fraud at other points.
Speaker 1: I found one Washington Post article that noted quote in
Speaker 1: a Post profile. One Republican luminary called him the party's
Speaker 1: single best consultant, and another dismissed him as one of
Speaker 1: the great all time frauds of American politics. Sure, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's hard to praise someone who hurt you, and it
Speaker 1: might be the you know what I mean, Like, I
Speaker 1: think there's a part of it too. There's a lot
Speaker 1: going on all these guys. I mean, there's so many
Speaker 1: times where something has happened in American politics and in history.
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's crazy, it's fraudulent, it's wrong, it's corrupt.
Speaker 1: And there he is. Yeah, it's always there, and it's
Speaker 1: it's a lot harder with like with Paul Manaford. You've
Speaker 1: got a bunch of cases where like, uh, there's this
Speaker 1: this war going on. Uh, I forget the name of
Speaker 1: the dictator, but there's this war going on in like
Speaker 1: Central Africa, and like the USSR is backing one side
Speaker 1: in the US is backing another side, and then the
Speaker 1: USSR pulls their military aid and everyone's like, Okay, the
Speaker 1: civil war is going to end, and these guys, Jonah
Speaker 1: Savimbi is the guy who was backing, and these guys
Speaker 1: are gonna stop. And then Manafort goes directly to the
Speaker 1: federal government and lobbies and gets Savimbi to continue having
Speaker 1: weapons for another ten years and half a million more
Speaker 1: people dying. Okay, that's a direct thing. Paul Manafort did
Speaker 1: undeniably extended the length of that war by his lobbying.
Speaker 1: It's never that clear with Roger Stone. There's always multiple people.
Speaker 1: So that's part of the thing that's difficult, is like
Speaker 1: Roger Stone because of just the kind of dirty tricks
Speaker 1: he gets up to, is a lot slippery here um,
Speaker 1: or at least he was until recently. So that is
Speaker 1: where we're going to leave off for today. When I
Speaker 1: come back, we will be talking about some things that
Speaker 1: are inarguable about Roger Stone. Finally, his foundational role in
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign and all of his many, many, many
Speaker 1: dumb crimes. So Thursday, the day after tomorrow, No, Sophie,
Speaker 1: we don't edit this podcast. What is time? You can't
Speaker 1: edit audio that's the most basic rule of this. Are
Speaker 1: you doing the lift thing? All right? Listeners, I am
Speaker 1: the bestard this week because I made Sophie sad. So
Speaker 1: buy a T shirt on te Public. It's the only
Speaker 1: thing that brings your joy is our T shirt sales.
Speaker 1: T Public public a sound bite that goes with tea public.
Speaker 1: That's our sound bite. Now there you go. You can
Speaker 1: you feel free anytime? Just public to me? Are you
Speaker 1: want to plug your plugables before we we cack out
Speaker 1: for the next couple of minutes. Sure? If you guys
Speaker 1: are looking for live comedy, do you want to see it?
Speaker 1: Arab American who grew up in East l A throwing
Speaker 1: his thoughts out. You can follow me at tamer Katan
Speaker 1: dot com for all my shows, at tamer cat on
Speaker 1: Instagram and then um of course, I'm the creator a
Speaker 1: host of my podcast called They Tried to Bury Us
Speaker 1: Along with My Mom, where we mean a new immigrant
Speaker 1: every weekend hear their American origin story. Check out They
Speaker 1: Try to Bury Us. Check out Tamar on Twitter. You
Speaker 1: can find this podcast on the Internet and all of
Speaker 1: its sources. I'm behind the Bastards dot com. You can
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter and the Graham, as the kids
Speaker 1: call it these days. At at Bastards Pod, I have
Speaker 1: a book called A Brief History of Ice, where I
Speaker 1: hurt my friends with dangerous drugs until Thursday. Roger Stone