The StoneZONE with Roger Stone


The Stone Zone ｜ 01-20-26


Episode Stats


Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Could former CNN talking head Don Lemon, a guy referred to as Donilon by Tucker Carlson, be in the hot seat? Don Lemon has a storied career as a CNN anchor and agent provocateur for the far-left. Who can forget the lawsuit in which he was sued by a young man because at a gay bar on Long Island, one summer, he put his hands down his pants under a youth s nose and said, Smell Good? And that lawsuit was finally settled? He is a Trump hater par excellence, and now it appears that he may actually be in trouble.

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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00:00:15.560 The Stone Zone. Entertaining and informative.
00:00:19.760 On the Red Apple Podcast Network.
00:00:23.380 Welcome to The Stone Zone.
00:00:26.180 Could former CNN talking head Don Lemon, a guy referred to as Don Limon by my good friend Tucker Carlson, be in the hot seat?
00:00:38.600 Don Lemon, a storied career as a CNN anchor and agent provocateur for the far left, who can forget the lawsuit in which he was sued by a young man because at a gay bar on Long Island,
00:00:57.480 one summer, Don, in an inebriated state, put his hands down his pants, pulled them out, put them under the youth's nose and said, smell good.
00:01:08.960 And that lawsuit was finally settled, as I understand.
00:01:14.000 He is a Trump hater par excellence, and now it appears that he may actually be in some trouble.
00:01:20.240 It's a long fall from CNN.
00:01:22.620 I believe he's with News Nation now, although he may be doing his own podcast.
00:01:28.000 I'm not sure that anyone is carrying the would-be star.
00:01:32.060 But, yes, there is active talk that he could be legally liable because he was just kind of standing by and just happened to be there
00:01:40.900 when a Black Lives Matter contingent and other radicals attacked a Christian's service in the state of Minnesota.
00:01:53.360 A terrorist attack on a house of worship during a service or a mass or any other ritual of that religion cannot be tolerated.
00:02:06.620 And this is one of the most chilling videos I've ever seen.
00:02:12.760 And a senior Department of Justice official is now announcing essentially a crackdown on extremists who masquerade as journalists.
00:02:23.220 That's exactly what Don Lemon is here.
00:02:25.480 Exploiting that dignity in a deceptive attempt to operate above the law.
00:02:30.920 Basically, while he's claiming to cover politics, he's really engaging politics.
00:02:35.740 On Monday, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dillon, a good friend of mine, floated the possibility of federal charges against the former CNN host Don Lemon
00:02:45.680 following his involvement in this outrageous anti-ice disruption at a Minneapolis church.
00:02:54.460 Dillon referenced the Civil Rights Act of 1871, commonly known as the Klan Act,
00:03:01.040 because it was first used against the Democrat rise, risen in the South, Ku Klux Klan.
00:03:09.380 And it explains that it can be used whenever individuals are conspired to fight civil rights of any American.
00:03:18.220 That's what the Klan Act is, the Klan Act of 1871. 0.52
00:03:21.040 In this case, the churchgoers, attending a Sunday service, found themselves targeted by radical activists,
00:03:29.700 accusing the pastor, David Easterwood, of cooperating with ICE, as he should be required to do by law.
00:03:38.600 That means supporting the Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers.
00:03:43.100 Lemon was reportedly interviewing protesters before the incident and then following them into church as they disrupted the service.
00:03:53.640 It was clear that Lemon was a fellow traveler of this hate-fest anti-Christian mob attacking people at the time of worship.
00:04:03.300 If there were ever any greater piece of evidence for President Donald Trump and the fact that it's time to enact the Insurrection Act of 1807,
00:04:13.760 which is that rare codicil of law, of the Constitution,
00:04:20.560 the one exception in which armed forces can be used to enforce order on the United States soil,
00:04:26.780 is this so-called loophole put in the law by the Founding Fathers, who were wary of a police state.
00:04:38.040 So, Dillon, the Assistant Attorney General, essentially, according to Dillon,
00:04:44.220 later acknowledged that he knew in advance what would occur inside the facility,
00:04:49.380 therefore noting Lemon's actions were participation, not legitimate journalism.
00:04:54.160 Dillon, the Assistant Attorney General, is arguing that material support for disruptive activity,
00:05:00.380 conspiracy to violate civil rights, and the use of media platforms as instruments of unlawful conduct
00:05:07.280 could be relevant to prosecute Lemon under the Klan Act.
00:05:13.500 Don Lemon, unfortunately, getting less and less relevant.
00:05:17.420 For years, these left media figures have been hiding behind their press credentials.
00:05:24.160 Always embedding themselves in the subversive activity, helping to orchestrate the actual attacks of the law enforcement,
00:05:30.940 border security, religious institutions.
00:05:33.620 Conservatives have long warned that this double standard completely erodes the rule of law.
00:05:43.060 It chills the constitutional rights of ordinary Americans.
00:05:46.600 The answer now is whether equal justice will finally be applied, if you ask me.
00:05:52.380 If so-called journalists knowingly exist, exercising their faith, their free faith or association,
00:05:59.080 the First Amendment does not grant them immunity.
00:06:03.520 We need to charge these lowlifes and we need to lock them up, starting, unfortunately, with Don Lemon. 1.00
00:06:10.600 Don Lemon lost me, it was a New Year's Eve, and he and his inebriated white boyfriend, 0.96
00:06:19.880 now I believe they're married, would be hosting the CNN show.
00:06:25.920 Don Lemon appeared in an impeccably cut, tartan, shawl collar tuxedo jacket,
00:06:37.440 a black pants, a starched formal shirt, and this is where he lost me.
00:06:44.280 No bow tie.
00:06:46.020 No bow tie.
00:06:46.940 That is just one of the great wastes, and therefore Don Lemon did not make my,
00:06:54.100 I guess it was probably in my 14th year or my 13th year of my international best and worst address list
00:07:02.340 that I put out, you know, like clockwork every New Year's Day.
00:07:07.680 The one year that I didn't publish it was the year that a federal judge had me unconstitutional gag,
00:07:14.260 and I wasn't allowed to comment on any public issue, but most particularly I wasn't allowed to defend myself
00:07:20.740 in the Russian collusion hoax.
00:07:25.180 But I know Lemon well.
00:07:27.140 I had an apartment first on the Upper East Side, and then I moved into gentrified Harlem,
00:07:35.100 lived right off of Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard.
00:07:37.740 Adam Clayton Powell, one of the true great leaders of civil rights,
00:07:41.960 Adam Clayton Powell used to infuriate the old white Senate bulls in the House and the Senate in the Congress. 0.75
00:07:51.400 First of all, he was impeccably clad.
00:07:54.420 He had a thin pencil mustache.
00:07:56.420 He was impossibly handsome.
00:07:58.320 He was the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.
00:08:02.280 He was, he was, he could pass, as they say.
00:08:07.880 He was a man of impeccable style, a great dresser.
00:08:12.040 He was elected to the House, and he rose through the ranks to become chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee.
00:08:19.600 He had an excellent relationship with Lyndon Baines Johnson, the vice president who became president.
00:08:25.480 He brought a lot of bacon home for New York.
00:08:31.060 He was, he was ultimately jammed up in a scandal.
00:08:37.260 There were several around him. 0.77
00:08:38.620 He was a rogue.
00:08:39.660 He was a ladies' man. 0.99
00:08:41.420 He was impossibly handsome.
00:08:43.220 He drove a powder blue Jaguar convertible, a 1938 Mark, pardon me, I guess it was a Mark 5 or Mark 6 Jaguar convertible that he would purposely park at the base of the Capitol where they had valets where all the segregationist senators could see them.
00:09:10.200 It aggravated the heck out of them, reportedly.
00:09:14.480 But in any event, what you, what you have here in this particular case is John Lemon, no longer a journalist, an activist.
00:09:26.120 If he was interviewing people before this vile attack on the church, then he had time to warn ICE and law enforcement or others that, that there, there was a high potential for violence.
00:09:39.200 If you've seen the video, it is horrific.
00:09:42.080 The children watching all of this look like this possibility is very real.
00:09:49.700 This comes the day after a BLM spokesman, you heard it right here in the Stone Zone, said, you know, it's time to burn the city down to get their attention.
00:10:00.040 Now, I, for one, believe that one of the great tests of the last four years was when you had widespread uprisings, let's call them that, in the United States run by BLM and Antifa across the Pacific Northwest in many major cities where hundreds of millions of dollars of public and private property was destroyed.
00:10:27.600 Where 30, at least 37 people were killed, where thousands were injured, where, and the amount of fires was extraordinary.
00:10:38.820 And very, very few people have actually ever been charged in this horrific uprising.
00:10:46.760 The president could have enacted the Insurrection Act then.
00:10:50.520 There was some talk of him doing so.
00:10:53.140 But he ultimately was convinced, I think, by his advisers that it was the governor's prerogative to call out the National Guard rather than order them out.
00:11:02.880 And every governor in those states where they were having widespread problems delayed.
00:11:08.480 Tim Waltz was very late.
00:11:12.140 Minneapolis, St. Paul was already burning.
00:11:14.980 But Tim Waltz, the governor who was the vice presidential candidate's wife, said when she flung open the French doors in the morning,
00:11:22.760 she loved the smell of the city burning because it reminded her of the fight for justice.
00:11:31.620 That's the kind of thinking we're dealing with here.
00:11:36.860 And that insurrection across the country was not put down forcefully.
00:11:40.900 But now history is repeating itself.
00:11:43.200 And what you see in Minnesota is a situation that is spinning out of control.
00:11:48.580 If local law enforcement and state law enforcement will not enforce the law, then federal law enforcement must.
00:11:56.160 It's required in the Constitution.
00:11:58.020 There's a complete abdication in the city of Chicago.
00:12:05.100 J.B. Pritzker, the orotund would-be candidate for president, and Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has a 6% approval rating at this moment,
00:12:17.180 have essentially passed through a provision of law that prevents the Chicago Police Department to come into the physical aid of an ICE agent whose life may be endangered by protesters or other criminals.
00:12:33.880 Legal experts who have looked at this say that Pritzker and Johnson could both be found personally liable.
00:12:42.500 Significant in the fact that the governor, J.B. Pritzker, is a billion-time, a billionaire 20 times over.
00:12:50.960 He's worth billions, but beyond that, we've just learned that the state has basically enhanced and put contracts into his blind trust that give his earnings,
00:13:03.800 the earnings of his family-owned Hyatt Corporation, just blows them through the sky.
00:13:11.040 So he's self-dealing.
00:13:13.960 Before this scandal's over, it's going to make the Somali stuff going on in Minnesota look like small potatoes. 1.00
00:13:20.740 But J.B. Pritzker, another elitist billionaire, but dipping into the public system to help himself.
00:13:28.640 I never understood this.
00:13:29.920 I saw it with Dick Cheney.
00:13:31.600 He stepped down from Halliburton, where he owned a big ton of stock, and he knows his stock was put into blind trust.
00:13:40.480 And then, of course, he convinced the American people to go to war in Iraq under a number of false pretenses.
00:13:47.580 And his Halliburton stock styrocketed in value.
00:13:53.060 So how blind is the trust?
00:13:57.060 These politicians pull this one all the time. 0.88
00:13:59.440 We'll talk more about it on the other side when we come back, right here in the Stone Zone.
00:14:04.480 We've got more hot politics for you on the way. 0.74
00:14:07.360 So please, stand by.
00:14:09.840 Keep listening.
00:14:10.660 We'll be right back.
00:14:15.500 The Stone Zone.
00:14:17.420 Entertaining and informative.
00:14:19.540 On the Red Apple Podcast Network.
00:14:22.540 Welcome back into the Stone Zone.
00:14:26.120 What a long, strange trip it's been.
00:14:28.540 I started as a traditional conservative Republican and a full-fledged swamp creature before I became an outsider
00:14:39.020 and recognized the elitist elements that have dominated both parties that are destroying our country.
00:14:47.080 Sure, I'm proud to be a member of the party of Lincoln, the party of Theodore Roosevelt, the party of Eisenhower,
00:14:58.560 the party of Nixon, of course, Reagan, and Trump.
00:15:02.640 That's my Republican Party.
00:15:05.480 On the other hand, I also recognize that we still have, even after Donald Trump took over the Republican Party in the hostile takeover of 2016
00:15:17.080 and has fully dominated it, easily turning back a number of politicians who thought they could wrest the nomination from him,
00:15:26.360 like Governor Ron DeSantis, Governor Nikki Haley, operating behind the scenes as former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo,
00:15:36.080 all maneuvering to succeed Trump when Trump went to jail in the tsunami of law firm.
00:15:48.360 All of these people were out there planning for a day that never came because Trump had the courage to fight it out.
00:15:57.340 And it just remains to me that they continue to underestimate him.
00:16:05.680 The ovation he got at the college game was, you know, I think is a closer measure of where he stands with the American people.
00:16:23.120 It is, the polling is kind of all over the place.
00:16:26.660 Trump had thunderous applause this past Monday, if you didn't hear it, at the college football playoff in Miami,
00:16:34.760 the most football crazy town there is, choosing to spend Martin Luther King's federal holiday alongside every American,
00:16:43.560 celebrating one of the nation's most cherished traditions.
00:16:47.240 Fresh off a long weekend at Mar-a-Lago, where my friends saw him dining.
00:16:52.520 He watched the football game like most red-blooded Americans, and then he headed to the game in Miami. 0.69
00:17:01.720 President Trump has always been a great football fan, and if you heard that crowd,
00:17:08.540 and you look at the polls that left-wing media outlets are reducing, you're seeing and hearing two different things.
00:17:15.620 We'll talk about it when we come back.
00:17:17.380 You're listening to Stone Zone on the Red Apple Audio Networks,
00:17:21.260 and we've got more politics for you on the other side.
00:17:28.820 The Stone Zone.
00:17:30.780 Entertaining and informative.
00:17:32.940 On the Red Apple Podcast Network.
00:17:35.940 Welcome back into the Stone Zone.
00:17:38.360 You know, working as a political strategist for many years,
00:17:41.600 I've had a time and the responsibility of reading an enormous amount of sophisticated polling that we call survey research
00:17:49.740 and recognizing a number of things about it.
00:17:53.960 The most important thing to remember is that any poll is a snapshot in time.
00:17:59.960 In other words, it is valid at that exact moment that it is taken and tabulated.
00:18:04.520 But in the volatility of our politics today, people change their opinions quickly,
00:18:10.080 and poll numbers can shift very quickly.
00:18:13.900 So while there are some mainstream polls today who have given President Trump a net unfavorable rating,
00:18:25.260 what they fail to recognize, those simple polls, reflect the rock-solid nature of his base,
00:18:31.400 which, of course, is at an all-time high for Republicans,
00:18:38.300 the importance of base is essentially how he continues to win not only the 2026 election,
00:18:50.560 but obviously for his party.
00:18:53.300 He is obviously, I think, very freed by the fact that he cannot,
00:18:59.020 and he's not running for re-election, whatever Stinky Steve Bannon may have tried to say.
00:19:04.260 The Constitution is quite clear about that.
00:19:06.720 It says no person may be elected two times.
00:19:09.560 It doesn't say they have to be contiguous.
00:19:12.640 In fact, Donald Trump is only the second president in our history to serve two non-consecutive terms.
00:19:19.820 Interestingly enough, it was Grover Cleveland, a conservative Democrat, governor of New York,
00:19:25.560 who won, then lost a disputed election, I think that was 1888, I believe, actually 1888,
00:19:34.940 only to come back four years later and serve another four years as an extremely conservative, sound, mighty Democrat.
00:19:43.480 A New Yorker like Donald Trump and a scrappy survivor.
00:19:48.840 But Trump, it's among Trump's base that interests me the most.
00:19:53.900 I mean, Richard Nixon survived in American politics because even at the lowest levels of Watergate,
00:20:00.640 he had a solid 35 to 38 percent of American people who stuck with him through thick and thin.
00:20:06.720 And he had a constituency, and that was in his darkest days.
00:20:13.320 He survived after the 1960 election because he had lost such a close race,
00:20:20.160 and he had a core constituency in the party that supported him, started him on the comeback trail,
00:20:28.840 but he essentially reassembled himself.
00:20:32.060 But with Donald Trump, his numbers are super early beyond anything I have seen.
00:20:38.740 In other words, I also worked for Ronald Reagan, had an opportunity as his Northwest political director for two campaigns,
00:20:47.000 the first one in which I had responsibility for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
00:20:52.660 It's where I met the great George Clark, who was then the Brooklyn County Republican Party chairman,
00:20:58.540 and also Yonkers Mayor James F. X. O'Rourke, who was our Reagan chairman for the state,
00:21:06.760 Westchester County Sheriff Dan McMahon, another strong early supporter of Ronald Reagan,
00:21:16.640 in what was a truly great campaign.
00:21:20.180 Of course, the local Republican establishment was locked up for George H.W. Bush,
00:21:26.220 or Papi, as they called him.
00:21:30.180 We ended up filing petitions to run Reagan delegates in every district in the state,
00:21:38.320 but many party leaders saw the wisdom of endorsing Reagan early.
00:21:46.320 Therefore, the Nassau County delegates, controlled by then-county chairman Joe Marciotta,
00:21:52.400 became Reagan delegates, and one by one, these party chieftains would fall,
00:22:00.660 and everything fell into place.
00:22:03.620 The point is that base is everything, and probably nothing has rattled Donald Trump.
00:22:08.400 He has 96% approval ratings among Republicans,
00:22:12.980 98.6% among conservatives in many reputable polls.
00:22:21.240 Despite the fact that there is not total improvement with all of the policies of the Trump administration,
00:22:28.200 his cutting taxes, his cutting registration,
00:22:31.420 his initiating his tough tariff policies,
00:22:35.240 he's switching to seeing every question put before the federal government
00:22:40.180 through one simple prism.
00:22:42.540 What is best for the United States of America?
00:22:46.120 Because, you see, Trump likes to win.
00:22:47.860 Trump's a winner, and he wants to see America win.
00:22:51.100 So he wants to make the country as rich and as prosperous and as powerful as he can.
00:22:57.120 And these tariff deals have brought literally billions of dollars to America's bottom line,
00:23:03.120 and more money to be had.
00:23:08.500 You also have a president who has unleashed a gas and oil explosion,
00:23:13.560 which is why gasoline prices,
00:23:15.420 which until recently plagued Republicans,
00:23:18.480 as they plagued Joe Biden,
00:23:20.520 as the number two or sometimes even number one issue,
00:23:24.960 when you ask people how to judge their personal financial strength,
00:23:28.580 what was their greatest concern ranked repeatedly in all the polls
00:23:32.820 because gas prices have now dropped so much
00:23:35.980 as it's dropped to both fifth or sixth conserved,
00:23:38.740 with food prices continuing to lead the list.
00:23:42.140 But the other thing I can tell you is
00:23:44.520 clever pollsters and researchers such as Tony Fabrizio
00:23:49.760 and others tell me is that the fundamentals are essentially still in place.
00:23:59.060 There's no erosion in the president's support,
00:24:02.560 and there is strong support for these revenues entering the country.
00:24:11.920 And then people should also recognize that Trump will get a boost
00:24:15.420 when a non-politicized Federal Reserve Board gives the country the interest rate it deserves
00:24:24.840 if you use the unemployment rate and the inflation rate as the two measures
00:24:30.120 which by law they're supposed to measure by,
00:24:32.820 the two things that were not as beneficial then as they are today
00:24:40.120 or challenging as they are today when the Fed cut rates for Joe Biden
00:24:46.420 to try to help him get re-elected.
00:24:49.000 So why can't we have a deep cut now?
00:24:51.300 The economic indicators that were due this cut with low inflation and low unemployment,
00:24:57.820 both lower than the last time they cut rates.
00:25:00.520 So it's Jerome Powell who's actually the one who's acting politically,
00:25:05.680 but that will also give Trump a lift for the 2026 elections.
00:25:14.500 The food prices have come down, but they're not down low enough,
00:25:17.760 but they will go much lower.
00:25:19.260 Gas prices are already low.
00:25:21.080 Interestingly, affordable housing is now an issue
00:25:24.280 that was really kind of first identified by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
00:25:27.720 in his presidential campaign,
00:25:29.780 but has now moved into second place
00:25:32.220 as the availability and cost of housing becomes a major problem for many Americans.
00:25:37.240 Part of that problem, of course, is caused by the influx of illegals 1.00
00:25:41.040 seeking to rent properties that are available,
00:25:47.060 particularly low-cost properties.
00:25:49.360 That's one of the issues,
00:25:51.000 but high mortgage rates have made it difficult,
00:25:55.480 and a tighter economy have made it difficult in the Biden years
00:25:59.160 for home ownership to become a reality for millions of Americans.
00:26:03.700 In Bill Pulte, formerly with the Pulte home family,
00:26:07.980 the president appointed a tiger as the Federal Housing and Finance Agency.
00:26:12.560 Not only has he fared it out,
00:26:14.140 mortgage fraud in multiple cases,
00:26:17.000 such as New York Attorney General Adichie James,
00:26:19.840 Senator Adam Schiff and even Congressman Eric Swalwell.
00:26:28.660 He is working with others about whether Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
00:26:36.280 the two government-owned mortgage companies,
00:26:39.200 which Bill Pulte also chairs as the head of FHFA,
00:26:43.960 should be taken public.
00:26:45.620 They have now billions of dollars of worth.
00:26:48.440 Donald Trump could take them to the public markets
00:26:51.640 but maintain U.S. government control of them
00:26:54.840 and literally reap hundreds of billions of dollars for the United States.
00:27:02.500 So all of these things will happen between the 20 and 26 elections.
00:27:08.120 It's pretty clear to me that the entreaties of the Ms. Machado,
00:27:17.080 Maria Corina Machado,
00:27:19.960 the would-be opposition leader to Donald Trump,
00:27:22.800 have failed.
00:27:23.480 While it may have been a nice gesture for her to give him the Nobel Peace Prize,
00:27:28.080 it actually I think he deserved,
00:27:31.000 given the fact that he ended eight conflicts around the war.
00:27:35.680 People I know in the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
00:27:40.880 and in Rwanda individually have told me
00:27:44.780 how much they appreciate Donald Trump's successful effort
00:27:48.240 to end that bloody conflict after decades.
00:27:51.300 Just another example why Trump should be given the Nobel Peace Prize.
00:27:55.740 But Machado talks a great game,
00:27:58.800 but when I began to do deep, deep research,
00:28:01.960 I found that she had supported the disarming of all of the Venezuelan people, 1.00
00:28:07.460 which is, of course, what has allowed the Machados and those,
00:28:13.320 pardon me, not the Machados,
00:28:14.740 but the Maduros and those before him just to suppress the people.
00:28:20.920 And she also showed up at a number of these international socialist gatherings
00:28:26.320 that really make you wonder what her real politics is. 0.99
00:28:30.780 Our own CIA, of course, always props up opposition,
00:28:35.060 but that doesn't mean that the opposition isn't kind of created or reinvented itself.
00:28:41.760 And then some of the people around Machado concern me. 0.99
00:28:46.020 Her top advisors called Donald Trump an idiot, 0.99
00:28:50.360 dismissed entirely the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from him, 1.00
00:28:55.580 even dismissed the idea that he was spied upon,
00:28:58.760 said that that was absolutely absurd,
00:29:02.280 said Trump's crying was absurd.
00:29:06.180 This was Machado's top advisor,
00:29:08.380 who she brought to the White House meeting with her.
00:29:12.280 That's not the way to handle Donald Trump.
00:29:15.520 Trump was cool but perfunctory.
00:29:18.440 It's very interesting how he staged this.
00:29:20.340 He did allow some pictures to be taken,
00:29:22.060 but he did not come out and do a side-by-side stand-up press opportunity
00:29:28.360 with a world leader as he would often do.
00:29:31.480 And he did basically come in a side entrance
00:29:34.720 rather than through the formal evidence entrance
00:29:37.660 where the press was waiting for her.
00:29:41.160 I think the president has said from the beginning she's a nice lady,
00:29:44.880 but according to the president, she doesn't have the national support.
00:29:49.220 The real question, of course, is what comes next in Venezuela?
00:29:52.580 Right now we seem to be in a position,
00:29:55.380 for those who said there he is with George Bush-style regime change,
00:29:58.820 which to me appears like the current regime is still in control.
00:30:03.240 So the arrest of Maduro is very clearly not about regime change
00:30:06.680 because, believe me, if Donald Trump wanted to change the regime,
00:30:11.320 he can and will do so.
00:30:12.920 Delce Rodriguez, who at first declined to take the position of president,
00:30:18.200 insisting Maduro was still the president,
00:30:20.300 he was illegally snatched,
00:30:22.740 finally took the oath of office and became president.
00:30:25.340 But she's just another hard-line socialist chavista, 0.99
00:30:29.560 like the long line of tyrants before her. 0.94
00:30:33.740 And the president, she clearly has gotten President Trump's message
00:30:37.340 that she, to use the president's blunt language,
00:30:40.060 must do everything we tell her to or we will obliterate her. 1.00
00:30:45.360 She must take that very seriously. 0.98
00:30:47.260 On the other hand, these people are like trapped rats.
00:30:50.700 You have to understand that Venezuela ceased to be a country. 0.97
00:30:54.020 It was like a mafia drug-importing operation
00:30:58.480 in which all of the government officials were involved in one major enterprise,
00:31:05.060 which was moving billions and billions of dollars.
00:31:11.960 There is no question that it's time for a change,
00:31:17.460 but I'd like to see at a minimum some short-term transitional group.
00:31:22.960 And among those, I think, who should be included is Edward Bittar,
00:31:26.880 whose small but fledging rumble party has been on the move.
00:31:30.940 He's been the one candidate who's been independent of all this previous corruption
00:31:34.760 and all of the fact that the chavistas are smart Marxists.
00:31:39.580 They set up, you know, what is called controlled opposition.
00:31:43.620 And that is precisely what I fear has happened in Venezuela.
00:31:49.960 The situation there has got to be watched very carefully.
00:31:53.280 But I'm glad to see Donald Trump when they say,
00:31:55.640 oh, it's about oil.
00:31:56.480 He's absolutely right.
00:31:57.340 It is about oil.
00:31:58.760 Donald Trump understands that China not getting that oil is a huge advantage.
00:32:03.460 China was taking 80% of the oil.
00:32:05.620 This was a shot in the kidneys to our biggest and most dangerous enemy,
00:32:11.960 and that is the communist Chinese president.
00:32:15.000 Donald Trump recognized that much of the intercommunity refused to admit
00:32:18.620 the Maduro regime was illegitimate.
00:32:21.380 It was running, ruining essentially as a drug cartel
00:32:24.220 under the facade of being a government.
00:32:27.020 President Trump's America First policy
00:32:28.960 consistently refused to normalize this kind of narco-tyranny. 0.74
00:32:35.100 To me, this places the safety of the American people above all else.
00:32:41.460 These are drugs that end up on the streets of the United States
00:32:43.680 killing American citizens. 0.55
00:32:45.840 So whether you're confronting Maduro's regime,
00:32:48.320 above all, it was a matter of protecting the American people.
00:32:52.180 I say Trump did the right thing.
00:32:53.920 We'll be right back.
00:32:58.660 The Stone Zone.
00:33:00.620 Entertaining and informative.
00:33:02.400 On the Red Apple Podcast Network.
00:33:05.100 Welcome back into The Stone Zone.
00:33:09.480 The United States evidently has quietly concluded its withdrawal
00:33:13.640 from having two decades of American troops
00:33:17.500 at the Assad Air Force Base in Iraq's end-bar province,
00:33:21.560 officially ending more than, as I say,
00:33:24.480 20 years of American political military presence in Iraq.
00:33:28.060 The fact that these troops are even in Iraq, of course,
00:33:31.160 is a leftover from the fact that former Vice President Dick Cheney
00:33:36.600 essentially manipulating, I think, President George W. Bush,
00:33:41.100 manipulated us into a war for which there was no basis.
00:33:46.640 First of all, he claimed that Saddam Hussein, who was a CIA-constructed puppet,
00:33:56.180 a creation of the CIA, was said to have weapons of mass destruction.
00:34:03.420 To have access to yellow cake uranium, they forced Colin Powell against his will.
00:34:08.700 Dick Cheney did, the vice president, who was in many ways the de facto president under George W. Bush,
00:34:16.240 at least early on, into saying on the floor of the United Nations.
00:34:20.660 Essentially very damaging to Powell's career when it was learned that that was not true.
00:34:28.160 So it's extraordinary that we are just now pulling down the final troops from Iraq.
00:34:37.100 The drawdown follows actually a September 2024 agreement between Washington and Bandai
00:34:43.400 that dissolves the U.S.-led coalition that once served as, I guess it was,
00:34:48.860 I thought, I guess we used it as a barrier against the Islamic State. 0.99
00:34:53.560 Now, the original target date, I'm told, for full exit was as late as 2025,
00:35:01.480 leaving about 250 to 250 military advisors behind.
00:35:07.820 Those are CIA agents' folks.
00:35:10.620 President Trump has made it clear that this was wrong and does not mean weakness.
00:35:13.940 Only last week he had direct talks with the Syrian president, Ahmed al-Shar,
00:35:19.240 reforming support for Syria's territorial unity and a joint commitment to destroy ISIS.
00:35:26.160 Al-Shar is a tough guy in his own right.
00:35:29.480 Both leaders agreed continued cooperation against terrorism is essential to regional stability.
00:35:35.880 U.S. Central Command echoed that resolve,
00:35:38.800 emphasizing coordinating military pressure against ISIS and supporting de-escalation through strength.
00:35:45.980 Look, Trump has bombed ISIS on the ground in Nigeria.
00:35:49.960 He's bombed ISIS on the ground in Somalia.
00:35:53.700 He is clearly set to destabilize and deconstruct ISIS.
00:35:58.920 But again, it is very Trumpian the way he, like the swamp fox, he rushes in.
00:36:03.900 He projects American power with a direct strike, 0.67
00:36:07.180 like he did in Iran against their nuclear weapons program,
00:36:10.840 like he did with the lightning-like arrest of Nicolas Maduro in a police action.
00:36:18.580 It was a law enforcement action in which he was arrested for crimes committed in the United States
00:36:24.160 by the Department of Justice,
00:36:26.180 and the U.S. military merely served as backup for his arrest.
00:36:31.220 That's not a regime change.
00:36:35.260 If that were regime change, well, then Delce Rodriguez would not be president.
00:36:44.080 In any event, that's about it for us today.
00:36:48.880 Thank you very much for joining The Stone Zone,
00:36:51.640 where we talk politics, news, history, and, yep, style,
00:36:56.000 five days a week until tomorrow.
00:36:58.000 God bless you, and Godspeed.
00:37:00.080 Thanks for listening to The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:37:04.460 You can hear The Stone Zone with Roger Stone weeknights at 8 on 77 WABC.
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00:37:28.340 See you next time for a new episode so you never have to wonder.
00:37:32.340 What the heck is going on here?