In this episode of The Stone Zone, host Roger Stone is joined by Troy Smith of Slingshot News to discuss the possibility of a third presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and why it would be the greatest debate of all time. Stone has served as a senior campaign aide to three Republican presidents, and is a New York Times bestselling author and a longtime friend and advisor to President Donald Trump. As an outspoken libertarian, Stone has appeared on thousands of broadcasts, spoken at countless venues, and lectured before the prestigious Oxford Political Union and the Cambridge Union Society. He has also appeared on CNN and other media outlets, and has been a regular guest on Fox News. Roger Stone has been involved in all three of the three most highly rated debates of all-time, including the first debate between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in 1980, and the second debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016, which Roger calls the debate of the 20th century. Roger Stone: The Top 3 Debates of All-Time, hosted by Roger Stone and the Stone Zone and features a special guest, Troy Smith, who broke the story about the possibility for a third CNN debate between Trump and Biden. The Stonezone with legendary Republican strategist and political icon and pundit, Roger Stone joins us to discuss all of this and much more! The with Roger Stone, host of the , host of The , and host of , joins us in The . to talk about the latest on the latest in politics, the 2020 Democratic primary race, and what s going to happen in 2020. and the upcoming 2020 Democratic National Convention, and how to prepare for the 2020 mid-term primary, and much, much more, including who s gonna win in 2020! with Hillary Clinton, and who s got the best chance to win it all! Roger s thoughts on the most important debate, and which is going to be the best one of them all-in-all! of all the rest! and who s the best in 2020? of course, there s gonna be the one that s gonna beat Hillary Clinton s the most of the night. of 2020, right? and much much more. , including the one you veep, and more! (and much, of it all, including what s gonna happen next! , and so much more...
00:01:47.940I mean, I had always assumed that Trump, of course, master debater, would be anxious to debate,
00:01:55.320that Joe Biden, in his diminished capacity, would not be anxious to debate.
00:02:01.260This doesn't even address the question of the candidacy of Robert Kennedy, the candidacy of the Libertarian and the Green Party candidates,
00:02:12.700potentially the independent candidacy of Professor Cornel West.
00:02:18.980What we don't know is, is CNN excluding them?
00:03:35.820It was at that moment that you saw Donald Trump at his absolutely combative best.
00:03:42.560That debate really framed this race for the American people.
00:03:48.440I think Trump performed far better than the expectations for him.
00:03:54.060I don't know why they were low, given his strong performance in the nomination debates, where he vanquished 16 other more experienced candidates.
00:04:05.520But Hillary Clinton came out, I think, on the short end of those debates.
00:04:09.820I think it played a crucial role in Trump's ultimate victory.
00:04:15.600Well, Roger, and for anyone who doesn't know his home, I was actually doing some research for this article because these obviously are historic debates.
00:04:22.300I mean, this is the first time there's going to be a televised debate that's a rematch.
00:04:27.360It's actually the first time because the only time this ever happened was before television, Roger.
00:04:32.120And I think that's important to point out.
00:04:34.100And it's also important to point out that the man sitting across from me in this meeting here, Roger Stone, has been involved in all three of the top rated debates of all time in American history.
00:04:48.080Now, Roger, the number one rated debate of all time was the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
00:04:54.460The second highest rated debate of all time was actually, to my surprise, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in 1980.
00:05:04.040And my question to you, Roger, would be you obviously worked on all three presidential campaigns for Ronald Reagan.
00:05:10.820And I wanted to ask you, what was your experience like surrounding this debate?
00:05:15.900Do you remember exactly where you were?
00:05:18.980Exactly what was your experience around it?
00:05:21.360Well, Troy, one of the great ironies is that Hamilton Jordan, who was Jimmy Carter's White House chief of staff, also his chief political strategist,
00:05:32.420wrote in his biography that Jimmy Carter wanted to run against Ronald Reagan.
00:05:38.920The candidates he feared were Howard Baker, the Senate minority leader, Bob Dole, or even George Bush.
00:05:47.860But for some strange reason, they really underrated Reagan's skills as a communicator.
00:05:55.700Television, of course, is Ronald Reagan's element.
00:05:58.660I mean, he was an actor before he was elected governor in 1966, reelected by almost a million votes in 1970,
00:06:08.140had run for president in 1976, had vanquished George H.W. Bush in a famous New Hampshire debate in Nashua,
00:06:18.480which really ended George Bush's prospects for the nomination.
00:06:22.940But nonetheless, Carter wanted to debate Reagan, and Reagan was absolutely at his best when he used his famous line,
00:06:36.360are you better off today than you were four years ago, and then went through the various economic statistics and so on.
00:06:44.220I think you can see, you can almost project that President Donald Trump will do the same thing when you look at the rate of inflation,
00:06:52.580when you look at the cost of gasoline.
00:06:55.480By the way, $4.29 last night in South Florida when I pulled up to the pump.
00:07:01.620You have the cost of food, the cost of living, the lack of affordable housing.
00:07:09.680You also have, of course, the spending of billions of dollars in Ukraine at a time that America has problems.
00:07:20.000So you can expect, I think, Trump to use exactly that.
00:07:27.400The media was trying, of course, to paint this picture of him as some kind of right-wing cowboy movie actor who might start a nuclear war.
00:07:37.280I think he had to reassure him that he had the gravitas and the sober judgment to be president.
00:07:43.720But as I pointed out here other times on The Stone Zone, one of the great things that Trump and Reagan have in common is their belief in peace through strength,
00:07:53.940the policy of Dwight Eisenhower, that unlike the neocons, unlike, say, George Bush, you don't go around the globe looking for foreign wars,
00:08:03.400where we have no inherent national interest, where we spend treasure and lives,
00:08:11.180but that strength, a strong military, as rebuilt by Donald Trump as president, is a deterrent to bullies.
00:08:18.640It is not lost on the American people.
00:08:22.540There were no new foreign wars under Donald Trump.
00:08:25.800And our adversaries, our most dangerous adversaries, the Russians, the Chinese, did not move on us in any theater.
00:08:34.200Also, the Iranians had been starved into submission.
00:08:38.640Donald Trump's policies had essentially bankrupted the Iranians.
00:08:42.880The sanctions he put on their highly productive oil industry made it impossible for them to sell their oil,
00:08:50.240meaning they could not fund their attacks on Israel.
00:08:53.920They could not fund their subsidies to Hamas and Hezbollah.
00:08:59.200I think you can look to Trump to bring all of these things up in the debate.
00:09:03.760Well, my question, Roger, is I know Trump is, you know, I've never seen him so calculated.
00:09:09.660And right now, I think it's such a it's a great platform for him to have at that courthouse almost every single day,
00:09:16.160because, look, I do this every day and I'm watching those videos and we're taking those at Slingshot
00:09:21.540and putting those out across different platforms across, you know, the country.
00:09:26.060And we're getting a lot of traffic on Trump outside the courthouse.
00:09:29.300So here's a negative that I think the Andrew Weissman's of the world, these people have tried to force onto Trump,
00:09:35.800and yet he uses it to his advantage, where yesterday he has House Speaker Mike Johnson,
00:09:41.340Representative Byron Donald, many others, including Vivek Ramaswamy, outside of that courthouse standing with him.
00:09:48.140And yet he still goes up as the lone man and talks to the media.
00:09:52.400It's kind of a brilliant move that provides him a platform that maybe the media otherwise wouldn't grant him.
00:13:50.440I remember in 2016, Trump would always taunt the media to turn their cameras around to just show how many people had come to see him.
00:13:59.780And eventually he'd go to them into doing it several times and people would show this vast crowd.
00:14:05.080But in this election and in 2020, Roger, the media is doing the same thing, but they're refusing to show the few people that show up to Biden's events.
00:14:12.340And when he does hold events, it's usually like a union or something guides as a presidential event.
00:18:26.820This is a real gamble for both Trump and Biden.
00:18:33.840I say that because although Trump is ahead of the polls and his lead is respectable, no place is it so dominant that the race is not still competitive.
00:18:44.500And even the best poll, with a large sample, has a plus or minus factor of three, two and a half, three, as much as four.
00:18:54.080So we are still locked into a relatively close race.
00:18:57.860Generally speaking, however, when an incumbent is under 50 percent of the vote, they're in trouble.
00:19:04.740It's not the challenger will ultimately get to 50, but the incumbent should be at 50 today.
00:19:09.980Biden is not at 50 in any survey that I have seen that I respect.
00:19:17.100There is, as you know, in America, this great tradition of presidential debates.
00:19:22.200This is very much shaped by the Nixon-Kennedy debate.
00:19:26.840This is a debate where Nixon gambled everything and he lost.
00:19:32.180Biden appears to be gambling everything, and I think he may also lose.
00:19:36.120But Nixon, after eight years as vice president, far better known than the younger John Kennedy.
00:19:47.000Nixon told his advisers that he would not go along with the four-debate challenge from Kennedy.
00:19:55.120They had no intention of giving that much airtime to his rival and also elevating challenger John Kennedy to the same level as an eight-year vice president.
00:20:08.860This is an incredible tale of woe because Nixon bumped his knee on a car door in, I believe it was in Tennessee, quickly developed a staph infection, had to be hospitalized and put on antibiotics, was running a very high fever.
00:20:28.820Now, Nixon had made an unjudicious decision, a bad decision, at the Republican National Convention in Chicago, pledging to visit every single one of the 50 states.
00:20:41.800That meant that he was committed to go into states like Vermont and Utah, which at the time, for example, were reliable Republican states that were in the bag.
00:20:53.600Therefore, he was off the campaign trail for more than two weeks after Labor Day, with the first debate in Chicago looming.
00:21:03.080He came roaring out of the hospital, still on antibiotics, almost 15 pounds underweight.
00:21:11.420He did five rallies on his way to Chicago.
00:21:15.640Meanwhile, Senator John Kennedy was on the roof of the hotel in Chicago, sunning himself with two gorgeous hookers.
00:21:23.000It is said that when Nixon and Kennedy went to the weigh-in, the lighting check, which is like the weigh-in in a prize fight, that Nixon's face was almost as gray as his suit.
00:21:39.840He had arrived in Chicago thoroughly exhausted, gone directly to his room, was cramming statistics and so on.
00:21:47.820I think Nixon made a fundamental misunderstanding that how you looked was every bit as important, perhaps even more important, than what you had to say.
00:21:58.940Nixon thought this was about substance.
00:22:01.540Kennedy knew that it was about both the mystique, the imagery, as well as substance.
00:22:07.520And then, of course, Nixon was flummoxed as John F. Kennedy came at him, not from the left, but from the right.
00:22:15.480Kennedy hit Nixon for opposing a large defense buildup, which was Eisenhower's position, one that Nixon could depart from.
00:22:25.100He accused Nixon as being part of the Eisenhower administration, which he said was too soft on communist China in their attempts to take two islands, Quimoy and Matsu, long forgiven in the dustbin of history.
00:22:39.880He also, and this was what rankled Nixon the most, he attacked Nixon for having no plan to remove Fidel Castro from the communist gulag 90 miles from our shore.
00:22:53.480Now, Nixon and Kennedy both knew, because they had gotten briefings from the CIA, that there was indeed an invasion plan.
00:23:02.240It would morph into the Bay of Pigs plan.
00:23:06.280It actually was born in a working group that Vice President Richard Nixon had been the head of.
00:23:14.560It probably began as a plan to assassinate Castro.
00:23:19.380It morphed into this invasion plan that would ultimately be part of JFK's, you know, problematic brief presidency.
00:23:30.100But nonetheless, Nixon began to sweat.
00:23:34.900Now, in the in the the lighting check, the the producer, Don Hewitt, very famous, said to Senator John Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, will you be requiring makeup?
00:23:48.980And Kennedy, who already, according to author Teddy White, who wrote The Making of the President 1960, looked like a bronzed god.
00:24:39.160John Kennedy, having declined makeup, went to his makeup room where his own personal makeup man, who had been flown in from New York, made the senator up for the classic debate.
00:24:52.220The amazing thing, of course, is that Kennedy's advanced men, knowing of Nixon's propensity to sweat under pressure, turned the air conditioning in the studios off.
00:25:03.620And the combination of the heat, the surprise of Kennedy, who wore a dark navy suit, as opposed to Nixon, who wore a light gray suit, the visual difference between them was shocking.
00:25:20.400As Nixon began to sweat, the powder on his face began to actually run.
00:25:26.440It actually appeared on screen as if Richard Nixon was melting.
00:25:31.180Now, it is interesting that those who heard the debate on radio but did not see it, a majority of those, when polled afterwards, said that Nixon had won the debate.
00:25:44.280But those who saw it on TV said by a broad margin that Kennedy had triumphed.
00:25:51.220It's interesting that Lyndon Johnson, listening to it on the radio at a campaign stop in Texas, not watching it, actually said to a traveling aide, that son of a bitch just blew it for us, speaking of his running mate, John Kennedy.
00:26:08.260But it's also interesting that Henry Cabot Lodge, the vice presidential candidate for Richard Nixon, watching it in Boston on television, said to an aide, that son of a bitch just blew it for us.
00:26:43.380There was a huge drop-off in debate two and three.
00:26:46.700But the viewership in the final debate was only 100,000 households less than the first debate.
00:26:54.980And it was considered by many Nixon's best debate of the four.
00:26:59.200Nixon, I think, had the momentum in this race going into Election Day.
00:27:04.460And as I've written in two books, Nixon's Secrets and the Rise and Fall and Rise of Richard M. Nixon.
00:27:12.800Actually, I think the book is entitled Tricky Dick, The Rise and Fall of Richard M. Nixon.
00:27:17.540I have detailed that Nixon's own mother would call Rosemary Woods, his personal secretary, and say, is Richard unwell?
00:27:30.620Whereas after the debate on a TV screen in Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley said, hell, he's not even dead yet, and they've already embalmed him.
00:27:40.720Well, you know, Roger, I am so amazed to listen to you go through that whole list of things.
00:27:49.140I mean, to still remember the technicalities of that, I know you've written books on the subject and stuff like that.
00:27:54.700But the idea of these little tiny things playing such a role, and especially in a situation like that with Richard Nixon and Kennedy.
00:28:05.760I mean, Kennedy, probably the best looking president we've ever had versus Richard Nixon, who I think, you know, we've talked at length here about the genius of some of his policies.
00:28:14.820You know, a brilliant guy. And that's why I love the rise again of Richard Nixon.
00:28:20.580And I think this debate really encapsulates why his rise, why him coming back was such a big deal.
00:28:28.140And it also highlights the importance of these debates.
00:28:31.360And my only question to you about these specific Trump debates, Roger, would be, you know, I don't remember in my lifetime there being a debate as early as June.
00:28:42.220Is that the earliest presidential debate you've seen? And what are your thoughts on scheduling it that soon?
00:28:47.460I know Trump must be eager to get there onto the stage and debate Biden.
00:28:52.740You can see that Trump is pulling at the bit. He definitely wants to get Biden one-on-one.
00:29:02.100Look, I think Trump is motivated more by anything else than what's happening to the country.
00:29:08.700He left us with a model economy. He left us with peace and prosperity.
00:29:13.600He put America on a solid footing to move forward.
00:29:17.460And then, of course, all of those things were very quickly undone by Joe Biden.
00:29:23.040So, yes, I think that he lives for this moment.
00:29:27.020You don't know, since we don't know the inner workings of the Biden campaign, what their thinking is on this image, on this decision.
00:29:34.360Biden himself is a very tough, feisty, arrogant, overconfident guy with a very high opinion of himself.
00:29:43.360I'm sure he believes that he can take Donald Trump in a debate.
00:29:47.620I think he's going to prove to be wrong.
00:29:49.680But let me point out, and this is important, the expectation levels are extraordinarily low for Biden.
00:29:57.320And they are, of course, sky high for the president, who's been demanding this debate for some time.
00:30:04.980I think it also guarantees one other thing, and that is there will be a vice presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and whoever it is that Donald Trump ends up selecting.
00:30:16.340Look, I think more debates are better.
00:30:20.020If the three debates don't go well for Joe Biden, it remains to be seen whether he will want another one to try to recoup or whether he'll take his licking and hope for the best.
00:30:31.780This is going to be, I mean, where is the popcorn?
00:30:34.480This is going to be absolutely jaw-dropping because the stakes are so very high.
00:30:41.260Obviously, if Biden could figure out a way to win a debate or to strike a knockout blow against Trump, he hopes for a comeback.
00:30:50.560Trump is in the position of being able to put this race away.
00:30:59.760But again, I think the comparison of the two records, which should be the centerpiece of the debate, it's very hard for Joe Biden.
00:31:08.500I mean, I don't know how he will defend his open borders policy.
00:31:13.080I don't know how he will defend the fentanyl crisis in America.
00:31:17.140I don't know how he will defend the billions and billions and billions of new deficit spending, which has fueled the inflation rate, which is destroying the average American family.
00:31:29.180I don't know how he will address the complete unavailability of affordable housing for middle class and lower income Americans.
00:31:43.040And then, of course, you never know, you know, whether he will start mangling his words, whether he will start forgetting, you know, where he is and what he's doing.
00:31:52.460I mean, look, I've always believed, and Trump said this himself, that they're probably giving him Adderall or some other stimulant before he goes into these public events.
00:32:04.000But if you watch him over time, you can kind of see the stimulant begin to wear off and Sleepy Joe gets even sleepier.
00:32:11.200Well, Roger, and I would expect Biden, someone to put the words in his mouth, or at least try to, at least, they're going to try to bring up these trials in these cases, and particularly the hush money trial.
00:32:23.280And this is something I wanted to get your opinion on.
00:32:25.640There was video of Dan Goldman that I have here.
00:32:28.320We're going to play this now of Dan Goldman saying that he has actually prepared Michael Cohen for his testimony in this hush money trial.
00:32:36.700Let's roll that clip first and let's get Roger's reaction.
00:32:39.900Then we have Goldman getting called out on it.
00:32:42.260But let's roll Goldman actually admitting that he counseled Michael Cohen.
00:32:57.760This seems to me to be a violation of the separations of power.
00:33:01.300He's a member of Congress, and he's interfering in a judicial proceeding.
00:33:05.780He should not be preparing Michael Cohen.
00:33:09.200Michael Cohen's testimony has, generally speaking, been, I think, a disaster in the sense that he never was able to tie any of these transactions directly to Trump.
00:33:25.000He did get shredded pretty badly in cross-examination by Trump's lawyers.
00:33:29.320I haven't had a chance to watch all of that yet because it's happening even as we speak.
00:33:35.980But it is Dan Goldman is jockeying to now that Adam Schiff is leaving the House to be the single worst member of Congress, certainly the most odious member of Congress.
00:33:48.380It's a tight race with Jamie from Maryland, Jamie Raskin.
00:34:02.240But there ought to be—the House Ethics Committee should investigate that.
00:34:05.400I don't think a congressman should be interceding in a judicial proceeding in this way.
00:34:10.960Now, I'm not an attorney, and I say that up front, but this seems inappropriate to me.
00:34:15.600Well, absolutely, Roger, and I think this is being talked about.
00:34:19.180We have a clip now of Representative Hageman bringing this up and actually calling out Dan Goldman for his involvement with Michael Cohen.
00:34:26.440And, folks, remember at home, this is a Democrat congressman interfering in a presidential election trying to boost the case against a Republican nominee for president.
00:34:36.380This is election interference, plain and simple.
00:34:57.780And if it seems like there might be a dog in this hunt on the other side, what you need to understand is that Mr. Goldman,
00:35:03.940the novice representative from New York, actually does have a personal stake in this case, he has stated that he has been involved with the Bragg case, helping to prepare Mr. Cohen for his testimony.
00:35:16.320So he is quite closely aligned with an admitted and convicted liar and perjurer.
00:35:22.580He's also paid the Judge Merchant's daughter's firm over $150,000 for her services.
00:35:30.780So I think we've got quite a conflict of interest from Mr. Dan Goldman, the novice representative from New York.
00:35:37.660And just one other thing to keep in mind when considering the hostility from the folks on the other side of this aisle is that the ranking member of this particular committee was Jeffrey Epstein's fixer.
00:35:49.440The ranking member was Jeffrey Epstein's fixer.
00:35:53.420So I think that that might give you some idea of why you see this husband's statement be taken down related to Mr. Goldman.
00:36:00.880I would ask that the statements regarding the conflict of interest related to Mr. Goldman be stricken down from the record.
00:36:13.800In your 14 minute and 14 second opening statement, you called the former president, current candidate for the Office of Presidents of the United States, all kinds of names.
00:39:56.080You subscribe on a monthly basis to this service.
00:40:01.540And if the grid goes down, if we have a complete power outage, maybe it's just a hurricane or maybe it's an attack on America.
00:40:10.420These satellite phones work extremely well, and there is a way to keep them charged.
00:40:17.260So I really urge you, for your own safety, many, many influencers and conservatives, many of my friends, both current and former retired military, use this satellite phone, the SAT 123 phone.
00:40:32.640Let's put up the email address where folks can order it.
00:40:36.400Go check it out at SAT123.com slash Roger.
00:40:41.420This is the most exciting technology I have seen.
00:40:45.800You know you can keep in touch with your loved ones.
00:40:56.300All right, Troy, let's continue with our political Lollapalooza here at the Stone Zone.
00:41:05.320Well, Roger, it's always a good time going through the politics here, and we always have a lot to cover.
00:41:10.880One thing I wanted to touch on today was particularly Mike Johnson yesterday.
00:41:16.320I wanted to get – you mentioned earlier that they were all kind of lined up with the red ties.
00:41:21.460And one thing I thought was interesting, you know, I listened to everybody's remarks, and I thought Mike Johnson was the one that was hit the hardest for going there to stand with President Trump.
00:41:31.720And I actually wanted to play his remarks here.
00:41:33.780And we also have a comment by Mitt Romney on the comments of the speaker that I want to get your opinion on, Roger.
00:41:40.520But let's roll Speaker Johnson yesterday in New York.
00:43:56.080So in order for the financial transaction in question to be a felony, it has to be in connection or in the furtherance or to cover up some underlying crime.
00:44:10.820Well, having an NDA with an actress, even an adult movie actress, is not a crime.
00:44:20.860And Cohen has still been unable to tie Trump to the actual transaction.
00:44:26.400There's a lot of evidence that it was Michael Cohen who decided to get an NDA with Stormy Daniels.
00:44:32.220There's a lot of evidence that he went out and took out a home equity line to get the money to pay Stormy Daniels and her lawyer, Keith Davidson.
00:44:43.640If Trump were paying for this, why wouldn't he have just gone to Trump for the money?
00:44:50.080This is the best they can come up with.
00:44:52.260The Speaker, as an attorney, knows that they have no case.
00:44:57.020This is about trying to frame President Donald Trump in a courthouse, in a jurisdiction where he's certain to have a hostile judge, that he certainly has, and a hostile jury.
00:45:16.140The judge gave a campaign contribution to Joe Biden's presidential campaign.
00:45:20.760That is a violation of the New York State Judicial Canon of Ethics.
00:45:25.840Judges are not supposed to give any political contributions.
00:45:29.140In this case, he actually gave to Biden, which demonstrates his bias against Trump.
00:45:33.820But then additionally, as has been widely reported, his adult daughter is a Democrat fundraising consultant, and her clients have made millions of dollars using this trial as the focal point of her fundraising pitch.
00:45:49.220So the judge should have recused himself.
00:45:52.300But as I've said to you before on the show, those who seek to destroy Trump, they really don't care whether the verdict here is unjust.
00:46:02.720They don't care if it is overturned on appeal, which it almost certainly would be if the president were to be convicted, as long as they can interfere with the election.
00:46:13.740As long as we can have a debate where Joe Biden can say, well, you're a convicted felon, Donald Trump.
00:46:22.120It's amazing, by the way, even in these proceedings, you notice how we saw this in Georgia.
00:46:27.480They continually refer to him as Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, when the correct title is President Trump.
00:46:35.780Even Bill Clinton was afforded that courtesy during the investigations into his activities.
00:46:42.240So it's a demonstration of what this is all about.
00:46:47.800Well, Roger, one of the things that I think we've tried to highlight here, and I think is so important heading into this next election, is that we combat the rhinos.
00:46:58.100And there's a lot of rhinos, as we've pointed out, that are leaving the House, that are leaving the Senate.
00:47:04.220And we have a headline from Slingshot News today, Mitt Romney actually calling Speaker Johnson embarrassing and saying it was embarrassing what he did.
00:47:15.280Really very difficult to watch, he said about Johnson.
00:47:18.280There is a level of dignity and decorum that you expect from people who are running for the highest nation in the land and going out and prostrating themselves in front of the public to try to apparently curry favor with the person who's our nominee.
00:47:31.980And that was the quote from Mitt Romney, Roger.
00:47:34.700And we're seeing the Senate Republicans, while Speaker Johnson is actually coming to the, I would not say to the aid, but to the support of President Trump, Senate Republicans refuse to go.
00:47:46.940And on top of that, I mean, they're putting up some defense.
00:47:51.080I've seen Tim Scott and others putting up some defense in the media.
00:47:53.820But they're not out there standing with President Trump and with Romney coming out and McConnell and the other Senate leaders saying we're not going to join Trump.
00:48:02.400I'm wondering, are you seeing a Trump resistance starting to build up in the Senate in anticipation that he's going to win this next election?
00:48:10.640Well, first of all, I don't quite understand what Mitt Romney means when he says our party, because he's already announced that he will not support Donald Trump and that he would vote for Joe Biden.
00:48:19.460He also, facing almost certain ignominious defeat in a Utah Republican primary against hard-charging Mayor Trent Staggs, who we here at the Stone Zone endorsed six months ago, even longer, he announced his retirement.
00:48:38.140This is Mitt Romney, who wasn't saying this, didn't sound this way when he was begging Donald Trump for his endorsement for the U.S. Senate in Utah, was not sounding like this when he asked President Trump to clear the field of other prospective candidates so that he would have a clear shot at the Senate seat.
00:48:59.100This is not what he was saying, of course, until he got to the Senate.
00:49:03.920And then, just as his father, Michigan Governor George Romney, stabbed Barry Goldwater, the 1964 nominee for president, in the back, refusing to support him, just as Mitt Romney's refusing to support Trump, it was, of course, Mitt Romney, the only senator, I believe, to vote for one of the articles of impeachment.
00:49:25.980Look, Mitt Romney is butthurt over the fact that he never got to be president.
00:49:31.500His entire life, all that plastic surgery, all those different hairstyles, he never got to be president.
00:49:40.780And that's the real source of his animus.
00:49:44.320By the way, I also think this is one of the reasons why John McCain hated Donald Trump so much, because Trump was a natural.
00:49:52.120Trump won the White House when both of those guys couldn't.
00:49:58.340If you look in Michigan, if you look in Wisconsin, if you look in Pennsylvania, if you look in Georgia, you will see that in the inner city areas, in the suburbs, but mostly in the inner cities, Donald Trump always ran two to three points better than either Romney or McCain.
00:50:17.780Now, if you only won the state of Michigan in 2016 by 65,000 votes, but you got 75,000 more votes in the city of Detroit, this is euphemistic, then you would have to say that that was the difference.
00:50:36.680Trump has an ability to transcend the Republican Party, where I think both Romney and McCain had a hard time reaching beyond the party to the so-called Reagan Democrats, many of whom had gone back to Obama because of the failures of the Bush years, and also the reach to disaffected Democrats.
00:50:58.440Yesterday here on the Stone Zone, we had Derek Gibson, the African-American community leader and real Republican, who talked about the great inroads that Trump is already making in what has been historically and traditionally a very solid Democratic voting group.
00:51:49.540At a historic level, it's 25, 28 percent of the African-American vote would be seismic.
00:51:56.900It would change the outcome of this election.
00:52:00.140And the polling we're looking at today shows that it is actually completely possible.
00:52:06.420Well, and Roger, I think there's a miscalculation by the media.
00:52:09.560You know, they think by attacking Trump and hitting, oh, he has this many cases, oh, he's been charged.
00:52:15.480They think that that is going to have some kind of effect on the American people where they're going to say, no, we don't want to vote for him.
00:52:20.700I think it's having the reverse effect.
00:54:07.440When I say I want to punch him in the face, it's because what he said to a person, a bystander or somebody in one of his rallies, he wants to punch him in the face.
00:55:18.900So Trump's supporters are violent, and he promotes violence, which is why I want to punch him in the face.
00:55:26.680How much less self-awareness could you possibly have?
00:55:30.260It also ignores the fact that it's actually Joe Biden who has threatened to beat up every political opponent he's ever had when he ran against John Burris for the U.S. Senate in Delaware, threatened to take him out behind the school gymnasium and beat him.
00:55:45.860He bragged about taking Donald Trump out behind the bleachers for a physical confrontation.
00:55:51.540So the guy who's constantly talking about assaulting his opponents, that would actually be Joe Biden.
00:56:09.720Like end all these foreign wars where we're wasting American lives and treasure?
00:56:16.320Like cutting this ridiculous spending so we can get inflation under control?
00:56:22.940Like negotiating a settlement between the Russians and the Ukrainians, which this administration has had multiple opportunities to do, but they don't, they refuse to do.
00:56:33.220They kill peace talks, they kill any efforts to negotiate, and the wrongheaded policy of supporting both sides in the Middle East, where we have unfrozen more than $100 billion in assets and given it to the Iranians on the naive view that they're just going to use it for humanitarian purposes, that they're not going to use it to restart their nuclear weapons development program.
00:57:00.840They're not going to use it to subsidize Islamic terrorists like Hamas and Hezbollah.
00:57:07.340It is at best naive, but as some have argued here on the show, Lee Smith particularly, the author and investigative journalist, this is actually their policy.
00:57:18.460They think a strong Iran is good for the region.
00:57:22.180I say that a nuclear armed Iran is a menace to world peace.
00:57:27.400So these people, I don't know what they think the Trump years were like.
00:57:33.820If they want to see someone who will destroy your freedoms, it would be the guy who's trying to keep Donald Trump off the ballot in 50 states.
00:57:40.540It's the guy who's trying to censor or cancel free speech on the Internet if they don't like what you have to say, whether it's about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccinations or whether it's about Russian collusion that never actually exists.
00:57:57.900I've been a victim of the fake news machine, and I understand these attacks, but it is, ironically, it is Joe Biden who is going to drive us into an authoritarian state.
00:58:14.740It is Joe Biden and the Democrats who want to erase our constitutional freedoms.
00:58:21.380Robert De Niro is an elitist who obviously cannot see or hear himself.
00:58:27.000All right, Troy, we're about to the end.
00:58:29.320I'm going to give you the last word, and then I'm going to close the show.
00:58:32.860Well, Roger, I think it's important, everyone, to just follow us here on Rumble, rumble.com slash Roger Stone.
00:58:40.120And I would make sure that you go to slingshot.news as well as stonezone.com to get all the latest things that I'm producing, that Roger's producing, that we're all doing here on the Stone Zone.