The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - Col. Robert Mannes ｜ 04-03-25

00:00:00.000 Back in the Stone Zone. Joining me now, retired Colonel Rob Maness. Rob Maness has a lifelong

00:00:07.500 record of providing dedicated service to our country. He made the decision as a 17-year-old

00:00:14.000 high school senior to enlist in the United States Air Force and has served in uniform

00:00:18.780 as the country faced multiple crises around the world. He worked his way up from the enlisted 0.99

00:00:25.820 ranks to be a full colonel and retired from active duty in 2011, ending his military service

00:00:31.740 of more than 32 years. Now, we only have about 15 minutes in this segment. If I read his entire

00:00:39.480 biography and all the service he has rendered to this country, well, we'd use the whole segment

00:00:44.680 and we wouldn't get to talk to Colonel Maness. So I'm going to skip through this other than to say

00:00:49.300 that Rob Maness is one of the gentlemen that I look to for analysis of any geopolitical or

00:00:57.140 geo-military question. Someone who has my enormous respect. He is, as a private citizen, also an

00:01:04.400 outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump and his America First agenda. And it is a great honor

00:01:12.140 to have him today in the Stone Zone. Colonel Maness, welcome.

00:01:17.940 Hey, Roger. Thanks for having me.

00:01:21.340 So in our earlier segment, we focused on the strategic and commercial importance of the Panama Canal.

00:01:28.560 Now, I worked in three presidential campaigns on the staff of Ronald Reagan in 1976 when he challenged

00:01:37.920 Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination. I was the national director of youth for Reagan,

00:01:45.840 working directly for Senator Paul Laxalt, the national chairman of our campaign.

00:01:51.520 In 1980, when I was the Northeastern regional director for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign,

00:01:57.680 handling New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. And then in 1984, when I handled those three states,

00:02:06.720 plus all the states in New England all the way to the Canadian border, plus at the recommendation of

00:02:13.200 President Nixon, the Reagan campaign also assigned me Ohio on the theory that if you took one large state

00:02:22.480 and you kept it out of Walter Mondale's clutches, that he could not possibly win. Remember it very well.

00:02:31.040 Nixon told Reagan, assign Ohio to Stone, he said. Stone's an animal. I always considered that a compliment.

00:02:39.520 But Ronald Reagan was right when he warned us that this day would come. Tell us what's going on today in Panama

00:02:48.000 and about the strategic importance of the Canal and the Canal Zone.

00:02:51.680 Well, from a national security perspective, you know, I think most people know, but especially

00:02:59.920 those of us that practice that as a profession, that it's the largest choke point for Navy traffic,

00:03:06.160 U.S. Navy and international Navy traffic in the world. You know, and we're risking lives to protect the

00:03:14.560 international traffic in the Red Sea, because this is a critically important shipping lane. The Panama Canal

00:03:22.800 is probably to the United States a hundred times more important than that. But it goes way beyond just

00:03:31.200 Navy traffic. You know, China controls the companies at each end of the canal, the port companies at this

00:03:38.720 point. And every company that's Chinese has a part of it, if not wholly owned by the Communist Chinese 0.89

00:03:45.280 Party or the People's Liberation Army and Navy. So it's extremely important that we get control of that

00:03:53.600 back. And I think the president had lined up, President Trump had lined up to have a company

00:03:59.840 buy those ports. But China's obviously pushing back against that deal. But you know what else is going on?

00:04:07.280 Economically, I don't know if you guys talked about this in your last segment, but

00:04:12.560 we're trying to expand our liquefied natural gas LNG marketing out to new markets. And the Panama Canal

00:04:21.280 is crucial to that because the LNG exporter capability in the United States, it's on the Gulf Coast and

00:04:29.360 Louisiana and places like that. So that canal has to be able to carry that type of energy type product 1.00

00:04:38.560 for us so that we can easily get through there, get to the Pacific theater of operations and deliver

00:04:45.600 that to potentially new customers. So it's very much tied together from a national security and an

00:04:53.600 economic security perspective. And obviously, with everything that's going on in the world,

00:04:59.440 the more that we can have direct control over from a trade perspective,

00:05:04.240 the better off our country is going to be. And I think the president's done the exact right thing

00:05:08.480 with the tariff issue. I was pleased to see the liberation day yesterday. I still have a smile on

00:05:14.720 my face with that because because it puts the manufacturing capability is going to come back

00:05:21.200 to the United States that we have been offshoring for decades now. And it's made us weak. You know,

00:05:28.320 China controls 90% of the precursor materials for antibiotics. We can't make antibiotics on our own

00:05:35.600 without the Chinese Communist Party. So we have to bring that type of manufacturing back. But we also

00:05:40.720 need the canal for free flow of our goods, especially with this LNG exporting effort to expand that going on.

00:05:50.000 As someone who served his country at the highest levels of our military, I have to ask you about

00:05:56.560 what has become known as signal gate. Now, I'm amused to see senators like Mark Warner of Virginia,

00:06:07.280 who I went back and looked, he had no problem whatsoever. When Robert Malley, a high level

00:06:15.120 Biden State Department official was sharing classified documents with the Iranians. He actually

00:06:21.440 never even got fired. They just, they just suspended his security clearance. They also left, let his

00:06:27.920 Confederates who were involved in the, in the transfer of these classified documents to Iran

00:06:34.960 continue in their positions at state. He never said a word. When Hillary Clinton got caught sending 30

00:06:43.680 plus thousand classified documents over an illegal computer server located in her bathroom. Once again, 0.83

00:06:51.280 not a peep from Mark Warner, but now he's in a lather about a signal exchange in which,

00:07:02.320 based on what I've seen, no classified information was exposed. Give us your take on, on signal gate,

00:07:10.880 if you will. Let's talk about the information itself. There's been a lot of, uh, uh, uh, angst about

00:07:18.640 that and lathering up, as you said, uh, with Senator Warner, uh, and his ilk over that information. None of that

00:07:26.240 information was classified, not one iota of it. Uh, there were not enough specifics in that thread,

00:07:34.800 uh, for anything to be classified, but, but even if secretary Hegg said, uh, and that's the information

00:07:40.400 that most people are talking about is what he put into the chat or his phone did, uh, is, uh, put in,

00:07:46.720 he is the original classifying authority on there. Just like president Trump is the overall original

00:07:52.080 classifying authority for every single piece of classified, uh, uh, secretary Hegg said,

00:07:56.800 the defense secretary is the OCA for that information. And even if it had been classified,

00:08:02.800 if he chose to put that in there, it's declassified, uh, from that perspective. So now let's talk about

00:08:08.800 signal, uh, itself. It's an end to end to end encrypted chat. And this is one of the areas that

00:08:13.920 I'm concerned about is that the national security team and national security council team, especially

00:08:18.240 under Mike Waltz, they got to get that, that stuff together. They have to investigate the,

00:08:22.960 how that reporter Goldberg, uh, from the Atlantic. I mean, the worst, uh, fake news guy, Russia gate,

00:08:30.960 all of it, the suckers and losers lie, all of that, that they tried to use to hurt president Trump and 0.98

00:08:36.640 the team, uh, was due to that one guy. So that's a major issue. And I'm not seeing anything yet that 0.98

00:08:42.800 makes me satisfied that that team is cleaned up, uh, uh, internally and that they don't have people

00:08:48.160 that have access to their information threads, like the signal chat, uh, that shouldn't have

00:08:53.200 access to it. So Waltz has got to get that fixed. Now let's talk about the senators because you didn't

00:08:58.000 mention the Republican Senator that has also joined in with Warner and is demanding a DOD inspector

00:09:03.760 general investigation of Hegseth, uh, over the signal thing. Uh, you know, my Senator Roger Wicker,

00:09:09.280 I agree with him on a lot of things like increasing ship building and, uh, get returning

00:09:14.080 to peace through strength instead of being in endless war policies when it comes to China.

00:09:18.320 But I disagree with him on a lot too on this. I disagree with him. It's absolutely unnecessary.

00:09:24.240 Number one, because the national security council is the team that set that chat up. It wasn't the

00:09:29.840 department of defense, uh, so there's no reason whatsoever to investigate secretary Hegseth or

00:09:36.400 the department of defense over that particular issue. Look, I'm all for investigating the

00:09:41.200 government. I don't trust hardly anybody in the government, but I do trust president Trump's

00:09:45.440 appointees, uh, uh, and that they need the maximum flexibility, uh, possible so we can move forward

00:09:52.080 and get the president's policies that we all voted for in place and throttled up so that we're,

00:09:58.320 they're running, uh, uh, appropriately and calling for investigations when it's not

00:10:03.680 necessary. It's just the wrong thing to do. This shrimp and coconut sauce is divine. What's your

00:10:08.080 secret? Goya coconut milk. How does it taste so good? It's all in that real coconut flavor and

00:10:13.360 that rich creamy texture. What about thickeners and added sugars? None, just smooth coconutty goodness.

00:10:20.640 What can I make with it from curries to sweet treats like coconut flan? The possibilities are endless.

00:10:26.480 Goya coconut milk. Take your cooking to the next level. No question about it. Find it in the

00:10:31.440 Goya section of your local grocery store. If it's Goya, it has to be good. Yeah, I agree with that.

00:10:36.800 This is beginning to look to me like an effort to get, uh, Hegseth, to oust Hegseth. Yeah. Uh,

00:10:45.120 that's because he, he was an outside the box, anti-establishment choice. Uh, he's the right choice.

00:10:51.600 I strongly supported the president's nominee. Uh, when I defended this, uh, uh, in, uh, on a show with

00:10:58.880 Chris Cuomo, uh, it was amazing the way they twisted what I said. See, I don't trust any online,

00:11:06.240 uh, service encrypted or unencrypted. I frankly think they're all vulnerable to being, uh, hacked.

00:11:13.520 They're all vulnerable to being monitored. So I always operate on the assumption that anything

00:11:18.240 you put in writing online, you should have seen that someone else is going to have the ability

00:11:23.360 to see it. So don't say stupid things online. That's kind of my attitude. Uh, I was defending 1.00

00:11:28.800 these people, but if you read their story, it makes it appear like that I was criticizing them,

00:11:33.360 which I was not. Uh, but the Democrats have spun this up because frankly, they don't have anything

00:11:41.440 else to talk about. It was interesting to see Cory Booker, the Senator from New Jersey,

00:11:46.640 breaking the previously held, uh, filibuster record held by, uh, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina,

00:11:55.200 who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes, uh, without a bathroom break, I might add, uh, uh, back in 1957.

00:12:06.640 Cory Booker has now broken that record. He spoke for slightly longer, but strangely enough,

00:12:13.040 with all that time, he never explained why when he was the mayor of Newark, New Jersey,

00:12:20.000 he authorized the New York city, the New York, Newark city water authority known as watershed

00:12:26.000 to pay $200,000 to his law firm, which he then put in his pocket. And when confronted by reporters,

00:12:34.880 he said, uh, that he didn't vote for that yet. Uh, if you, and they're hard to find, but when I found

00:12:40.160 the actual formal minutes of the meeting, he was not only in the chair, but he also voted for the

00:12:46.640 disbursement. Then he came up with three different explanations as to why he got that money. Once he

00:12:53.600 said it had no connection, uh, to watershed, that it was the buyout of his, uh, uh, his, uh, uh, portion

00:13:02.640 of the law firm. Another point, he said it was deferred compensation. I'll tell you what it was.

00:13:08.240 It was graft. That's what it was. And he's never been, never answered that question. I actually

00:13:14.320 wrote a biography on him. It's called Spartacus, the real Cory Booker story. It's now out of print,

00:13:20.080 but I might bring it back to tell you the truth. Uh, it may be time to put it back in truth. By the

00:13:26.160 way, what you saw there was the launch of Cory Booker's presidential campaign, uh, because he sees

00:13:33.360 himself as a presidential candidate. By the way, he is the senator from Greenwich Village. He doesn't

00:13:39.040 even live in New Jersey. Uh, good. Sorry. I hope to get a copy of that book, sir. Uh, I'm going to,

00:13:47.600 I got to pull it out of mothballs. I, I published it when he was running for president, but his campaign

00:13:52.640 was such a flop. Didn't sell many copies, but if he's going to run again, I may have to republish it

00:13:58.320 again. When we come back, I'm going to ask Colonel Manus about, uh, Cuba and the fact that, um, the

00:14:05.680 Chinese have a very sophisticated spy station set up in Cuba. But I also want to know, do they have 0.99

00:14:13.520 missiles? And if they have missiles, are they offensive missiles or defensive missiles? And do they pose the

00:14:20.640 same danger that Russian missiles, uh, pose to this nation in 1962 when the Russians put them in Cuba?

00:14:29.360 We'll be right back with Colonel Rob Manus right here in the Stone Zone. So don't go away.

00:14:35.200 This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone. The Stone Zone.

00:14:41.040 Neither sizione, nor do they choke the shit I would say before. 0.99

00:14:42.240 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, so. 0.99

00:14:45.840 Back with Colonel Rob Manus retired. Colonel Manus led numerous combat operations during

00:14:52.680 his military service, including as a bomb squadron commander in Operation Enduring Freedom and

00:14:59.280 Operation Iraqi Freedom. Colonel Manus also served as an enlisted bomb disposal technician in three assignments,

00:15:06.280 countering terrorism before being commissioned and selected for flight training.

00:15:12.780 He is a man who has put his life on the line for his country, and we are honored to have him with us today.

00:15:19.020 I want to focus on that question regarding Cuba that I raised before the break.

00:15:24.980 My wife is a Cuban-American.

00:15:28.060 She is one of those who fled the Castro regime, her family, and she as a child.

00:15:34.140 And therefore, I have a special interest in the regime 90 miles off of our shore.

00:15:44.940 Cuba was a great danger to the United States.

00:15:47.460 Then with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse, really, of the Russian economy,

00:15:54.100 when they could no longer subsidize their comrades in Cuba, they became less of a danger to us.

00:16:02.100 But now they seem to have been scooped up by the Chinese. 1.00

00:16:06.480 It is indisputable that Joe Biden's administration knew they had a sophisticated spying operation set up on the Cuban island,

00:16:14.560 about which he did nothing.

00:16:16.260 And some military experts tell me that they also have missiles,

00:16:20.920 and that although those missiles may be defensive, with a very slight technological fix,

00:16:27.120 they could be offensive missiles, what is the situation going on today between us and Cuba?

00:16:34.640 Well, I think with President Trump coming into office,

00:16:38.720 you're going to see the view of the United States from an official perspective change back to one of questioning

00:16:47.460 why are the Chinese armed forces allowed to have bases on the island?

00:16:56.120 Why are they being allowed to run these surveillance operations on the island?

00:17:03.200 They're so close.

00:17:04.260 As you reminded us, it's 90 miles away.

00:17:07.320 So electronic surveillance capability that we have today is much more effective than it would have been even 10 years ago.

00:17:17.580 Not just that, but there are cable lines that give them access to the digital networks inside the United States

00:17:27.020 that they are able to get access to being in such close proximity and uncontrolled.

00:17:32.780 And I think, and I hope that we're going to see the national security team start putting pressure on the Cuban government again to get those forces removed.

00:17:44.540 But, you know, one of the conflicting issues, though, is the Russia-Ukraine war, Roger,

00:17:51.740 as the president tries to stop the killing over there.

00:17:54.900 And I wish it could happen tomorrow, because that's going to be a conflicting issue when every time we talk about China being 90 miles away,

00:18:07.400 the other side gets to talk about what we're letting, you know, Russia, expecting Russia to allow NATO to be right up against its border.

00:18:17.540 So that kind of debate will get generated out of that.

00:18:21.940 But knowing President Trump, he'll ignore that and push through to take care of the interests of the United States of America in both of those situations.

00:18:30.360 And I'm so glad that he's in office, because we're going to get the killing stopped in Europe and get that situation resolved.

00:18:38.640 Yeah, I don't think it's an illegitimate argument, by the way.

00:18:41.340 We signed the Budapest Memorandum, in which we promised when the Russians united East and West Germany,

00:18:47.940 or they allowed us to have it reunited, we agreed not to push Ukraine into NATO,

00:18:53.440 which means not to mount NATO missiles on the ground in NATO aimed at Russia.

00:18:57.820 We reaffirmed that in the Minsk Accords.

00:19:00.180 We are in violation.

00:19:01.920 Putin has made it abundantly clear that that was his line in the sand.

00:19:06.320 No, I'm not pro-Putin.

00:19:07.420 I have many of my own family relatives mowed down by Russian tanks in Budapest in 1956.

00:19:14.140 So they'll say, oh, Roger Stone's a rollover for Putin.

00:19:17.540 He's a pro-Russian.

00:19:18.820 Not even an iota.

00:19:21.420 But I understand why the Russians might not want intercontinental ballistic missiles on their border pointed at the nation.

00:19:33.080 All right, we're out of time.

00:19:34.080 I want to thank my special guest, retired Colonel Rob Manis.

00:19:37.600 He has a killer substack that you might want to check out.

00:19:42.420 But I appreciate your being with us, Colonel, and I appreciate your bringing your real-world defense and national security expertise to my listeners here in the Stone Zone.

00:19:54.160 So, my friend, thank you for being with us, and God bless you.

00:19:58.080 Thank you, sir.

00:19:58.880 And I hope to get you on the show and spend an hour with me talking about who killed John F. Kennedy now that all these documents have been released.

00:20:05.720 I would be most honored to do so.

00:20:09.040 For you out there listening to the Stone Zone, I want to thank you as well.

00:20:13.360 Until we meet again, God bless you and Godspeed.

00:20:18.760 And, yes, God bless America.

00:20:21.500 Thank you.

00:20:22.840 Thank you.

00:20:26.280 Thank you.

00:20:26.900 You

00:20:27.100 You

The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - April 04, 2025

Col. Robert Mannes ｜ 04-03-25

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