The office of the Speaker of the House is officially vacant with the Brave 21 down to a reformed Brave 8. Congressman Matt Gaetz, who led the way to the removal of Kevin McCarthy, is the first Speaker in history to be voted out of the Speakership. And history made his well in a Manhattan courtroom where President Trump, for a second straight day, defended himself from the Marxist Dems' political persecution.
00:12:22.520He's certainly about law and order and the safety and security of our neighborhoods.
00:12:28.040He has certainly, I think, surrounded the issue of energy independence.
00:12:33.720As you know, Lou, every president, Republican and Democrat in our lifetimes promised us this and they never delivered it.
00:12:42.900We were still going hat in hand to Saudi Arabia or to Russia or to Venezuela to try to get oil.
00:12:50.400Those days ended with Donald Trump and they rebegan with Joe Biden.
00:12:55.380You don't have to be a genius to know that when you turn off the oil pipelines and you deny all permits going forward for the drilling of natural oil and gas,
00:13:06.560and you close down those areas in the Antarctic, which are energy rich,
00:13:12.140that you're going to drive gas prices beyond the cost or I should say the reach of the average driver,
00:13:19.360whether it's commercial or personal in this country.
00:15:01.160I mean, Ron DeSantis would be managing a McDonald's someplace right now if it weren't for Donald Trump.
00:15:07.040He was an undistinguished member of Congress.
00:15:09.600He was a long shot, to say the least, for governor.
00:15:13.140The Republican establishment in Florida had decided on another candidate who had a 35 plus lead.
00:15:21.080It is only through the good graces of Donald Trump and a tweeted endorsement and then dogged campaigning in the closing weeks of that general election in 2018 that Ron DeSantis rose to national national prominence.
00:15:35.640So this act of attacking Trump now smacks to me of treachery, of disloyalty.
00:15:43.680There was a time when I thought voters, even though I cared about it and I certainly knew Trump cared about it, I didn't think voters cared about it.
00:15:51.640I turned out to be wrong about that, certainly here in the state of Florida.
00:15:57.320The other thing I guess I would say is that I've now begun to see this trend of Joe Biden using soundbites of Ron DeSantis in his TV commercials to attack Donald Trump.
00:16:10.440So to me, that demonstrates that this contest, which really should be called, is actually going to begin to hurt the party.
00:16:20.540I'm not sure it will hurt Trump, but it will certainly hurt the party overall.
00:16:24.720And that debate the other night, I mean, look, like you, Lou, I'm a junkie.
00:16:38.940It was like a junior high school shouting match.
00:16:42.220Candidates shouting over each other, leveling personal insults.
00:16:46.500I mean, I actually saw Senator Tim Scott, who I kind of like, attacking former governor, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, who I did not like, over the curtains at the UN mission of the United States in New York.
00:17:02.300Talk about mundane when when there are three hundred and seventy thousand homeless veterans in the country, when the average person cannot afford groceries, when there are at this point, two hundred and thirty five thousand, I think, illegals pouring into the country unchecked.
00:17:20.720You guys are arguing about the curtains at the UN, please.
00:17:26.720Yeah. And and beneath this president, President Trump, who did is again, I'm in absolute concurrence.
00:17:34.980And I'm so glad we agree on this, made the decision not to participate, a great decision and a great leader showing, again, why he is 51 points ahead.
00:17:46.780We're going to talk about each one of these candidates, if we may, Roger, when we come back.
00:17:51.100I'd like to get your judgment on each of the magnificent seven or whatever you might want to call them.
00:17:58.120I will be hyperbolic in my praise of them until we hear your critique and I will adjust accordingly.
00:18:04.000We'll be right back with a great Roger Stone.
00:18:48.840I mean, I've always thought, certainly back to the days of Reagan, that likability was an extraordinarily important quality in a candidate regardless of their issue positions.
00:19:02.380I think likability was one of the great strengths of Reagan.
00:19:05.280I think it is one of the great strengths of Trump.
00:19:07.440And I think the greatest single problem that Governor DeSantis, who I think most people would say to the extent that there is anyone in second place in this race, although even that varies from state to state.
00:19:40.700His his responses all seem to me to be canned, rehearsed, practiced in front of a mirror.
00:19:47.340There's nothing genuine or most importantly, nothing entertaining about him.
00:19:52.980I'm reminded I think I've told you the story about the guy who owned the dog food business and ultimately his dog food business went broke because he couldn't sell any dog food as hard as he tried.
00:20:04.900And when he was asked why his dog food company went out of business, he said, well, there was one problem.
00:20:32.940I don't think the American people want endless foreign war.
00:20:36.600I think the American people are already beginning to become disillusioned with shipping billions more to Ukraine.
00:20:43.480All these candidates give lip service to sealing our border.
00:20:46.700But they seem to be intent on spending more money to protect the Ukrainian borders than they are prepared to spend on protecting our borders.
00:21:00.740I'm a former young Republican national chairman.
00:21:03.080I spent my life in the party of Lincoln, the party of Eisenhower, the party of Goldwater, the party of Reagan, obviously the party of Trump.
00:21:10.780But to me, her foreign policy is indistinguishable from that of Anthony Blinken and the Biden administration.
00:21:35.500He is a person I think many people want to like.
00:21:39.440And they want to, in some ways, hear more from him.
00:21:43.360But I thought that Nikki Haley did an amazing job of taking him down a peg, if you will, when she said, basically, and I thought this was great.
00:21:53.980There was great irony in this as well, because she said she felt dumber the more she listened to him.
00:21:59.580I wondered if that's because that was the only person she was listening to.
00:22:04.420Your thought about him, your critique.
00:22:07.380You know, I must tell you, Lou, I think that his 15 minutes have come and gone.
00:22:11.380I think he was an interesting kind of novelty early in the race.
00:22:16.160He's clearly modeled his campaign based on a serious study of polling, which indicates that both Donald Trump and Donald Trump's issue positions are extraordinarily popular in the party.
00:22:30.160So he has gone out of his way to identify himself with Trump as opposed to positioning himself as a critic of Trump, unlike all the other candidates at this point.
00:22:40.360Very notable that on the morning, Trump was arraigned in Miami in the so-called documents case.
00:22:47.520Vivek showed up outside the courthouse in support of the president.
00:22:53.660The problem now, I think, are a couple fold.
00:22:56.340He expresses skepticism about the war in Ukraine.
00:22:59.560I agree with him, but he does not take the time to explain his position historically in a way that, say, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. does, who I think explains his hesitation about the war in Ukraine with a great, great historical perspective.
00:23:15.640Because, as you know, we signed an agreement with the Soviets, with the Russians, I should say, when East and West Germany were unified, in which we agreed not to push Ukraine further into NATO.
00:23:29.740To use former Secretary of State Jim Baker's exact words, not an inch further into NATO.
00:23:37.420The reason that it matters is it's not about membership in some club.
00:23:41.840It's about the mounting of offensive Western missiles pointed at Russia mounted in Ukraine, a total violation of an agreement that we reached.
00:23:52.840Vivek doesn't take the time to explain that.
00:23:55.880And now, when you add to that the fact that he has, and I saw this video last night, he has been busted really lifting a lot of rhetoric directly from Barack Obama, reminiscent of when Joe Biden lifted rhetoric from Neil Kinnick, the famous British political leader, which caused his campaign to collapse.
00:24:18.740Now, you add, on top of it, Vivek's connections to the World Economic Forum, to George Soros, which he tries to kind of glibly explain away, but I think raise a lot of questions in people's minds.
00:25:49.720And then these questions about his past would disappear, assuming that he performed consistent with his current issue positions.
00:25:57.740Well, people are allowed to change their mind over time based on new information and also by just based on, you know, the wiseness that comes with age.
00:26:24.000Everybody ganged up on him in this most recent debate, largely because he had very effectively taken the point against all of them, career politicians, in the first debate.
00:26:37.940I mean, this devolved into a shouting match, which I think no one distinguished themselves.
00:26:42.000And Chris Christie, very hard to understand what this guy thinks he's doing other than the revenge tour.
00:26:50.160I mean, we understand he's angry at Donald Trump because he never got a cabinet job.
00:26:53.980But there's zero chance that he can be nominated.
00:26:57.800His allies in New Jersey recently tried to pull a fast one under which they would have canceled the New Jersey Republican presidential primary and allowed the delegates to be selected in a smoke filled back room in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
00:27:13.780And the party chieftains decided that they couldn't sell that.
00:27:20.840And when they have his primary, I would predict to you that Donald Trump will soundly thrash one of the least popular political figures in the state of New Jersey.
00:27:31.140Yeah, it's it's pretty easy to see his motivation.
00:27:34.680It's hard to understand how he has an appeal, even amongst the the gambling moguls of of the country.
00:27:47.680We're going to take up what Roger thinks of the shutdown, the budget and how the Republicans are doing as they try to reconcile an impeachment with giving a an impaired and compromised president.
00:28:16.060Roger, again, it's great to be talking with you.
00:28:19.220I'd like to ask you, first of all, what do you make of a Republican Congress that at once is trying to impeach Joe Biden,
00:28:29.440but at the same time, trying to give him every dime he asked for in a seven plus trillion dollar budget?
00:28:38.720Well, let's take the first part of it first.
00:28:40.960First, I'm not sure that they're seeking to impeach Joe Biden.
00:28:44.780They're making a lot of noise about it.
00:28:46.500But if you look at the subpoenas from the House Democrats surrounding January 6th,
00:28:52.220if you look at the subpoenas from House Democrats and the House Intelligence Committee when they were in control of the Congress surrounding the Russian collusion hoax,
00:29:01.180why has no member of the Biden family yet been subpoenaed to testify?
00:29:06.080There's plenty to ask them about when congressmen like Jerry Nadler, AOC, say there's a Dane Goldman, say there's no evidence.
00:29:14.880No, on the contrary, there's a mountain of evidence and more growing every single day.
00:29:20.300So how serious they really are about impeaching him remains to be seen.
00:29:25.640Now, I think most of your listeners know that an impeachment is just an indictment.
00:29:31.680It's just a charge. That's not the same as a conviction.
00:29:35.720Simple impeachment by the House does not remove you from office.
00:29:39.100Only a conviction after a trial in the U.S. Senate does that.
00:29:43.620The Democrats knew when they moved to impeach Donald Trump, not once but twice,
00:29:48.520that they did not have the two thirds necessary in the Senate.
00:29:52.120But their goal was to do as much political damage to Donald Trump as they possibly could.
00:30:00.800Now, to move to the second part of the question, my head is still spinning because it all seemed to happen so quickly.
00:30:09.760But you have to conclude that we have a uniparty in which everybody's kind of on board the same agenda.
00:30:18.060And that, therefore, the current Republican leadership was never serious about spending constraint,
00:30:24.860never serious about single issue spending bills, never serious about term limits,
00:30:29.880never serious about releasing all of the January 6th camera footage.
00:30:35.140I mean, Kevin McCarthy has broken faith with Republicans in both his conference and in the country on every major concession he made in order to become speaker.
00:30:45.960And he seems to prefer to negotiate privately and secretly with the Democrats to fund Joe Biden's entire agenda going forward.
00:30:56.860Particularly shocking, before this even went down, was an announcement by the Pentagon that regardless of what the Congress did,
00:31:05.620the rate of spending and the money we were shipping to Ukraine would not be impaired in any way.
00:31:11.420So does it really matter at the end of the day?
00:31:14.700It looks to me in a weird way that it does not.
00:31:17.700Either the Republicans stand for something or they stand for nothing.
00:33:10.020This idea that I somehow had custody of this information, received it from someone, passed it on to someone on its way to Rudy Giuliani and publication is a fever dream, is a crazy left-wing conspiracy theorist theory.
00:33:28.880I've been subpoenaed now, not that I'm being sued directly, but Rudy Giuliani is being sued directly.
00:33:36.840The accusation is that he hacked and tampered with the material.
00:33:40.960I don't think that's correct based on what I've read.
00:33:43.720Garrett Ziegler at the Marco Polo Foundation is being sued along similar lines.
00:33:49.020I think that's a frivolous lawsuit as well.
00:33:52.460And I have nothing to provide these people.
00:33:55.680Everything I know is from a public source.
00:33:59.300So I think the design here is just to muddy the waters and also in my case and the case of others to try to discourage you from talking about this in your public broadcasts.
00:34:10.080Notice, Lou, that Hunter Biden's lawyers have not sued Fox, have not sued the New York Post.
00:34:17.080That's because, particularly the New York Post, they have deep pockets and they would fight because their stories have all been authenticated by their publishers and their editors.
00:34:26.480So I think it's just general harassment.
00:34:29.880Way back in March, I got a letter from Hunter Biden's lawyer, Abby Lowell, who told me that if I did not apologize for my public comments regarding the laptop by last March 31st, that he would file suit against me.
00:34:44.620I declined to apologize for speaking the truth and stating my opinion.
00:35:14.140And what are you to produce under the terms of that subpoena?
00:35:17.500They would like all of my communications regarding the laptop with a long list of people.
00:35:22.980It includes Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani and many, many people I've never heard of.
00:35:27.020Now, there is no correspondence, but that's not the point.
00:35:31.720The point here is it's a fishing expedition.
00:35:35.260This is a matter brought in Delaware state court, which means Mrs. Stone and I have to go out and retain a Delaware state attorney, probably to move to quash this.
00:36:10.540The reality is that you said it, I believe, again, absolutely correctly.
00:36:15.520It's a way in which to chill important voices and to keep them from speaking the truth as they see it, give their opinions based on their knowledge of the circumstances and facts.
00:36:29.460And that is what all of this is about.
00:36:31.920And lawfare, certainly, as they try to bankrupt every single person on the right who has the courage, as you do, to speak up and tell the truth.
00:36:43.180Roger Stone, we thank you so much for being with us.
00:36:46.620It's always wonderful to talk with you.
00:36:48.780And as always on this podcast, we give our guests the last word.
00:36:53.800Your concluding thoughts, if you would.
00:36:55.540Lou, these are obviously very dispiriting days for anyone who looks at the news.
00:37:02.560I think most of the people listening do as well.
00:37:05.160Donald Trump is unique, kind of like there's only two other people, I think, in history where the entire future of the country hinged on one man.
00:37:33.000I intend to keep praying for my country, praying particularly for Donald Trump's safety and content in the belief that good will prevail in the end.
00:37:53.420Thanks, everybody, for being here today.
00:37:56.020Tomorrow, we're joined by one of the brave eight who stood up for integrity in the House of Representatives and for the American people, conservative Congressman Matt Rosendale.
00:38:05.460Please join us for Congressman Rosendale and much more tomorrow.