The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - Hank Sheinkopf ｜ 06-26-25

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00:00:40.460 The Stone Zone.

00:00:42.620 On the Red Apple Podcast Network.

00:00:46.420 Dr. Hank Sheinkoff, my friend Hank, thank you so much for joining us.

00:00:51.720 Roger, it's a pleasure to be with you.

00:00:53.040 I'm grateful.

00:00:54.920 So you are a shrewd analyst of American politics.

00:00:59.300 You have an amazing ability to see the future based on data and trends.

00:01:06.320 Was there anything about the Democrat primary for mayor in New York City that produced a nominee, Zoran Mandani, that surprised you?

00:01:18.380 Well, it was surprising.

00:01:20.640 I mean, surprising in the amount of organizing ability that Zoran Mandani and the Working Families Party and the left wing brought to the event.

00:01:29.060 New York is now a case example of what happens when the left organizes, as it's known how to do very well.

00:01:34.640 And they did a great job.

00:01:36.120 They turned out a vote.

00:01:36.940 They turned out voters who don't necessarily vote, which is kind of interesting. 1.00

00:01:42.060 And the other campaigns were very stupid, very simple. 0.97

00:01:45.860 Do you think that his victory reflects changing demographics of both New York City and of the Democrat Party in New York City? 0.99

00:01:57.280 I think it's I think it has a national impact, Roger, because New York is a petri dish, you know, for what goes on nationally.

00:02:04.760 What it tells you is that the New York that we knew no longer exists.

00:02:08.680 The blue collar New York of Jews and Italians and Irish has now been replaced by an entirely different grouping. 0.94

00:02:15.460 The class struggle will be between those who voted for Mandani, likely, and everybody else.

00:02:19.720 His electorate was better educated, richer, more professional.

00:02:25.860 The colonel electorate was poorer, blacker, less educated. 1.00

00:02:29.700 And the educated people chose to vote for Mandani.

00:02:32.720 Now, what does that really mean?

00:02:34.240 It means that the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party now owns New York, at least in that Democratic primary.

00:02:41.760 And those folks are highly motivated to turn out again, which they will.

00:02:45.140 They are much more progressive, much more liberal, much less likely to be religiously engaged.

00:02:51.760 The very things that made American culture what it is are things that don't matter to them.

00:02:56.040 There are people who have never borne a burden or paid a price, you know, and have no idea about history that got us to this point.

00:03:03.600 But they do know that they don't want to pay a burden, pay a price rather, bear a burden, and will never serve this nation in any capacity.

00:03:10.720 It makes sense.

00:03:12.060 You know, it's kind of interesting.

00:03:13.360 They're the new class of the Democrat Party.

00:03:17.480 And they will be in constant conflict with the Republicans for some time, who have become much more blue collar, much less engaged in, more engaged in the things that this group has rejected, which is religion, community, and traditional American kinds of values.

00:03:33.140 We also see something important here as well, Roger, that people tend to forget.

00:03:37.000 This was a European derivative country where European institutions mattered.

00:03:42.920 The Magna Carta, you know, people don't say, well, I think about the Magna Carta, but European institutions that created democracy were part of American culture.

00:03:51.160 We now have a society that is more than 50% non-European derivative. 0.81

00:03:55.700 And that tells you where we're going to be going.

00:03:58.980 We've got to create some democracy someplace and put it into people's brains or we're going to lose this country.

00:04:04.480 I, for one, do not see how the policies of defunding the police, essentially nationalizing or taking control of grocery stores and having the taxpayers pay for food for everyone.

00:04:24.500 And how the failure to denounce anti-Semitism and terrorism, I just don't see how this can work in New York City, a city that already has very substantial problems.

00:04:39.240 Many of the Republicans that I know nationally who believe that in the end, and Mamdani will be elected because of the lopsided voter registration in New York City, think this is a good thing because his policies will, by the next presidential election, turn New York into chaos and be an example for the American people of what happens under these policies.

00:05:09.280 You're thinking?

00:05:10.320 No.

00:05:10.760 I couldn't agree with you more.

00:05:11.780 I think that this will be the case example, should he be elected, of how it doesn't work.

00:05:18.040 And it will be a place of chaos where police will be more significant but less significant.

00:05:26.560 What do I mean by that?

00:05:27.520 They'll be more needed, but they won't be wanted.

00:05:29.660 Okay?

00:05:30.420 Because the people that elected Mamdani don't think they need police.

00:05:34.800 And they also believe that others really don't need them.

00:05:37.060 What they need is something else.

00:05:38.280 What they need is something else isn't working.

00:05:41.140 You know, even under David Dinkins, who didn't get enough credit for reducing crime.

00:05:46.860 Crime went up under Mayor Koch and went down on David Dinkins.

00:05:50.320 He knew that we needed more cops, and he went and got them.

00:05:52.260 So we're going to live in a society in New York, likely, where police are less important, where the belief is that somehow, if we reduce enforcement of societal norms, that everything will work out fine.

00:06:03.160 Which is not exactly how things work.

00:06:05.800 And New York will change.

00:06:08.080 It's not going to be the melting pot that it was.

00:06:12.420 It's going to be something different.

00:06:14.300 What that difference is, is not clear yet.

00:06:17.560 But it won't be the New York that we knew.

00:06:20.480 Cultural institutions will suffer.

00:06:22.840 Educational institutions will suffer.

00:06:25.060 And the people that paid the tab, they're not staying.

00:06:28.260 I mean, the Jews will start to migrate out. 0.99

00:06:29.960 Which, when that happens in any society, Hannah Arendt was right.

00:06:33.980 It's the beginning of totalitarianism.

00:06:36.380 Just simple fact of life.

00:06:38.320 You can't have chaos and presume that a society will function well.

00:06:42.660 And that's what this portents.

00:06:44.900 Simple.

00:06:46.220 So I'm not hopeful about the future here.

00:06:48.920 Yeah, look, I think we both respect the extraordinary political talents of Andrew Cuomo.

00:06:56.980 The polling always showed him leading in this race.

00:07:02.580 But, of course, he did not win.

00:07:04.540 He was carrying very, very significant negatives pertaining to the circumstances of his resignation

00:07:12.080 and the attempt to impeach him before he resigned.

00:07:16.980 I candidly never thought that he could win this contest.

00:07:22.280 Now, of course, he did file and preserve the ability to run as an independent in the general election.

00:07:32.160 Do you think he will do that?

00:07:34.220 And, the corollary, do you think he could possibly be successful?

00:07:39.200 He will not run, is my hunch, because he's a New York patriot.

00:07:42.800 And if he were to run, he would lose.

00:07:44.440 Why?

00:07:44.960 He was the issue in the race.

00:07:46.780 He also ran a bad campaign.

00:07:48.680 Why?

00:07:49.120 Because the advertising arguments were bad.

00:07:53.200 And Mandami's advertising arguments, they weren't great, but they were great ads.

00:07:57.820 They fit the tenor of the moment.

00:07:59.780 They were slick.

00:08:01.520 They looked like text, T-E-X-T-S.

00:08:03.840 The mail was a combination of Instagram, TikTok, and the overblown graphics, which are very much a part of some of the movie comic books that are kind of appearing.

00:08:17.600 You know, and hip-hop culture, the overblown graphics, the overblown everything.

00:08:23.020 He understood that.

00:08:24.340 Andrew Cuomo didn't.

00:08:25.800 The ad makers were just lousy.

00:08:27.660 And that goes back to the polling question you raised.

00:08:30.120 You know, we're living with pollsters who, I cautioned some people, I said, stop looking at people who voted in four of the last four elections or three of the last four elections.

00:08:40.580 Start looking at people who voted in one of the last four elections or two of the last four elections, because those are the people that Mandami is going to turn up. 0.99

00:08:48.020 And that's exactly what he did.

00:08:50.000 That, combined with the understanding of social media and better advertising, kind of sunk Andrew Cuomo.

00:08:57.200 Plus, his history.

00:09:00.420 The sexual harassment arguments had tremendous impact here.

00:09:04.140 And there's something you can't forget, because they were all in the newspapers, and it was extensively covered for an extended period of time.

00:09:12.980 I concur with all of that.

00:09:16.400 I actually question at this point the efficacy of polling.

00:09:21.260 I think both between the way we communicate has changed and the extreme, extreme polarization in our politics.

00:09:31.600 I really wonder the extent to which voters, Republicans and Democrats, and those who are neither but who do vote,

00:09:40.440 are willing to answer questions either on the phone or online from strangers they don't know.

00:09:49.240 They don't want to be targeted.

00:09:51.520 They don't want to be harassed.

00:09:53.000 They don't want to be identified.

00:09:54.260 I think taking a legitimate, scientifically-based poll today to try to get a snapshot of voter opinions is increasingly difficult.

00:10:08.180 The thing is, you know, we're not living, as I've known them before, in a communal society anymore, Roger.

00:10:13.880 And polling is kind of a communal thing.

00:10:15.580 You know, people call you.

00:10:16.980 It might be your neighbor.

00:10:18.040 They say, oh, I'm your neighbor.

00:10:19.060 I live in your community.

00:10:20.020 And by the way, I'd like to know how you're feeling.

00:10:21.340 Would you mind answering some questions?

00:10:23.820 And that'd be really good.

00:10:24.680 Nobody's doing that anymore.

00:10:25.560 We live in a society that is much less personal, much more, sorry, much less communal, much more driven by individual needs and desires, much less communal, much less voluntary, and much less civic.

00:10:43.680 You know, our turnout numbers are kind of lousy when you think about it.

00:10:47.420 So why should people want to participate?

00:10:51.260 Why should they want to be polled?

00:10:52.620 Yeah, we definitely saw this phenomena in 2024 where President Donald Trump exceeded his share of the vote by several points above all of his polling in the swing states.

00:11:08.620 And I attribute this to the fact that there were Trump voters who did not want to tell a stranger, either online or on the phone, that they were going to vote for Donald Trump because they feared being targeted and harassed.

00:11:26.320 It's a sad commentary on where we are in our politics today.

00:11:30.560 Many conservatives, many Republicans, many sane people today calling for the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, to drop out of the race and to endorse current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is now running as an independent.

00:11:49.620 Listen, in your view, does Sliwa have a chance in the race under the current circumstances or with those who fear a Mamdani mayoralty be best served if Sliwa and Adams could join forces?

00:12:08.920 Sliwa is a decent man.

00:12:11.920 He loves the city.

00:12:14.020 He's a New York patriot.

00:12:15.420 And the New York patriot thing to do would be to follow the law, leave the state for a while and get off the ballot in order to solidify Eric Adams' possibilities of being reelected.

00:12:26.400 Adams is not without flaws, but he is a former New York City police officer who served the city.

00:12:31.220 He cleaned up the act of that administration.

00:12:35.400 The police commissioner he's appointed, the fire commissioner he's appointed, the deputy mayor he's appointed, are doing brilliant work.

00:12:41.020 He's got a lot to talk about.

00:12:42.660 And he ought to protect New York City from a Mamdani administration run by a guy who managed an office with a budget of $150,000 with three people. 0.98

00:12:52.860 You know, this is an extraordinary event to manage New York City.

00:12:55.640 And it takes, I mean, it's very Herculean by any measure.

00:13:01.480 What is this guy going to do?

00:13:02.640 Put Brad Lander, the former controller who supported boycott the rest of the sanctions of Israel, in charge of the city as a deputy mayor?

00:13:10.820 What kind of people is he going to bring into government?

00:13:13.140 People who want to destroy the police department or change it radically so it doesn't function?

00:13:18.300 And people who really don't understand the gravity of the situation.

00:13:21.100 Look, maybe, Roger, the argument is that having, you know, it's just, it hits the Trumpian era, right?

00:13:28.140 Maybe the cities have lost their function.

00:13:31.020 Maybe we don't need them anymore because the melting pot has changed.

00:13:34.640 Maybe we don't require cities as places for the exchange of ideas and culture anymore because people are so self-sufficient and so unengaged.

00:13:43.140 Maybe this election reflects that.

00:13:46.100 You know, the suburbanization of America, finally, the amalgamation of former cultural and ethnic groups that, frankly, have made their way in America through the melting pot.

00:13:59.140 And that the new immigrants don't need what we've provided in the past. 1.00

00:14:03.980 Maybe that's where this is.

00:14:05.640 And that's something we have to consider.

00:14:07.840 It may just be that in the late stage of urbanization that doesn't, that has to change.

00:14:12.300 Well, as you pointed out, Ma'am, Domi's victory came by mobilizing a very substantial number of voters who hadn't voted before or had voted sparsely in the past.

00:14:26.040 Conversely, however, do you now think it is possible that voters who did not participate in the primary but are alarmed to the prospect that he may become mayor could now vote in the general election in order to vote against him?

00:14:40.100 I think that's not an impossibility.

00:14:43.500 But it depends on the argument.

00:14:44.720 I mean, he is very, very clever, extraordinarily good to the camera.

00:14:49.900 His credit in the past has been, you know, to globalize the anti-fada, which does not mean let's have lunch with Jews. 0.99

00:14:56.780 It means kill them. 0.89

00:14:57.520 But the liberals and the progressives are prepared to look past that, like Jerry Nadler, who really should have retired a long time ago, and to endorse people like this with the hope that somehow this will go away. 0.98

00:15:09.300 It's not going to go away.

00:15:11.180 But they don't understand that.

00:15:12.420 And they don't understand that the city's changes are not reflected necessarily in the populations that he serves, the very wealthy west side of Manhattan, where people have never really suffered a bad day.

00:15:25.720 I mean, he doesn't understand this.

00:15:27.240 So who knows what could happen?

00:15:29.880 It is, I think we've entered into a realm where all possibilities occur, even the most irrational.

00:15:36.760 And we proved that at Election Day in New York just a couple of days ago.

00:15:41.080 If you're just tuning in, folks, we're talking to the premier Democrat strategist in the country, Hank Sheinkoff, one of the few Democrats I know who accurately predicted the election of Donald Trump in 2024.

00:15:52.180 And we'll be right back.

00:15:53.500 So please don't touch that dial.

00:15:56.340 The Stone Zone.

00:15:58.020 On the Red Apple Podcast Network.

00:16:02.580 The Stone Zone.

00:16:04.260 On the Red Apple Podcast Network.

00:16:06.760 And we're back in the Stone Zone.

00:16:10.560 We're talking to Hank Sheinkoff, to me, the preeminent and I think most brilliant Democrat strategist in the country today.

00:16:19.160 I remember a very specific interview right here on this show where Hank Sheinkoff said that the National Democrat Party did not understand that between open borders and the fentanyl and crime problem that caused,

00:16:34.520 the runaway inflation, the runaway inflation, the unbridled spending, that the Democrats did not recognize the toxic myths, his words, that would lead to Trump's probable re-election.

00:16:48.360 Most of my other Democrat friends were still talking about the election of Kamala Harris, but not Hank Sheinkoff.

00:16:56.480 Hank, you were right.

00:16:57.800 I want to acknowledge that.

00:16:59.540 And I want to ask you, how do you think you're a Democrat, but how do you think Trump is doing so far?

00:17:06.160 He's got significant problems because of the issues with his own party.

00:17:12.820 And I think that he's been, you know, away from my own political leaders, I'm still, I would still like to be a Clinton Democrat, but I think that ship has sailed.

00:17:20.960 I don't think we have a centrist Democrat party anymore.

00:17:23.020 But I think the measure of Donald Trump's success, if they're in an early one, will be whether this budget bill gets passed and what shape it's in.

00:17:32.000 If he can be the guy like Clinton was, who has cured the debt, he will be a great man.

00:17:39.920 But I don't know that that's going to happen.

00:17:41.460 That's problem one.

00:17:42.120 Internationally, the crisis, the international crisis, where America's strength is being challenged by our enemies throughout the world, is maybe unmanageable by anyone.

00:17:54.700 And I think Trump is doing the best he can to manage that crisis.

00:17:59.220 But it's the Ukraine issue alone makes it appear that he is weak.

00:18:03.960 How he cures those two problems, the financial, the internal financial one, the debt issue, and the foreign policy questions will determine how he is remembered in history.

00:18:13.980 And these are very difficult things that he's walking into.

00:18:16.380 I think he inherited these problems.

00:18:18.780 And he's, and frankly, he's ripe for attack because they're not, they may not be solvable.

00:18:24.280 And that is a very difficult condition to be in for the United States of America.

00:18:28.180 We believe we can solve almost anything.

00:18:29.980 And Donald Trump, no matter his skill, may not be able to solve those two problems.

00:18:33.960 A final question.

00:18:36.000 The decision he made to strike the nuclear weapons development sites in Iran last Sunday.

00:18:43.520 Do you think he made the right decision?

00:18:45.920 The world depends on the United States to save it, to save the world from insanity.

00:18:51.580 The United States should have done this or taken out of Iran or gone after Tehran in 1983 after the attack,

00:18:59.040 after the murder of 200, close to 300 Marines and French troops who were there in a Beirut peacekeeping mission.

00:19:07.040 What Donald Trump did was to let the world know.

00:19:09.320 And this was not just for the Iranians.

00:19:11.340 This was for the Russians and for our European allies to let them know that we will do what we must do and that the Russians should behave better and the Chinese should be very careful. 0.89

00:19:22.620 And for those reasons alone, I think that it was the only move he could make.

00:19:26.060 It was brilliantly executed.

00:19:27.720 And we called the president a great deal with gratitude.

00:19:30.580 All right.

00:19:31.200 We have to wrap it there.

00:19:32.340 The great Hank Sheinkoff.

00:19:33.480 I want to thank him for joining us today in the Stone Zone.

00:19:36.720 And until tomorrow, God bless you and Godspeed.

00:20:03.480 See you next time for a new episode so you never have to wonder.

00:20:14.040 What the heck is going on here?

The StoneZONE with Roger Stone - June 26, 2025

Hank Sheinkopf ｜ 06-26-25

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