The StoneZONE with Roger Stone


The Pillow Fight in Minnesota


Episode Stats


Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

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Hate speech

6

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Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:59.340 I am a sample
00:01:03.120 long before I'm measured
00:01:04.740 long before I'm named
00:01:06.240 each piece of me has a message
00:01:08.420 a nuanced role
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00:01:32.020 The Stone Zone. Entertaining and informative.
00:01:36.120 On the Red Apple Podcast Network.
00:01:39.020 You are now entering the Stone Zone.
00:01:43.080 Kick back with me while I enjoy what President Richard Nixon used to call a silver bullet.
00:01:48.800 That's an extra dye vodka martini.
00:01:51.960 and we review today's political news.
00:01:55.400 You almost have to admire the consistency of my friend Mike Lindell,
00:01:59.520 the crazy pillow guy, the MyPillow founder,
00:02:02.420 went into Tuesday's Minnesota Republican gubernatorial primary
00:02:06.420 with the endorsement of President Donald Trump,
00:02:09.520 substantial name recognition,
00:02:11.560 and polling that had given him reason to believe that he could win.
00:02:15.000 One Survey USA poll had Mike Lindell at 35%
00:02:19.460 to his opponent, House Speaker Lisa DeMuth's 26%.
00:02:24.840 But when Minnesota voters, Republican voters, actually voted,
00:02:29.640 well, they delivered a rather different result.
00:02:31.980 Now, this isn't really surprising because, unfortunately,
00:02:35.880 my friend Mike Lindell undermined his entire campaign for governor
00:02:39.660 right after he was endorsed by President Donald Trump
00:02:43.060 by coming out for amnesty for illegal immigrants
00:02:46.760 where the vast majority of people in Minnesota and America,
00:02:51.100 according to every poll, want illegal immigrants deported.
00:02:55.380 I just don't know what Mike was thinking.
00:02:58.500 On the other hand, I warned Mike previously
00:03:01.300 that former presidential advisor Steve Bannon
00:03:04.520 would ultimately be revealed as a close revisor to Jeffrey Epstein
00:03:09.620 that Bannon had been seen coming and going
00:03:13.540 from Epstein's palatial home in Manhattan
00:03:16.180 that Bannon had visited Epstein's island and ultimately when the FBI released 1900 emails
00:03:24.180 that showed that Steve Bannon in his conversations with Jeffrey Epstein had advocated for the removal
00:03:33.040 of President Donald Trump under the 25th Amendment, had denigrated Trump and said that he, Bannon,
00:03:39.240 not Trump, was the head of the MAGA movement. I warned Mike Lindell, but Mike continued appearing
00:03:46.000 on Steve Bannon's show.
00:03:48.500 Now, this wasn't in Minnesota,
00:03:50.140 one of those elections where somebody lost by 600 votes
00:03:53.280 and everybody spends three days staring at provisional ballots.
00:03:57.280 DeMuth, Mike's opponent, received 43% of the vote,
00:04:00.980 Lindell about 33%, with the third candidate,
00:04:04.180 Kendall Qualls, taking roughly another 20%.
00:04:06.860 So, in other words, DeMuth's advantage over Mike Liddell
00:04:11.060 was more than 45,000 votes on the reported count.
00:04:15.060 That's a substantial defeat. That's not a close call.
00:04:19.360 It also represents an upset of sorts because, well, Mike Lindell had something that Republican candidates covet enormously.
00:04:26.920 He had the endorsement of President Donald Trump.
00:04:29.840 But unfortunately, I think he voided that endorsement by coming out in favor of amnesty for illegal immigrants.
00:04:36.720 Now, if you know anything about Mike Lindell, you probably know exactly what happened next.
00:04:41.000 Mike Lindell refuses to concede.
00:04:43.360 Instead, he began talking about possible irregularities in the election.
00:04:47.460 He told supporters that his people were hearing about what they called anomalies.
00:04:52.120 But there's a rather different distinction here, particularly for those of us who take election integrity seriously.
00:04:58.320 An allegation is not evidence.
00:05:01.380 As of today, Mike Lindell has not publicly demonstrated fraud sufficient to explain anything resembling a 45,000 vote deficit.
00:05:10.220 And I have to admit there's something almost comically predictable about all of this. If Mike Lindell entered a contest to determine America's favorite pillow and finished second, I suspect we'd be hearing by breakfast about irregularities in the pillow counting machines.
00:05:26.040 This is, after all, a man who spent years making election fraud allegations, paid millions of dollars to supposedly former intelligence agents, but has never been able to present the proof.
00:05:39.680 So when he loses his own election and immediately begins questioning the count, nobody exactly falls out of their chair in astonishment.
00:05:47.560 But underneath the humor here is a serious point. Election integrity matters too much to become an automatic explanation for losing.
00:05:56.040 If Mike Lindell has evidence, well, let's see it.
00:05:59.520 If there are genuine discrepancies, investigate them.
00:06:02.660 If ballots were mishandled, document it.
00:06:05.440 If election law was violated, identify that violation.
00:06:09.240 Americans should insist on transparent elections and aggressively investigate credible evidence of wrongdoing.
00:06:15.380 But the burden is on the person making the accusation to produce actual evidence,
00:06:20.760 particularly when we're talking about a double-digit defeat
00:06:24.200 rather than a razor-thin recount situation.
00:06:28.340 There's another political story here that shouldn't be overlooked.
00:06:31.600 Trump's endorsement wasn't enough, or rather Mike undid that endorsement
00:06:35.860 by coming out for amnesty for illegals.
00:06:38.640 That does not mean that Trump's influence in Republican primaries has suddenly disappeared.
00:06:43.180 The president remains enormously influential within the Republican Party.
00:06:46.760 My phone is ringing off the hook with various Florida candidates at all levels seeking the president's endorsement index Tuesday's Florida primary, but endorsements aren't magic wands.
00:06:58.040 Minnesota Republicans had their own statehouse speaker in Lisa DeMuth, and enough of them apparently decided she represented a stronger choice for November.
00:07:05.980 The result is particularly striking because Lindell's national profile, of course, dwarfed hers.
00:07:12.380 And November is where this gets much harder.
00:07:14.660 You see, DeMuth, the Republican, will now face U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, who easily won the Democrat farm labor gubernatorial primary and begins a general election with formidable statewide name recognition.
00:07:29.680 Republicans haven't won a statewide contest in Minnesota since 2006, so DeMuth's task is considerable.
00:07:36.440 She has to unite the Republican electorate after the primary.
00:07:39.920 She has to attract independents and persuade voters that after years of Democrat control, Minnesota needs a change of direction.
00:07:47.880 As for my friend Mike Lindell, he has every right to examine the results.
00:07:52.160 He has every right to request information available under Minnesota law.
00:07:55.700 And if he discovers genuine evidence of wrongdoing, he should produce it.
00:07:59.660 But until then, the scoreboard says that his opponent won and Mike Lindell lost.
00:08:04.320 And perhaps there's a lesson here.
00:08:06.440 You can't defend election integrity by assuming that every election you lose must have been stolen.
00:08:12.160 Sometimes the voters simply choose the other candidate.
00:08:15.700 And therefore, for Mike Lindell, accepting the possibility that he may have considerably lost,
00:08:21.320 will be considerably less comfortable for him than one of his pillows.
00:08:26.000 In the meantime, I've been watching very closely the South Carolina Senate race.
00:08:30.400 That's got a lot more interesting.
00:08:32.620 When Senator Lindsey Graham died suddenly on July 11th,
00:08:36.300 Governor Henry McMaster, an old friend of mine,
00:08:38.820 appointed Graham's sister Darlene Graham to temporarily fill the seat.
00:08:44.140 What initially looked like a caretaker appointment quickly became something more.
00:08:48.120 President Trump encouraged her to run for a full term,
00:08:51.820 endorsed her, and the Republican establishment largely fell in place behind her.
00:08:56.520 Yesterday was the first round of the South Carolina Republican primary
00:09:00.460 and South Carolina Republicans got their first chance to render a verdict.
00:09:06.040 And that verdict was decidedly mixed.
00:09:08.380 You see, Darlene Graham finished first in a 10-candidate Republican field
00:09:12.620 with about 33% of the vote.
00:09:15.220 Congressman Ralph Norman, a reliable conservative,
00:09:18.380 came in second with roughly 24% of the vote.
00:09:21.900 Congressman Russell Fry took about 20% of the vote.
00:09:26.040 Former Governor Mark Sanford, remember him,
00:09:28.520 He's the guy who went missing while said he was on the Appalachian Trail.
00:09:35.160 In fact, he was in South America with his mistress.
00:09:38.480 He got an amazing 15%.
00:09:40.520 But, well, nobody reached the majority required for the nomination,
00:09:44.480 so now the two top vote-getters, Darlene Graham and Ralph Norman,
00:09:48.320 head into an August 25th runoff.
00:09:51.780 Now, there's two completely different ways to read these numbers.
00:09:55.000 Graham can, of course, say, I won.
00:09:56.620 Well, she finished nine points ahead of Norman, despite being a political newcomer thrown into a statewide campaign on extraordinarily short notice.
00:10:05.920 She also has the most valuable endorsement available in South Carolina in a Republican primary, that of President Donald Trump.
00:10:14.140 And Trump isn't merely leaving his name on a press release.
00:10:17.760 He said Tuesday night that he intends to go to South Carolina to campaign for him.
00:10:22.480 But Norman can look at exactly the same returns and make a very different argument.
00:10:27.280 67% of Republican voters voted for someone other than Darlene Graham,
00:10:33.040 the sister of the late Lindsey Graham.
00:10:36.140 So Norman, Fry, and Stanford together accounted for nearly 60% of the vote.
00:10:41.260 Of course, you can't simply add those numbers together and hand them to Norman.
00:10:45.120 Politics doesn't really work that way.
00:10:47.560 But in a two-person runoff, those voters suddenly became the entire ballgame,
00:10:51.820 and Norman only has to find enough of them
00:10:54.420 to erase a nine-point first-round deficit.
00:10:58.060 That brings us to Russell Frye.
00:11:00.300 That congressman had roughly 20%
00:11:02.420 and may now be the most valuable block
00:11:04.220 for Republican voters in South Carolina.
00:11:06.600 Where Frye goes personally matters
00:11:08.620 because where his votes go matters considerably more.
00:11:11.980 Norman needs to consolidate Republicans
00:11:13.740 who wanted an alternative to Lindsey Graham's sister.
00:11:16.820 Graham's objective is the opposite.
00:11:18.260 present this from coming a simple anti-Graham coalition.
00:11:22.400 If she can hold her first-round votes,
00:11:24.500 picking up a meaningful piece of prize support
00:11:28.320 and benefit from a Trump-driven turnout operation,
00:11:32.000 well, the arithmetic could change very quickly.
00:11:35.260 But there's another fascinating wrinkle here.
00:11:37.780 There is not a conventional MAGA versus establishment race.
00:11:40.900 Norman is a House Freedom Caucus conservative
00:11:43.600 with an actual congressional voting record,
00:11:45.460 and Graham is the candidate endorsed by President Trump.
00:11:49.200 Norman's vulnerability is that he supported Nikki Haley rather than Trump
00:11:52.720 during the 2024 presidential primary,
00:11:55.680 although he endorsed Trump after Haley withdrew,
00:11:57.920 but that's a significant negative in the Trump crowd, including with me.
00:12:02.300 His opportunity is to make the runoff about experience and ideological record
00:12:06.720 rather than personalities or political history.
00:12:09.980 Graham's opportunity is to make it about Trump's judgment
00:12:12.540 and her status as an outsider.
00:12:15.460 And that's why this next two weeks could be even more revealing than the first round. 0.93
00:12:20.600 You see, runoffs are different animals.
00:12:23.480 Turnout contracts, intensity matters more, endorsements matter more, and organization matters enormously.
00:12:30.360 Norman has to persuade Republicans who voted for Frye, Sanford, and the other candidates that he is their logical second choice.
00:12:37.880 Graham has to convince them that yesterday's results central to the fundamental question.
00:12:42.420 She finished first, she has Trump's backing, and Republicans should unite behind her.
00:12:47.760 The Trump campaign appearance could therefore be one of the most pivotal moments of this race.
00:12:53.200 So I would resist declaring a favorite tonight.
00:12:55.680 Darlene Graham won the first battle, but Ralph Norman may have the more intriguing arithmetic here.
00:13:01.180 Graham has Trump, the Senate seat, and the Graham political name,
00:13:04.780 as well as the institutional backing of the National Republican Senatorial Committee,
00:13:08.540 and of course a very popular Governor Henry McMaster.
00:13:12.080 Norman has experience, a Freedom Caucus record,
00:13:14.960 and a potentially enormous pool of first-round voters,
00:13:17.780 67% of them, who chose someone other than Darlene Graham.
00:13:22.560 August 25th will tell us which matters more.
00:13:25.320 In a state that hasn't elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 28 years,
00:13:29.640 there's a very good argument that this runoff isn't merely another Republican primary.
00:13:34.280 It could definitely be the contest that effectively determines
00:13:37.540 the South Carolina's next U.S. Senator.
00:13:40.600 In other words, whoever wins this runoff on the 25th is almost certainly to go to the U.S. Senate.
00:13:48.680 Take your pick.
00:13:50.340 I was not particularly a fan of Lindsey Graham, but I will not speak ill of the dead.
00:13:55.120 But his sister is in the poll position here to win this contest,
00:13:58.460 while Ralph Norman, who unfortunately for him supported Nikki Haley,
00:14:02.600 has got to pull together an awful lot of votes.
00:14:04.900 We're talking politics with the kind of breakdown that only we can give right here in the Stone Zone
00:14:11.040 Don't go away because we'll be back with more
00:14:13.460 As I begin to examine whether Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman
00:14:17.700 Can pull an upset and actually defeat Kathy Hochul
00:14:21.160 In the upcoming contest for Governor of the Empire State
00:14:24.820 The Stone Zone
00:14:26.680 Entertaining and informative
00:14:28.980 On the Red Apple Podcast Network
00:14:31.440 WSIB presents
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00:15:36.080 Welcome back in to the Stone Zone.
00:15:39.540 President Trump announced today that Caroline Leavitt will be departing her role
00:15:44.360 as the White House press secretary to spend more time with her young children.
00:15:49.740 Now, in my 50 years in American politics, I've known four presidential press secretaries,
00:15:55.000 some of them good, some of them great.
00:15:57.400 But I have to tell you, Carolyn Leavitt has been the best.
00:16:01.900 She first came to my attention when she ran a spirited campaign for Congress in New Hampshire.
00:16:07.660 She didn't win that, but she gained valuable experience.
00:16:11.300 And as the president's spokesperson, I think she's been enormously effective.
00:16:15.740 She has been feisty when the job required that.
00:16:19.180 She has provided information as necessary to a largely hostile press corps,
00:16:24.680 but she didn't put up with any guff.
00:16:27.400 President Trump put out a statement. His statement said our wonderful White House press secretary and one of my most trustless aides, Caroline Leavitt, will be departing her role at the end of the month so she can spend more time with her beautiful young children and family, a decision I totally understand and respect.
00:16:45.780 Caroline will now be one of my top outside advisors and an influential voice within the Republican Party
00:16:51.120 as we work to defy history and conclusively win the midterm elections.
00:16:56.800 Caroline has been a real leader in the White House and has done a phenomenal job 0.90
00:17:00.680 fighting for justice, liberty, and freedom since 2018, including our historic re-election campaign in 2024.
00:17:09.700 Caroline Levin has been one of the best White House press secretaries in the history of the office.
00:17:13.520 Thank you, Caroline, for a job well done, signed President Donald Trump.
00:17:19.920 This comes on the heels of the White House counsel, David Warrington, also tendering his resignation to go back to private business.
00:17:28.640 Dave Warrington and I have been friends since we were in Young Americans for Freedom together.
00:17:34.760 And named as his replacement is Will Scharf.
00:17:38.360 Will Scharf is one of the sharpest young lawyers I know, actually supported his unsuccessful campaign for the attorney general's office in his native Missouri.
00:17:51.420 By the way, my general experience in politics, in which I have quite a bit, is that candidates who run and lose are always better the second time around.
00:18:01.520 The very best candidates are those who learn from that first experience.
00:18:05.340 I think of Tom Kane of New Jersey, who ran for governor in 1977, lost that contest, lost the Republican primary to a state senator, Ray Bateman, who went on to lose to Brendan Byrne.
00:18:19.540 In 1981, Tom Kane came back and ran again.
00:18:23.460 This time he ran a much better campaign, and he was a much better candidate.
00:18:27.480 In every case, candidates who have run and lost have profited if they view it not as a defeat, but as a building experience.
00:18:37.580 As my mentor, Richard Nixon, said, a man is not finished when he is defeated.
00:18:45.160 He is only finished when he quits.
00:18:48.400 And that is the story of American politics.
00:18:51.420 That is the story of all of these candidates.
00:18:54.000 Caroline Leavitt is quitting today.
00:18:56.500 She's leaving a job, but at her age and with her talent level, I have no doubt whatsoever
00:19:02.060 she will be back in the political arena again to fight for her country.
00:19:06.500 How did the president put it?
00:19:07.520 To fight for justice, liberty, and freedom. 0.99
00:19:10.880 I have no doubt whatsoever that in the future fight for America, Caroline Levitt will be 0.81
00:19:16.960 in the front lines.
00:19:18.240 I'm Roger Stone.
00:19:19.140 You're listening to Stone's Zone.
00:19:20.000 When we come back, we're going to look at Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County Executive,
00:19:24.280 and whether he can really beat New York Governor Kathy Ockel.
00:19:40.460 The Stone Zone.
00:19:42.460 Entertaining and informative.
00:19:44.620 On the Red Apple Podcast Network.
00:19:47.520 You know, the best thing about summer, of course,
00:19:51.060 if you're a well-dressed gentleman,
00:19:52.600 is the summer alternatives available to you.
00:19:56.080 Linen, seersucker, silk, madras,
00:19:59.800 and of course my favorite,
00:20:01.240 those two-tone spectator shoes
00:20:03.460 or a nice pair of white bucks.
00:20:06.320 Combine that with a sharp-looking pair of suspenders
00:20:10.700 and a madras bow tie,
00:20:13.520 and you've got a great look.
00:20:14.820 So I love this time of year,
00:20:16.760 and because I'm a political junkie,
00:20:18.580 I of course have been very carefully watching
00:20:20.500 the upcoming race between Bruce Blakeman and Kathy Hochul.
00:20:25.100 Now, here's a political number worth paying attention to, 49 to 39.
00:20:29.400 That's Governor Kathy Hochul's lead over Republican Bruce Blakeman,
00:20:32.840 the Nassau County Executive, and the new Siena poll of likely New York voters.
00:20:38.680 First one warning sign, an incumbent under 50 is generally thought to be in trouble.
00:20:43.820 In this case, Kathy Hochul, with universal name ID and enormous resources, 0.59
00:20:48.460 is not breaking 50% of the vote.
00:20:51.060 Now, a 10-point deficit is obviously still a deficit,
00:20:54.200 and anybody telling you that Bruce Blakeman is presently winning this race
00:20:57.940 doesn't know how to read the poll.
00:20:59.660 But here's what makes the number interesting.
00:21:01.860 At roughly this stage four years ago,
00:21:04.800 Siena had Hochul beating a Republican congressman
00:21:07.540 and a good friend of mine, Lee Zeldin, by 14 points, 53 to 39.
00:21:13.200 Again, Hochul over 50 and a 14-point margin.
00:21:17.780 Zeldin ultimately lost, but in the end, only by about six points.
00:21:23.080 So that history doesn't tell us what will happen in November,
00:21:26.180 but it does tell us not to dismiss an upset in the New York governor's race as early as August.
00:21:32.980 Remember the chronology of 2022.
00:21:35.720 In August, Siena had Hochul ahead by 14 points,
00:21:39.120 but by late September, her Siena lead had actually expanded to 17 points, 54 to 37.
00:21:46.300 The conventional wisdom by some said the race was basically over then.
00:21:52.180 Then something happened.
00:21:53.940 New York governors started foking intensely on the election.
00:21:57.560 Zeldin hammered away on crime and the economy as well as high taxes.
00:22:02.280 And the contest tightened dramatically even though Hochul had unlimited money and Zeldin had to struggle to raise money.
00:22:11.980 By October 18th, Siena itself had Hochul's advantage down to 11 points, 52 to 41.
00:22:19.540 Then came election day.
00:22:21.840 Lee Zeldin didn't win, but he came considerably closer than those earlier polls had suggested he might.
00:22:27.920 And that matters in 2026 because, well, Bruce Blakeman isn't trying to invent a Republican coalition that has never existed.
00:22:35.960 He's trying to take the base coalition that Zeldin assembled four years ago
00:22:40.600 and find the additional votes that Zeldin couldn't find with lesser resources.
00:22:47.100 That's a difficult assignment in heavily Democratic New York,
00:22:50.280 but it's a much more concrete problem than people saying Republicans can't win in New York
00:22:56.140 because that's not necessarily true.
00:22:59.080 And look underneath today's statewide numbers because this is where the race becomes even more interesting.
00:23:04.500 Siena has Blakeman leading Huckel in the suburbs 49 to 41,
00:23:09.620 essentially even with her upstate and Huckel's enormous firewalls, 1.00
00:23:14.100 of course, New York City, where Siena has her leading 64 to 19.
00:23:19.220 So that tells you exactly what the geographic equation looks like.
00:23:24.040 Blakeman needs a major suburban performance.
00:23:27.080 He has to win on Long Island.
00:23:28.940 He has to win in Westchester up through Rockland. 0.57
00:23:32.000 he has to win in the suburbs, and he needs to prevent Hochul from building an insurmountable
00:23:38.040 margin inside New York City. Blakeman also comes into this race with a different resume than my
00:23:43.940 friend Lee Zeldin. He's the Nassau County executive, and he can point to running one of the biggest
00:23:49.680 suburban governments in America, rather than campaigning purely as a legislator. And Nassau
00:23:55.600 County sits right in the suburban battlefield, and Republican has to dominate there to have
00:24:00.480 chances statewide. Bruce Blakeman has won in Nassau County by large margins several times.
00:24:06.640 His campaign is emphasizing taxes, affordability, crime, and immigration while attempting to
00:24:12.440 tie Hochul to policies coming of New York City's Democratic left. And here's where Republicans have
00:24:18.820 to be realistic, however. Ten points is still a substantial gap. Hochul is at 49 in the Siena
00:24:25.260 poll, and New York's underlying Democrat advantage hasn't disappeared. She has an overwhelming lead
00:24:31.040 in New York City and substantial advantages among both women and black voters. So Blakeman cannot 0.99
00:24:36.380 merely reproduce normal Republican turnout and hope dissatisfaction with Albany carries him over
00:24:41.900 the line. He has to somehow expand the Republican coalition, particularly among suburban and working
00:24:48.120 class voters, while improving the Republican Party's performance somewhere within the five
00:24:53.160 Burroughs. Here's what he does have going for him. In the 50 years that I have been looking at
00:24:58.480 polling, I have never seen a public official with a higher disapproval rating than Kathy Hochul.
00:25:04.960 Never. That encouraging factor means that this could really become a race. And the encouraging 0.79
00:25:11.040 historical comparison for Blankman is that we've already watched the New York gubernatorial race
00:25:15.840 move significantly in its final months. Zellman demonstrated that issues such as crime, inflation,
00:25:22.220 and dissatisfaction with state government
00:25:24.680 could make New York considerably more competitive
00:25:28.100 than its presidential voting record might suggest.
00:25:31.600 But there's also a warning in the Zeldin experience.
00:25:34.640 Getting close isn't the same thing as getting 50%.
00:25:37.480 Zeldin ran an unexpectedly strong campaign
00:25:40.640 and still couldn't overcome the Democrat advantage statewide.
00:25:44.880 Blankman therefore has to improve upon Zeldin's coalition,
00:25:47.700 not just recreate it.
00:25:49.380 And that's where I put this race tonight.
00:25:51.680 Hochul is still the leader, but Blakeman has a plausible path to making it competitive.
00:25:56.440 The Senate poll doesn't establish what New York is about to elect a Republican governor,
00:26:00.540 but what it does establish is something more modest, but more politically significant.
00:26:05.800 Blakeman is closer to Hochul at this stage than Zeldin was in Siena's August 2022 survey,
00:26:11.460 and Zeldin subsequently turned that race into a six-point contest.
00:26:15.660 If Blake can dominate the suburbs, remain competitive upstate, or actually increase his position upstate, improve Republican performance in New York City only slightly, and make the election a referendum on Hochul rather than national politics, then New York could once again give us a Republican governor's race worth watching all the way to election night.
00:26:39.280 Meanwhile, there's a remarkable story coming out of President Trump's trip to Turkey,
00:26:43.600 and naturally, much of the coverage has concentrated on the cloak and dagger aspects of it.
00:26:48.520 See, last month, after the NATO summit in Ankara,
00:26:52.320 Trump publicly boarded the familiar Presidential 747.
00:26:56.160 But intelligence indicated a credible Iranian threat against President Trump,
00:27:00.860 so the Secret Service and the military did something extraordinary.
00:27:05.180 Trump was quietly taken off that aircraft,
00:27:07.440 moved across the airport, concealed in a catering vehicle,
00:27:11.740 and put aboard a smaller Air Force C-32A.
00:27:16.580 The big presidential jet took off without Trump.
00:27:21.240 Trump was somewhere else.
00:27:23.400 This wasn't Hollywood. This was presidential security.
00:27:27.120 Now, the controversy is that the White House staff and members of the press
00:27:31.020 remained aboard the other aircraft without knowing that Trump had left it.
00:27:35.360 Critics are calling them human decoys and asking whether they were unnecessarily in danger.
00:27:41.380 Those are legitimate questions for the Secret Service.
00:27:44.000 To answer our guests, before we succumb to the breathless suggestion that using deception to protect an American president is somehow a Trump invention,
00:27:53.140 there's a rather inconvenient piece of presidential history here worth remembering.
00:27:57.540 His name is Bill Clinton.
00:27:59.260 Go back to March of 2000. Clinton was traveling through South Asia and wanted to make a highly sensitive visit to Pakistan.
00:28:07.700 This wasn't exactly a garden-variety presidential stop. Pakistan had undergone a military coup only months earlier.
00:28:15.160 The region was extraordinarily dangerous, and American officials were deeply concerned about terrorism.
00:28:21.800 Before Clinton National Security Officer Bruce Riedel later wrote,
00:28:26.260 the United States had reliable reporting that al-Qaeda was targeting Clinton for assassination.
00:28:31.720 The Secret Service took the danger seriously, as it should have.
00:28:35.800 So what did the Clinton White House do?
00:28:38.280 They also used deception.
00:28:40.100 Clinton flew into Islamabad aboard a small, unmarked aircraft.
00:28:45.960 Another aircraft bearing the official United States markings
00:28:48.960 landed first right in front of the cameras.
00:28:52.480 And here's the detail I particularly enjoy.
00:28:55.120 A Secret Service agent who actually resembled Bill Clinton
00:28:58.840 got off the decoy aircraft and got into the limousine.
00:29:02.560 Only afterward did the unmarked plane
00:29:04.740 carrying the real President arrive.
00:29:07.020 The Washington Post reported the entire operation after the fact.
00:29:11.060 This isn't speculation reconstructed 26 years later.
00:29:14.100 It actually happened.
00:29:15.380 And the deception doesn't stop with the airplanes.
00:29:18.300 Clinton's motorcade reportedly contained five similar black limousines
00:29:22.340 with the possibility of cars changing positions after leaving the airport.
00:29:26.460 Why? Because when terrorists may be trying to assassinate the President of the United States,
00:29:31.820 the Secret Service does not send them an itinerary.
00:29:35.500 You create uncertainty. You conceal movements.
00:29:39.100 You use an alternative aircraft and alternate vehicles,
00:29:42.840 which makes the potential assassin or assassins wonder which plane, which car, where is the
00:29:49.440 president? No, that's not scandalous. That's precisely the point of a decoy. So now let's be
00:29:55.540 precise because there's one difference between the Clinton and Trump in episodes. In the Clinton
00:29:59.960 operation, a senior representative of the traveling press call was privately briefed about security
00:30:05.060 precautions beforehand, but kept the information confidential. In Trump's case, according to the
00:30:10.120 Washington Post journalists and even some White House personnel aboard the other aircraft did not
00:30:15.720 know that Trump had switched planes. Now maybe that distinction is legitimate journalism. It's
00:30:20.920 perfectly reasonable debate whether Trump's operation should have handled it differently,
00:30:24.700 but I don't think so because it doesn't change the historical fact that an American president
00:30:28.920 using aircraft as part of an elaborate deception to defeat a potential assassin has a precedent.
00:30:36.780 In fact, there's something almost reassuring about the continuity.
00:30:40.280 In 2000, that president was Bill Clinton. 0.65
00:30:42.860 The danger involved Al-Qaeda, and the destination was Pakistan.
00:30:46.700 26 years later, the president is Donald Trump.
00:30:49.440 The reported threat is Iranian, and the operation occurred in Turkey.
00:30:53.180 Different presidents, different enemies, different circumstances, but the same basic principle.
00:30:58.740 When American intelligence and the Secret Service believe the commander-in-chief may be targeted,
00:31:04.660 the presidential security becomes deliberately unpredictable.
00:31:08.540 And that's exactly how it ought to be.
00:31:11.040 So scrutinize the Trump operation, if you will, for a moment.
00:31:15.120 Ask whether everybody aboard the other aircraft was adequately protected.
00:31:18.960 Ask why the details remain secret for weeks.
00:31:21.340 Those are fair questions.
00:31:23.460 But spare me the manufactured astonishment of the idea that the Secret Service
00:31:27.320 might switch airplanes and employ a decoy to protect a president.
00:31:31.480 Bill Clinton did it more than a 40-century ago,
00:31:33.840 complete with an unmarked plane, a decoy aircraft, and a presidential lookalike, and multiple limousines.
00:31:40.260 There's a serious story here about the continuing threat against the American president,
00:31:44.600 but the tactic itself, no, it's not unprecedented.
00:31:48.240 That's presidential security, and history has a remarkably inconvenient memory.
00:31:55.000 For there are some people whose lives have seemed almost impossible when you describe him.
00:31:58.560 Jack Kemp was one of them before he became one of the most consequential Republican thinkers of his generation, before 18 years in Congress, before he was in the cabinet, before he became the Republican nominee for vice president.
00:32:12.820 Jack Kemp was a professional quarterback and not some politician who happened to play a couple of seasons of football.
00:32:18.820 Jack Kemp was one of the defining quarterbacks of the American Football League.
00:32:22.820 When you actually examine his record, I think there's a compelling case that Jack Kemp belongs in the Professional Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio.
00:32:31.820 His football story is wonderfully American because it began with rejection.
00:32:36.240 Kemp came out of Occidental College, bounced around professional football, eventually found his opportunity in the American Football League.
00:32:44.280 With the Los Angeles and then the later San Diego Chargers, Kemp became one of the AFL's original stars.
00:32:50.240 He took the Chargers to an AFL championship game in both 1960 and 1961.
00:32:57.700 Then came one of the great personnel mistakes in football history.
00:33:01.780 In 1962, the San Diego Chargers put the injured Kemp up on waivers.
00:33:07.080 Buffalo claimed him for a waiver price of $100.
00:33:10.900 That $100 quarterback would help change the history of the Buffalo Bills.
00:33:16.180 And here's where Kemp's record becomes remarkable.
00:33:18.580 He took Buffalo to the 1964 AFL Championship game, where the Bills defeated their former team, the San Diego Chargers, 20-7 to win the championship.
00:33:30.400 Then Kemp did it again in 1965. Buffalo again met San Diego for the AFL title. This time, the Bills demolished the Chargers 23-0.
00:33:40.400 Jack Kemp was named quarterback to back-to-back championships in 1965.
00:33:45.280 Jack Kemp was named the American Football League's most valuable player.
00:33:49.300 Not Buffalo's most valuable player, not an all-state game award, the MVP of the entire AFL.
00:33:56.720 He was also recognized as the outstanding player in that 1965 championship game.
00:34:02.360 Then in 1966, Kemp took Buffalo to the AFL championship game again, this time losing to the Kansas City Chiefs.
00:34:10.220 So put this resume in retrospect.
00:34:12.800 Trump appeared in AFL championship games in 1960, 61, 64, 65, and 66, five championship appearances, two championships, and as the league's most available player award in 1965.
00:34:27.720 This was a league that had existed for only 10 seasons before completing its merger with the NFL, and Jack played quarterback in half of the championship games.
00:34:37.380 My friends, it is time to put Jack F. Kemp in the Professional Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, to preserve the history of professional football and to tell the story of one man's determination to succeed on the field of sports.
00:34:54.340 before he became one of the most influential congressmen
00:34:57.000 and one of the most influential conservatives in the Republican Party
00:35:01.160 in the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s.
00:35:05.040 God bless my friend Jack Kemp.
00:35:07.000 But if you're listening in Canton, Ohio,
00:35:09.200 it's time to put him in the Football Hall of Fame.
00:35:12.420 The Stone Zone.
00:35:14.380 Entertaining and informative.
00:35:16.540 On the Red Apple Podcast Network.
00:35:19.400 Welcome back into the Stone Zone.
00:35:22.840 Pardon me while I eat the olive out of my martini.
00:35:27.780 President Donald Trump is leaving open the possibility of declaring a national security emergency over the nation's election system
00:35:34.780 if Congress fails to enact the Save America Act, which would simply require photo identification and proof of citizenship for federal voting.
00:35:44.420 President Trump noted that stranger things have happened when the press broached the question,
00:35:50.240 very intelligently not showing his hand, in the lead-up to the crucial midterm elections.
00:35:55.480 The president's hysterical liberal critics have warned that such an action would exceed the president's authority
00:36:00.580 because states retained constitutional responsibility for administering elections.
00:36:05.180 We've seen how that's worked out with sophisticated ballot harvesting
00:36:08.980 and outright rigging operations emerging in Democrat-dominated slums across America.
00:36:15.060 When the mainstream media tells you that there's no evidence whatsoever of voter fraud
00:36:19.500 and it's very rare in America, they're lying.
00:36:22.240 The evidence is, in fact, overwhelming and irrefutable.
00:36:27.360 But you won't hear that on CBS or NBC or ABC or CNN.
00:36:32.720 Now, I don't get my news from CNN for the same reason I don't drink out of the toilet.
00:36:38.220 Recent events have given President Trump grounds to call a national emergency to protect our elections.
00:36:43.340 In New Jersey, for example, Democrat Governor Mikey Sherrill disclosed that the Motor Vehicles Commission software error
00:36:50.880 improperly registered roughly 6,600 people who had indicated they were not U.S. citizens.
00:36:57.400 We found out today that number is actually 8,100, a substantial number of those people voted.
00:37:04.240 Federal prosecutions have also documented illegal voting.
00:37:07.460 In June, three non-citizens pled guilty in Florida to no-leg voting in federal elections,
00:37:12.620 while Justice Department cases in New Jersey have charged multiple non-citizens with illegally registering and voting.
00:37:19.620 This is just the tip of the iceberg.
00:37:22.040 These episodes reinforce the case for stronger verification, accurate voter rolls, and citizenship guard lines.
00:37:29.120 Passing the Save America Act is a no-brainer,
00:37:31.600 but Republican senators left for the summer without taking action.
00:37:35.820 The fact that no Democrats will join in this passage shows that they are the party of fraud.
00:37:40.580 Who could be opposed to a requirement that one be a national,
00:37:44.140 a federal U.S. citizen of the United States and have a photo ID in order to vote?
00:37:50.340 Seems like a no-brainer to me.
00:37:52.560 But the case is strong for calling a national emergency.
00:37:57.460 Democrats cannot be allowed to hold our entire system hostage as they wage war against our constitutional system,
00:38:04.160 and as they most dependably can be proven, well, they just cheat.
00:38:11.000 In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin County Executive David Crowley narrowly defeated Democrat Socialist State Rep. Francesca Hong
00:38:20.520 in Wisconsin's gubernatorial primary,
00:38:23.440 dealing a setback to the party's activist left in a battleground state.
00:38:28.520 Crowley edged Hong, who's one of the strangest people I've ever seen,
00:38:32.920 based on her videos, by roughly 3,000 votes
00:38:36.060 and a razor-thin finish,
00:38:38.060 despite the fact that most polls had given Hong the lead by over 20 points.
00:38:43.920 Crowley's victory came after Governor Tony Evans endorsed him
00:38:47.040 cast Crowley as the Democrats' best position to win in November
00:38:51.200 against Republican Tom Tiffany,
00:38:54.720 a strong and credible magnet Republican.
00:38:57.140 You might really have a contest in Wisconsin.
00:38:59.900 I'll be watching closely and keep up with it right here in The Stone Zone.
00:39:04.320 Whatever you do, don't go away, because we'll be right back.
00:39:12.580 Thanks for listening to The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:39:16.320 You can hear The Stone Zone with Roger Stone weeknights at 8 on 77 WABC.
00:39:22.820 If you like the podcast, share it with your friends and listen anytime at WABCradio.com
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00:39:40.620 See you next time for a new episode so you never have to wonder.
00:39:44.280 What the heck is going on here?
00:39:46.320 Thank you.