On today's show, Stone is joined by Jake Novak Novak to discuss the latest in the Iran situation, the latest on the peace talks between the United States and Iran, and much more. The Stone Zone is a podcast by Roger Stone that takes a deep dive into the happenings in the world of economics, politics, and current events.
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00:00:30.000this is the stone zone with roger stone people love him and respect him roger stone
00:00:48.060now get in the zone it's the stone zone here's roger stone and i'm jake novak in for roger
00:00:56.880Stone this evening. Great to have the opportunity again. A lot of moving parts in the news today,
00:01:02.260internationally, domestically, locally, depending on what city you're talking about. So I want to
00:01:08.740try to get to as many of them as I can. Again, as you know, I still believe, obviously, our war
00:01:14.680with Iran, which is at the ceasefire position right now, but we, of course, still have
00:01:19.380literally hundreds of thousands of American servicemen and women in forward areas. We now
00:01:26.040have three aircraft carrier groups in the waters off of Iran. That's rare to have that, extremely
00:01:32.900rare, with the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier arriving there. So this has to be your
00:01:41.320top concern. Again, you know, one of the things I talk about a lot is we all know that there are a
00:01:45.960number of biases in the news media. And, you know, it's run by humans still, so humans are always
00:01:52.700going to have biases and we focus so much on the left wing bias which is real it's it's it's
00:01:57.900destructive and it's constant but i actually believe that there are two biases that are
00:02:02.920actually biases that are even more prevalent and they're just as destructive and just as in my case
00:02:08.960annoying and one of them is the two that are even bigger than the left wing bias the number one is
00:02:14.820the bias in favor of negativity bad news stories that will frighten you um i think that's been
00:02:21.360true since the caveman days the caveman drawing days but there's also the geographic bias if
00:02:26.680you're in if you're in your bubble in new york or dc especially new york and that's the way you're
00:02:32.920going to look at the rest of the world and even though in new york city in the five boroughs there
00:02:38.860are quite a few people who are certain from from those areas from these five boroughs who are
00:02:44.280serving in the military there are not so many of them in manhattan and certainly not many people
00:02:47.920who work in the news media here in Manhattan know someone in the service, ever knew anyone
00:02:53.660in the service, but in the rest of the country, this is a big deal.
00:03:11.480So, of course, that would be the big story anyway.
00:03:13.320But the fact that so many Americans are personally affected by this, they have a family member,
00:03:17.180They have a friend. They have loved ones. And this is life and death. So to me, that's why this has to continue to be our top story for so many reasons.
00:03:27.880Now, we don't know if these peace talks that are scheduled for Pakistan in the next day or so are going to happen.
00:03:33.780We still don't know for sure. It looks like the Iranian, some Iranian contingent is there.
00:03:39.420And it also we also don't even know that if they do meet U.S. envoys, presumably against Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and some others with them.
00:03:49.940And then meeting with the Iranians face to face, we also don't know if it's going to go anywhere.
00:03:54.600You know, we just heard from Senator Roger Wicker.
00:03:59.300He is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, a Republican, obviously.
00:04:03.680And he just came out and said he doesn't really think that the negotiations are worth it with this regime.
00:04:09.420And he may have a point, obviously. So, I mean, that's we've heard some Iranian folks saying that to hear that from such a high ranking senator, no matter what his real power is, he's still a high ranking senator, is interesting, to say the least.0.63
00:04:28.600I think we all would like to see the end of it, people being in harm's way, an end of fighting.
00:04:34.300We're in the ceasefire now, so it's not like we've been seeing bombs going off constantly, although that's not the case in Lebanon, and I'll talk about that in a second.
00:04:42.320But at the same time, we certainly don't want to see this regime remaining intact.
00:04:46.240and being able to, after however long,
00:06:24.420I would love for Iran's regime, what's left of it,0.99
00:06:27.220to just unconditionally surrender already.
00:06:29.720It seems obvious to people like you and me
00:06:31.780that they're not going to win this thing
00:06:33.480and there's nothing they can do really to salvage.
00:06:36.640themselves and all these erroneous reports about the trump administration being ready to pone up
00:06:41.740tens of billions of dollars to this regime are just that ridiculously erroneous this it's just0.95
00:06:46.420so stupid i know where they're coming from by the way and i'll talk about that in a second but0.97
00:06:49.940there's no there's no chance of that getting it happening so sure it makes sense to you and me0.99
00:06:56.400but we're not dealing with rational people now as far as all where all that money and where these
00:07:01.440reports are coming from you know i did some digging into this because during the week and
00:07:05.660last week I was hearing from some of the usual suspect Trump haters in my timeline and in my
00:07:10.160personal life. And they're like, oh, are you going to apologize to Obama for all that money he gave
00:07:14.440to Iran because Trump's going to give him more? And I'm like, what? Who would he even give it to?
00:07:18.760I mean, think of the logic of that. And then I realized where the reporters are sort of getting
00:07:23.360this. And this is not an excuse for them at all. This is still a ridiculous stretch.
00:07:27.800This is coming from the floated idea that when Iran either surrenders or a regime gets there
00:07:34.860in place that will work with us the u.s government will encourage u.s oil companies to start doing
00:07:40.820business in iran which will of course lead to billions of dollars of investment in iran it's
00:07:45.600not like pallets of cash going to the terror leaders of iran going to the mullahs like biden
00:07:50.300and obama gave them i mean it's quite the stretch to say oh see trump's going to give them even more
00:07:54.520money it's not even to the same people and it's not in the same way and it may not even happen
00:07:58.920i don't you know just because the oil companies will potentially be allowed to do that doesn't
00:08:03.540mean they're necessarily going to do it. They got a lot of drilling to do here. And even if things
00:08:08.000are peaceful forevermore in Iran after this war is over, it's a schlep, as we say, to go over0.98
00:08:14.080there. They may have as much oil to drill here in this part of the world and on and on. And again,
00:08:19.720a lot of other points. Now, again, as I said before, I was going to tell you what's going on
00:08:23.080in Lebanon. The shooting has already started again in Lebanon. Hezbollah has broken the ceasefire
00:08:28.820that President Trump announced between Israel and Lebanon. Although it's really Israel and Hezbollah
00:08:33.240Israel's never had any problem or at least not any shooting wars with the government of Lebanon.0.93
00:08:37.920This has always been about Hezbollah, which is Iran.
00:08:40.820It's just Iran's Lebanese army, Lebanese terror group.
00:08:45.600And Hezbollah has broken that ceasefire several times in the last day or two, and the Israelis have had to retaliate.
00:08:51.900They're almost in full-blown blows over there.
00:08:55.120So, you know, this is this is all this is all developing right now as we speak.
00:09:02.340And it's going. And again, if I were a betting man and, you know, you can't say that lightly anymore because of these poly market, these betting markets where you can bet on war outcomes, which is really very scary, especially since some of the people who make these decisions and carry out the war have been caught betting on these things.0.66
00:09:19.840It's kind of like Pete Rose betting on baseball.
00:09:23.780If he had been betting on his own team, we'll never know for sure on that one.
00:09:27.980But the thing is, if I were a betting person or advising someone like that,
00:09:33.260and I would like not to know someone like that,
00:09:34.880I would tell them I think this thing is going to get hot again.
00:09:37.760The war is going to get hot again, if I had to guess.
00:09:40.900I would really like to see an unconditional surrender.
00:09:43.440I would like to have our USS Missouri moment for you, History Buffs.
00:09:46.300That's where the Japanese surrendered to Douglas MacArthur on the deck of that ship to end, you know, effectively World War II because the Japanese lasted longer than the Germans.
00:09:56.860But I don't think we're going to get that from this crew.
00:10:00.240And because of that, I think we're going to get into a hot war again.
00:10:04.080Hope I'm wrong, and I hope we get that.
00:10:07.380All right. The other burning story in America, very much so, continues to be this incredible scandal, incredible evidence against the Southern Poverty Law Center.
00:10:18.200And I want to get you updated on that, including a very personal story about the SPLC from my life 25 years ago, about about 25 years ago, which was the moment when I realized this group was no good.
00:10:30.520I'm Jake Novak in for Roger Stone. This is the Stone Zone. Stay with us.
00:10:33.640This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
00:10:38.080He likes politics and he's a professional at the highest level.
00:11:11.560People forget he's actually a brilliant, brilliant political analyst.
00:11:14.560Now, get in the zone. It's the Stone Zone. Here's Roger Stone.
00:11:20.520And I'm Jake Novick on this Friday night filling in for Roger Stone.
00:11:23.600You know, we have a story developing here in the New York area, actually not far from my home,
00:11:29.100that I think is a much bigger story, and it's pretty scary as it's being reported anyway,
00:11:34.220but I think it's a much bigger story than it's been reported.
00:11:36.760I believe this involves terrorism. I believe it's a more sophisticated incident than people are being led to believe.
00:11:42.440it involves an elite public high school on Long Island. I'm going to talk about that in the next
00:11:47.440half hour. But I want to talk about the Southern Poverty Law Center. And you've heard so much about
00:11:50.980it in the last few days. You haven't heard so much about it on the mainstream media, although
00:11:54.140kudos to CBS, CBS Evening News doing a big expose on the Southern Poverty Law Center a couple of
00:12:01.180nights ago. And good for them for joining in what the conservative news media has been covering.
00:12:05.880But everyone should be covering this, this scandal. Records, receipts, financial stuff proving that they had been funding these right wing hate groups, supposedly right wing hate groups, just, you know, all of them, KKK, the white supremacist groups, in order to create a need for their quote unquote services and also to create a narrative of America being a much more hateful country than it truly is.
00:12:28.880We've got plenty of hate in this country. We don't need a manufacturer in any. Thank you so much, SPLC.
00:12:33.920But I wanted to tell you a personal story about this organization, one that I certainly wasn't a big fan of them 25 years ago.
00:12:41.340But they went they crossed the line for me because of something that happened in my family involving the SPLC.
00:12:47.840my father uh was it turns out you might remember the case in alabama many years ago when then judge
00:12:57.380roy moore wanted to put the ten commandments in public buildings in alabama include especially
00:13:04.340at the state supreme court he wanted to have this big artistic sculpture of the ten commandments
00:13:09.620put there and there were a bunch of people suing against it saying that this was a violation
00:13:13.380of church and state setting up an official religion now it just so happens that my father
00:13:19.780is a great expert on religious law theology and specifically jewish law and tradition
00:13:25.780and it just so happened that he had written well before this case became a thing
00:13:29.420it's basically expanding on the fact that according to the early rabbis the right and
00:13:35.060this is during the roman era the ten commandments were considered to be civil law and not religious
00:13:39.920law. They were considered anyone who believed in God and was part and was living in that area was
00:13:47.080this this was your law as well this was your cornerstone of morality so it wasn't anything
00:13:52.200specifically just Jewish in other words. Now because my dad had written that years before
00:13:57.500the state supreme court of Emma called him down as an expert witness in that case and he was
00:14:02.660questioned about this and he explained the concept I don't know if the court understood it from what
00:14:06.260I understand during the proceedings of the original case, the judge wasn't so smart. I'm
00:14:09.980not talking about Judge Wormore. I mean, the judge who was presiding over this case. And who knows
00:14:13.940what the people in the court understood or didn't understand. But that was why my dad was called,
00:14:19.640because the idea was, hey, wait a minute, maybe this isn't a specific one religion over the other.
00:14:23.720Maybe this isn't just Judaism or Christianity. If it's all religions, if it's a monotheistic
00:14:28.380ethos, and that was what the Ten Commandments were considered to be, especially at that time.
00:14:33.300At that time, during the time of the Romans, the Ten Commandments were part of the daily prayers in Jewish life.
00:14:41.000You had to read, it was part of the morning prayers.
00:14:43.240So it was something that kind of like was done publicly and recited publicly.
00:14:46.900Anyway, one of the lawyers suing against this was working, one of the people suing against this was the Southern Poverty Law Center.
00:14:55.500And for the life of me, I don't know exactly what they had a problem with.
00:14:58.560I don't understand how this has anything to do with necessarily bigotry.
00:15:03.380I can understand the stretch, but it's quite galling when you consider the SPLC was basically
00:15:09.360set up to help protect the rights of black people in the South and to fight the KKK until they
00:15:14.240started funding them. I mean, the incredible ignorance of these people, do they not understand0.97
00:15:20.100that the abolitionist movement in this country was a church movement? It wasn't a bunch of
00:15:27.380communist students from from university it was a church movement through and through
00:15:34.740so the idea that like anything religious is somehow bigoted is is beyond me it's really1.00
00:15:42.060frightening to me that it it's it's a combination of hatred and stupidity which by the way go1.00
00:15:46.580together hate make you hate makes you stupid so an sblc lawyer gets up there to cross-examine my1.00
00:15:52.260dad like like he's a hostile witness he's not he's just telling them what he had written about1.00
00:15:56.540many years before and explaining that he's not he's not there to be a buddy to judge rory more
00:16:01.260for all i you never met him i know my dad never met him still hasn't you know i mean none of that
00:16:05.380was in in play my dad was just there as an expert on this and nobody in that courtroom or even in
00:16:10.080the world can hold a candle to his expertise on this he wasn't there to help anybody win a case
00:16:15.000necessarily he was asked questions and as a citizen in this country he answered the questions
00:16:19.280that were posed to him well the sblc lawyer proceeded to smear my father basically saying
00:16:24.900well wait a minute you're a professor at these universities and at university of virginia but
00:16:29.000isn't it true and he he gets like the court into a hushed silence isn't it true that you are also
00:16:35.320an ordained rabbi and he starts twirling his like fingers around his sideburns so i guess if my
00:16:41.720father's like some kind of hasidic rabbi in disguise oh a rabbi dun dun dun i mean not only0.99
00:16:50.280was that stupid but it was just like he was what was he trying to do to get like i mean probably0.99
00:16:53.820it's like some New York guy who thought like, well, if in Alabama, if I identify this guy as1.00
00:16:58.020a rabbi, everyone's going to come out with a baseball bat and beat him. I mean, I don't know
00:17:00.940what they were trying to do there. But the SPLC can really go pound sand. This is something that
00:17:06.560happened 25 years ago or so. Yeah, I take it personally. I didn't like them before that,
00:17:11.880to be honest. But now since then, I've really known what they're all about, which is,
00:17:15.660you know, trying to stir up hatred. You know, I talked about that being the number one
00:17:22.280bias in the news media. Well, we ain't alone on that one. There are people in this world whose
00:17:27.120number one cause and number one goal in life is to stir hatred, stir fear, create controversy,
00:17:33.900because they profit from it. And those people should be given a tremendous punishment. I believe
00:17:40.900that people who fake hate crimes should be given a minimum of a 10-year federal prison sentence.
00:17:47.260And I think people who organize national fake hate crimes should be given life in prison because a faked hate crime has the same effect as a phony one.
00:17:57.480It still instills terror, but it also smears the people who didn't have anything to do with it.
00:18:03.680It's a double crime and it's a heinous one.
00:18:06.200When I come back, I'm going to let you know what's going on in Long Island because it's a story you're not going to hear anywhere else.
00:18:10.000I'm Jake Novak in for Roger Stone on The Stone Zone.
00:18:17.260Some say the bubbles in an Aero Truffle piece can take 34 seconds to melt in your mouth.
00:18:38.340Sometimes the very amount you're stuck at the same red light.
00:24:22.220You know, we have an illegal immigration crisis in this country under the Biden administration. We had tens of millions of illegal immigrants coming into this country. And even if most of them aren't criminals, and I'm sure most of them aren't, it's still a net gain of criminals coming into this country. I love I love these people who think this is a reasoned argument.
00:24:38.560Well, what's wrong with these illegal immigrants? They commit murder at a lower rate than the people who are here legally, which, by the way, has not been proven definitively. Don't accept that statistic. But even if it were true, so we're still we're still importing some criminals into this country that we should that shouldn't be here.1.00
00:24:54.740how many how many what percentage of murder is acceptable to you and what a stupid argument that0.95
00:24:59.680is even if it were true and i'm not sure it is where this has been one of the biggest demographic0.99
00:25:05.620news stories affecting the lives of almost every american in the history of this country and
00:25:10.720certainly in my lifetime and so whenever anyone is arrested for something and we really don't
00:25:16.080know exactly their history in a neighborhood that should be asked and it's not racist to ask it and
00:25:21.140it's and it's irresponsible not to ask it i did see some local news outlets saying that they
00:25:29.420didn't know his immigration status so good for them although most of them didn't and they
00:25:32.500certainly didn't make it an issue to really pound the table on because so far we still don't know
00:25:36.780by now we would have known if they were really making an issue out of it they're not
00:25:40.700i don't know if this kid is really even this man's son because we also know that so many people came
00:25:48.600over the border during the Biden years claiming to be families when it turned out the adult was
00:25:53.340a child trafficker with children or using children as kind of a human shield. This isn't crazy
00:25:59.800conspiracy stuff, folks. This is all heavily documented, and the numbers are astounding.
00:26:04.660The numbers are off the charts. For anyone who still believes the arguments like, well,
00:26:08.280illegal aliens help our economy, those were studies based on a trickle compared to what
00:26:13.660massive flood came into this country during the Biden years. There's been no economic study
00:28:11.260If you're a shareholder in Comcast, which owns NBC, and I can name a lot of others, you should know that your company, your money is being invested in a company that has division after division that aren't interested in making money.
00:28:24.640I think you should know that. I also think it's actionable. I think the shareholders of Comcast should sue Comcast for carrying divisions in their business, expensive divisions that have no intention of really making money, that are just there to parrot a political statement.
00:28:41.540and if the if the comcast lawyers were honest in discovery they would say that's true
00:28:47.120but we're doing that for the overall goal of protecting the profits of our other divisions
00:28:51.700in other words we use nbc news and ms now and cnbc i know they spun them off but they still
00:28:56.780have controlling interest we use all those entities to basically be a de facto lobbying
00:29:01.740outlet so that our really important money-making entity the broadband cable stuff and everything
00:29:06.820else like that which is susceptible to regulatory hell i mean congress could snap its fingers and
00:29:12.300put comcast out of business considering all the regulatory okay you need to run communications
00:29:19.520and telecom and stuff like that in this country in any country and i would love for the nbc comcast
00:29:25.600lawyers to admit that's why we put so much pro bureaucracy pro swamp pro usually the democrats
00:29:31.720and control content on our news platforms
00:29:36.120because we're trying to make them feel like we're their friends
00:29:38.840so that they don't screw us in regulatory hearings.
00:30:26.920That's the kind of disclosure I demand as a shareholder.
00:30:32.300And right now, the local news operations that are owned, especially in New York, they're all owned and operated by the national news media.
00:30:38.540They're not doing enough to get me to want to click on that story and follow it.
00:30:41.780Let me tell you something about culture on Long Island, especially in Nassau County.
00:30:45.380This story hits all the major hot points for people who live in Nassau County.
00:30:50.720Public schools, you know, the competition between the elite public school systems in Nassau County.
00:30:56.100That would be Syosset, Jericho, Roslyn.
00:30:59.180For those of you who live in this area, you know what I'm talking about.
00:33:49.300And I'm Jake Novak filling in for Roger Stone.
00:33:51.500And one more segment here on the Stone Zone this evening.
00:33:54.100And I don't want to be guilty of something that I was complaining about at the top of the program and then in the middle of the program as well.
00:34:01.260I don't want to be guilty of the whole the news media is number one bias is just negative stories and frightening stories and just divisive stuff.
00:34:09.740I'd like to be able to finish off at least with something a little bit more heartwarming.
00:34:14.520And, you know, today was the release of this new biopic about Michael Jackson.
00:34:31.960But what I've read about it is that it stays away from the controversial stuff.
00:34:36.020Obviously, the sex and the molestation stuff, it stays away from that.
00:34:39.400And for those of you who think, like, well, that's really leaving out a lot of stuff, understand that this movie is not pretending to be about everything in this person's life.
00:34:47.500It's about his step from being a part of his group with his brothers to being a solo act, and what an incredible sensation it was that.
00:34:56.080Anyone who lived through that, as I did, and this was my teenage years, so this was, not only did I live through it, but it was something that was really targeted at me and my demo.
00:35:06.300I can tell you, it was an extraordinary thing.
00:35:09.340The interest in this guy and his solo career when it took off was interesting.
00:35:15.400And just as someone who's interested in history, I was very interested when I learned certain things about Michael Jackson.
00:35:20.600I don't know if this movie is going to talk about this, but this is stuff that I've heard from a number of people who worked with him over the years.
00:35:35.040And then I remember being shocked when I saw some of the documentaries about the making of Thriller, which was the next album which came out in 1982.
00:35:41.920too, I remember being shocked to hear that both Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones, Quincy Jones
00:35:48.000being his longtime producer, and of course the great Quincy Jones you know from other things
00:35:51.740that he did, were really disappointed in the sales for Off the Wall, even though it was this
00:35:56.020huge hit. They thought that this was so groundbreaking that it should have been the
00:36:01.080greatest album of the decade. And so that was their motivation when they did Thriller. They
00:36:05.860were like, darn it, we're going to get it now. And boy, did they ever. I don't know if you like0.98
00:36:09.820that music or not but they certainly hit it with that album i mean that album was just it was
00:36:15.340constantly on the radio the first one was billy jean that was the first release i mean that was
00:36:20.880constantly on the radio and then beat it and then when thriller came i mean it was just good luck
00:36:24.900turning your radio dial back then and not hearing one of the out one of the songs from that album
00:36:29.440it was a huge hit and it was a massive amount of work and a massive amount of dedication involved
00:37:04.660and she's been out telling the story about donald trump and michael jackson going back to 2005
00:37:11.380listen to this president trump who was not president at the time at the time but you know
00:37:17.040i never will forget a conversation he said to michael he says you have a place here
00:37:21.480at um trump towers as long as i'm alive you'll never lose it and do you need anything he offered
00:37:31.040financial support yeah and that's the truth president trump who was not president that's
00:37:36.520ramon bain and you know look does that mean that donald trump is the philanthropist of all time
00:37:41.140and uh maybe you could say well donald trump had soft spots in his heart for certain celebrities
00:37:45.940particularly it seems like he's had soft spots in his heart for a long time for african-american
00:37:50.220celebrities i'm thinking of some of the other ones he's helped over the years um but so what
00:37:56.960It doesn't matter. It's an act of kindness. And I just think that it's an interesting little caveat.
00:38:03.200I wanted to end on something a little bit more positive, but understand, folks, that, you know, anyone can really decide to create an impression of a public official, of a public figure.
00:38:16.620And one of the things that's really struck me about Donald Trump is that no matter how many people I meet, I never usually get necessarily the same story.
00:38:27.400I hear people who say something bad about him.
00:38:29.900And of course, we see that in the mainstream news media every day.
00:38:33.700And I don't meet too many people who have had a personal bad experience with him, but I read about it in the media just like you do.
00:38:40.840But when I meet people who have had personal dealings with Donald Trump, whether it was in business or when it was show business, especially on shows like The Apprentice and things like that, I hear good things.