The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - Col. Douglas Macgregor ｜ 04-15-25

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00:00:30.000 This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.

00:00:40.760 They went after a guy named Roger Stone who's sitting in the office.

00:00:44.500 And I'll say this in front of Roger, he's no baby.

00:00:46.900 And right now he's cleaner than anybody in this place.

00:00:50.480 Now they treated him very unfairly.

00:00:53.080 Now, get in the zone. 0.94

00:00:54.920 It's the Stone Zone.

00:00:56.960 Here's Roger Stone.

00:00:58.500 Welcome back into the Stone Zone.

00:01:01.500 Here we talk politics, style, news, history, and occasionally food.

00:01:08.160 We call him like we see him.

00:01:11.000 We criticize Republicans and Democrats.

00:01:13.540 I'm an equal opportunity critic.

00:01:16.100 Today I'm privileged to have as our guest Colonel Douglas McGregor.

00:01:19.900 He is a decorated combat veteran and author of five books, a Ph.D., and the defense and

00:01:26.920 foreign policy expert that I respect perhaps more than any other in the country.

00:01:31.800 Doug McGregor was commissioned in the regular army in 1976 after one year at VMI and four

00:01:38.260 years at West Point.

00:01:39.880 In 2004, Colonel McGregor retired with the rank of colonel.

00:01:44.200 In 2020, the president appointed McGregor to serve as senior advisor to the Secretary of

00:01:49.260 Defense, a post he held until President Trump left office.

00:01:52.860 He has a master's degree in comparative politics and a Ph.D. in international relations from

00:01:59.100 the University of Virginia.

00:02:02.200 Now, Colonel McGregor is widely known inside the United States, Europe, Israel, Russia,

00:02:07.600 China, and Korea for both his outside-the-box thinking and his leadership in the Battle of

00:02:14.560 1973, Easting, the U.S. Army's largest tank battle since World War II, as well as for his

00:02:21.540 groundbreaking books on military transformation.

00:02:24.920 I was reading a book by Alexander Coburn, Nobody's Idea of a Conservative, and I came across

00:02:31.800 this passage describing Colonel Douglas McGregor as a gifted military theoretician who had led

00:02:39.140 an armored squadron and fought a victorious tank battle in 1991 during Desert Storm.

00:02:43.800 McGregor had long brooded on what he considered the outmoded organization of Army combat units

00:02:50.240 into 20,000-man divisions and proposed the division's reorganizations into smaller, more

00:02:56.220 flexible units capable of more agile deployment and maneuver.

00:03:01.440 Forthright in his judgments when he's speaking to superiors, unfortunately, McGregor has suffered

00:03:06.880 the traditional fate of innovative military thinking.

00:03:09.720 His radical and new ideas exciting fear and distrust among those at the highest level of

00:03:16.640 our military.

00:03:17.960 I don't think there could be any greater compliment.

00:03:21.740 I'm going to bring him with us, and then we're going to cut to a break.

00:03:24.580 But Colonel Douglas McGregor, thank you so much for joining us today in the Stone Zone.

00:03:29.320 Hey, Roger.

00:03:30.100 Thanks so much for including me.

00:03:31.400 I appreciate it.

00:03:32.600 We've got a lot to cover here, but the most important one, of course, is war and peace,

00:03:38.320 what's happening in the Middle East, what's happening also between Ukraine and Russia.

00:03:45.580 Folks, you're in the Stone Zone.

00:03:47.260 We're about to talk to our guest, Colonel Douglas McGregor.

00:03:50.580 So don't go away.

00:03:51.600 We'll be right back.

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00:04:23.060 This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.

00:04:34.880 All right, we're back in the Stone Zone, joining us once again, Colonel Douglas McGregor.

00:04:41.000 This is the distinguished officer that I respect perhaps more than any other in the country

00:04:46.460 when it comes to matters of geopolitical defense and national security, but also one who understands

00:04:53.300 the politics and its limitations.

00:04:55.820 Colonel McGregor, the other night you texted me an interview with Secretary Pete Hegseth,

00:05:03.500 who I like, take nothing away from him, but he says that we, the United States, are ready

00:05:09.120 to launch powerful strikes deep within Iran if negotiations break down.

00:05:13.840 I tend to agree with my colleague, Tucker Carlson, I think war with Iran would be a horrific 0.99

00:05:19.820 mistake.

00:05:21.160 So what did you mean when you sent me this interview?

00:05:25.940 Well, I think a couple of things.

00:05:27.720 First, you know, and I think you would agree with this, that Trump's instincts on a whole

00:05:34.320 range of policy issues, not just foreign and defense, but many policy issues are very, very

00:05:41.060 good. And one of my frustrations with President Trump in the past as being his failure to follow

00:05:48.240 his own instincts. And right in his White House, with large numbers of people who are hell bent

00:05:54.160 to go to war with Iran. And they seem to think that threats and bullying tactics are somehow

00:06:01.120 or another helpful. And I don't think they are. When you're negotiating with someone, frankly, Roger, it pays to say

00:06:10.060 as little as possible. And once the negotiation is completed, you reach some sort of decision, good, bad or

00:06:18.500 otherwise, then you can talk about it. But I think President Trump wants very much to reach an accommodation

00:06:25.740 with Iran. So I would refrain from saying anything at this point that is belligerent or threatening,

00:06:32.860 because it simply drives away the people that you're trying to bring on board. And that's a difficult

00:06:39.120 thing to do right now, because we're asking the Iranians to accept life in a region where only Israel 1.00

00:06:47.100 has nuclear weapons. And that's a hard pill to swallow for them. And I think for large numbers of other

00:06:53.120 people in the region, because they don't trust the Israelis. Now, whether or not that appeals to us 0.98

00:06:58.720 is irrelevant. The point is, under those circumstances, Whitcoff and President Trump have a very difficult

00:07:04.940 challenge. And I hope that what Mr. Whitcoff has said about events turns out to be the case. And he is

00:07:13.500 cautiously optimistic. So whatever we can do to be supportive of a positive outcome of an accommodation,

00:07:21.200 we should we should support that and encourage, I think, President Trump to listen to his own

00:07:29.040 instincts, because if he does, we'll be successful. For those to listening to this interview with Colonel

00:07:36.280 Douglas McGregor, you can follow him at OurCountryYourChoice.com. I strongly urge you to do

00:07:43.260 that. Look, I always thought, and I could be wrong about this, that the sanctions that President Trump put on

00:07:50.400 the Iranians during his first term, seemed to me to be terribly successful. I mean, it's an oil-rich

00:07:56.780 country, but they were not even able to sell their oil to their Chinese patrons under those circumstances.

00:08:04.400 Therefore, it occurred to me that when Joe Biden and his administration unfroze over $190 billion of

00:08:12.180 wealth to go to the Iranians, that it was inevitable that they would not only restart their nuclear weapons 0.96

00:08:19.420 development program, but they would also begin to fund Islamic terrorism again, leading to the attacks

00:08:26.880 on October 7th. Could sanctions be effective or successful yet again in the new administration?

00:08:37.440 No. I think the sanctions in the past have been much less effective than people in Washington think.

00:08:44.340 The truth is that we have overused sanctions to the point where everyone has found workarounds.

00:08:52.540 One of the things we need to keep in mind, especially about the Chinese and the Iranians,

00:08:57.540 is that the Chinese in particular have built alternatives to reliance on the movement of oil and gas

00:09:04.680 via the Straits of Hormuz by sea to China. In fact, the Belt and Road Initiative is very much a part of

00:09:13.560 creating a system of cross-continental trade and commerce that we, with our Navy, cannot interrupt

00:09:21.020 or disrupt. And the other thing is that, and this is the problem with our tariffs and so forth,

00:09:26.440 over the last five years, the world has changed. The Chinese have developed new markets. The Chinese 1.00

00:09:33.340 have developed new supply chains. In other words, at some point, your sanctions are counterproductive.

00:09:39.700 I think the president understands that, which is one of the reasons that he's folding pretty quickly

00:09:45.200 on the tariffs that he's imposed. He's now said clearly the automotive industry needs

00:09:51.600 the trade, and he's pulling back on those tariffs. I think we're going to see that with all forms of

00:09:57.560 electronics coming out of China, Japan, Korea. So I think President Trump understands that. I just don't

00:10:03.340 think he's being well advised on these things. And I don't think that we will get further by

00:10:08.240 threatening and bullying. I think we'll get further with more accommodation and recognition

00:10:13.520 that other countries have legitimate rights and interests. We have had a bad habit, particularly

00:10:19.940 with Biden. I mean, his administration just cast any caution to the winds and treated anyone else's

00:10:28.100 interest with complete disinterest.

00:10:30.280 Mr. Colonel McGregor is the CEO of OurCountryOurChoice.com. OurCountryOurChoice.com. I want to get that

00:10:40.560 straight.

00:10:41.980 And look, I appreciate being corrected on the sanctions. I'm a politico. I'm not a military

00:10:50.520 strategist, nor am I a world economist. China seems to be cutting off the experts of rare earth minerals

00:10:57.060 needed in the production of automobiles, aerospace, and defense manufacturing. I mean,

00:11:02.660 what is the best way for America to respond to that?

00:11:06.540 Well, there's not much of a response. I mean, the things that we sell most are things that

00:11:11.640 China can easily replace. Our biggest exports are agricultural products and energy. And the 0.98

00:11:19.920 only other thing that we export in great quantity is military equipment and bombs.

00:11:23.780 So someone put it recently in terms of the three Bs, bushels, barrels, and bombs. That's what we

00:11:31.160 export. Well, the Chinese can replace the agricultural and the energy output very, very easily with all 0.98

00:11:39.300 sorts of people all over the world. So I don't think you're going to get very far. On the other hand,

00:11:44.840 we're very dependent on the Chinese for a lot of the microcircuitry, the electronics,

00:11:49.880 you pointed to the rare earths. And you know, this is something else that's depressing about us,

00:11:55.560 Roger. We should have built a rare earth refinery in North America a long time ago.

00:12:01.880 And right now, if you find rare earths, and I happen to be in this business at the moment,

00:12:07.340 and you extract them successfully, and we have a lot of rare earths out there,

00:12:11.440 it's just that it hasn't been profitable to extract them. Now it's becoming very profitable.

00:12:16.280 If you do that, you've got to send your rare earths to China, or Kazakhstan, somewhere else 0.99

00:12:23.960 on the other side of the world to have them refined into the materials that you need for

00:12:29.420 your defense establishment, and for every cell phone that you manufacture. So I hope that if we

00:12:35.560 learn anything from this, we need to build our own refineries. And we need to invigorate this rare

00:12:41.660 earth exploration and extraction in our country. Probably the country with the most rare earths in

00:12:47.200 the world, but they aren't tapped yet, is Canada. They're just north of us. So hopefully, we will

00:12:53.680 have learned something from this whole business. But right now, the Chinese are cutting off Boeing,

00:12:59.200 cutting off purchasing any of our aircraft. And everybody says, well, wait a minute now,

00:13:04.340 where else are they going to get great aircraft like that? Well, we no longer monopolize the aerospace

00:13:09.720 industry the way we did. I think this is something we don't seem to understand anymore, Roger.

00:13:15.880 We had a huge monopoly on all sorts of technologies back in 1990, 91. And that gave us an enormous

00:13:23.880 strategic advantage. That monopoly was eroded and then erased in the early part of the century.

00:13:30.160 So we no longer are in the same position we were. That's not the end of the world. It's not something

00:13:35.660 we should try to fight our way out of. It's simply something we ought to recognize. And we can

00:13:40.960 moderate some of our positions as a consequence. President Trump seems steadfast in his desire to

00:13:48.300 acquire Greenland. He keeps saying that we need to do so to bolster our national defense and for

00:13:54.500 national security purposes. How would having Greenland help the United States protect itself?

00:14:00.800 I think that President Trump is approached by people, particularly in the Navy, who are quite

00:14:10.360 concerned about the Arctic passage that is developed, because you can now cut your travel across continental

00:14:17.900 travel down to a couple of days, three or four days, because you can send a ship between Greenland

00:14:26.380 and Norway through the Arctic passage on the north side of Canada. And poof, they're on the other side of the

00:14:34.600 world, where China, Japan, Korea, and so forth are located. And I think there has been a fear that we would end up

00:14:43.420 in some sort of conflict in the Arctic over who controls what and who has passage and so forth. And of course,

00:14:51.260 the Navy has always been very bellicose and sees this as a justification for a larger surface fleet

00:14:58.220 and warlike action. And I think Greenland fits into that because the assumption is that from Greenland,

00:15:05.580 you can control access to this passage. I don't think we need to militarize this. I think what is

00:15:12.980 required and what the president ought to do is say to all the nations that border this Arctic passage,

00:15:20.540 that includes Russia and Norway, Canada, the United States, why don't we come up with an arrangement

00:15:28.760 so that everybody has passage? We know where you can go and where you can't. And I think this would

00:15:35.380 work. You've got another problem because there's so much in terms of rare earth as well as oil and gas

00:15:42.160 products, energy products lying on the seabed. Everyone wants to rush out there and extract all of this,

00:15:48.920 which is not an easy process. You know, this is very cold water, tough environment. You can't do

00:15:53.560 that every night. We need to sit down and sort through this like adults. This is not the time

00:15:59.960 to figure out how we fight a war in a place like that because the war will sabotage all the productivity

00:16:06.140 and development that we're seeking. So I don't think we need to control Greenland per se. You know,

00:16:11.940 Roger, the Danes have been good allies. We've done along brilliantly with the Danes. We already have

00:16:18.180 a base in Greenland. Why not just talk to the Danes because they have much to gain from all of this as

00:16:24.820 well, since they too are a maritime power like the Norwegians and the British.

00:16:28.900 As you know, I am an acolyte of President Richard Nixon, who was my political mentor. I think one of

00:16:38.740 his great accomplishments was driving a wedge between the Russians and the Chinese, recognizing 0.89

00:16:45.060 they had a long mutual border and centuries of distrust between the two countries. I think it is how he

00:16:53.060 secured the strategic arms limitation agreement with the Russians. I think he is unfairly blamed

00:16:59.860 for the threat that China poses to our country today. The time that Richard Nixon brought them 0.99

00:17:06.420 in out of the cold, they were a dirt poor, backwards agrarian society with very little indoor plumbing, 1.00

00:17:12.660 didn't even have electricity in the rural areas. There was no way for Nixon to see that 30 years later,

00:17:18.500 Bill Clinton would give them most favored nation trading status, and he would actually

00:17:23.780 sell them in return for illegal campaign contributions, some of our top military secrets in the morale

00:17:29.620 scandal. Can President Donald Trump be equally successful now? Because Biden drove them together.

00:17:36.420 Can President Trump now be successful in driving them apart?

00:17:41.300 No. The case was very different when Nixon was president. First of all, the wedge already existed.

00:17:49.860 He had the good sense and the wisdom to recognize that it existed. You remember back in the 50s,

00:17:55.860 everyone saw communism as this monolithic force. Well, Stalin used to refer to the red Chinese as red

00:18:03.460 onions. He said they're red on the outside, but inside they're really white. And his meaning was,

00:18:09.460 the Chinese are really at heart capitalists. Well, Stalin was right. And I think Richard Nixon 0.99

00:18:15.780 understood that. And as far as China representing a threat to us, militarily, I absolutely reject that

00:18:23.140 notion. If you look at the Chinese military, I've seen it. It's not postured for offensive warfare.

00:18:29.940 Everything is purely defensive. And the Chinese are preeminently about business. They don't start wars,

00:18:35.860 don't want to start a war anywhere. And if they and whenever they have had conflicts, they've lost

00:18:42.340 them. They've spent most of the last 500 years, roughly 340 of them under foreign governments and foreign

00:18:49.860 occupation. I think that the Chinese are an economic power. And we need to remember that for 0.99

00:18:56.180 most of the last 2000 years, China was the richest country in the world, although some of my friends in India

00:19:03.060 argued that India was actually richer, be that as it may, when we were very poor and backward,

00:19:08.660 China was a flourishing civilization and extremely wealthy. I don't think that's going to change anytime

00:19:15.300 soon, nor do I think it should. I think we need to change our approach. But the notion that we are

00:19:21.220 going to drive a wedge between the Russians and the Chinese is ludicrous. This is a marriage made in heaven. 1.00

00:19:26.900 The Russians have all the resources that the Chinese could possibly use. And the Russians still have 0.99

00:19:33.300 superior military technology in many key categories, which they have willingly shared with the Chinese

00:19:38.660 that have helped China immensely in terms of developing its defensive force posture. I think

00:19:44.980 we have to treat them with respect and understand that they have legitimate interests and that neither of

00:19:53.140 those states won a war, least of all with us. All right, we're going to have to leave it there.

00:19:59.540 I want to thank our guest, Colonel Douglas McGregor. You can find him at OurCountryOurChoice.com,

00:20:07.060 also at RE-Public. I want to thank you again for joining us in the segment. I guess we'll be right

00:20:14.500 back with just a little bit more of Doug McGregor. I was a little premature there, but up next,

00:20:19.220 keeping the live and alive with Debbie Nigro, sponsored by Native Path Collagen.

00:20:27.780 This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.

00:20:39.780 And you're back in the Stone Zone. I just got some amazingly good news from my wife late last week.

00:20:47.460 My wife had what the doctors described as a cardiac event. A completely incompetent 1.00

00:20:55.460 cardiologist who attended her at the hospital to which she was taken by ambulance basically told her

00:21:02.660 that her heart was pumping at 30 percent, that there was no explanation for this,

00:21:06.740 and nothing could be done for her, that she should go home and get her affairs in order.

00:21:11.700 Yes, it was pretty shocking. I'm happy to say now, having gone through multiple tests and seen

00:21:17.220 a highly competent cardiologist, I can report that all of that was wrong. And she's not only going to

00:21:24.980 live, she's going to be fine. So I apologize if I have been a little disjointed here, Colonel.

00:21:30.500 Tell us about Republic, this incredible online social media platform in which you have been active.

00:21:39.220 Well, listen, Roger, I think everybody in the future needs to get a second opinion,

00:21:43.060 and that's really what you've demonstrated. I'm very happy to hear that. That's your wife.

00:21:46.900 The Republic platform is a free speech platform that I think everyone should look at carefully,

00:21:54.580 and it's locally focused, but it covers the spectrum of news and events and people.

00:22:00.580 It's a place where you can find out who governs you and look at their decisions,

00:22:04.820 and it's a place where you can register your opinion and ultimately affect what happens at your

00:22:10.580 level of life in your county, inside your state, where you can contact any of the political leaders,

00:22:17.140 who are responsible for events in your state, all the way up to and including the national level.

00:22:22.660 So I think the Republic is something RE, and we say colon public, is well worth your time and effort to examine.

00:22:33.460 This is very much, I've signed up just because I think it is extraordinary. I like the social media

00:22:40.100 programs I'm in. I really like X and what's being done there by Elon Musk. But I think in terms of

00:22:46.340 connecting you to like-minded people, and with action in mind, I mean legal action in mind,

00:22:53.780 I really like the site. Tell people again how they can go there.

00:22:57.300 Yeah, I think the easiest way to do it is to, you can go to re.republic.com. You'll find

00:23:10.420 everything that Roger's describing, and I can't emphasize enough the accuracy of his statement,

00:23:14.900 which is that this is a place where you can communicate across the country. You will find

00:23:21.140 like-minded people, and no one is going to censor you. We've made that very clear. Now, of course,

00:23:26.340 you know, we draw the line at vulgarity, and we're not going to support, you know, statements arguing for

00:23:32.740 the overthrow of our own government. But other than that, I think you've got pretty much free reign.

00:23:39.860 Nancy Pelosi can go on just like anybody else. Let's put it that way.

00:23:43.300 All right. Thank you very much. We're going to wrap it there. My great thanks to my good friend,

00:23:48.580 Colonel Douglas McGregor, for joining us today. And I thank all of you who have been tuned in.

00:23:54.660 Until we meet again, God bless you, and Godspeed.

The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - April 16, 2025

Col. Douglas Macgregor ｜ 04-15-25

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