February 5, 2019 • 48 mins
In Episode 46, Robert is joined by Tamer Kattan to discuss the strange, corrupt life of Roger Stone.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hm. I'm Robert Evans, and this is the introduction behind
the Bastards, my podcast where talking about terrible people and
all the things you don't know about them with me today.
My guest for this episode is Tamara Katan, host of
They Tried to Bury us UH podcast about immigrants coming
into the United States that exactly every week is a
(00:21):
different American origin story. So we have a different immigrant
every week. Awesome, it's been great. Well today we're not
talking about an immigrant, but we are talking about someone
who has done a lot of damage to immigrants, not directly,
but just through the people he's supported. Sure. Yeah, we're
talking about Roger Stone. What do you know about Roger Stone, tamer.
(00:44):
I know a little bit about him. I know that
he is uh. He lives in the upside down. As
I think a phrase I said to you outside, I
think he is a white Malcolm X to me, a
political version of aid any means necessary, you know what
I mean, Like before Malc come went to Mecca and
and got balanced in his life without principle, without principle,
(01:05):
by any means necessary. I don't care who I hurt.
I don't care how often I have to lie. I
think that lying is good. I think if you believe
in doing things that are virtuous, that you're a chump.
It's a cancer in our political system. Yeah, and he
is a human cancer. Absolutely. Now, listeners will note that
we did a two part episode on Paul Manafort months ago.
(01:27):
I recommend checking that out too, because they're there are
two halves of the same coin. So we talked about
one coin back. Today we're dropping the other side. So
let's get into it. On August ninety two, little baby
Roger Stone was born to Gloria Rose and Roger J. Stone.
His mother was a journalist who followed local politics. His
(01:49):
father drilled wells. Roger grew up in Louisborough, New York,
and described his family as middle class and blue collar.
So so far, we're doing fine. It's a normal middle
American by way. Roger was eight years old when he
got involved in his first political election. He campaigned for
John F. Kennedy, and even at that tender age, he
knew that honesty was not the way to achieve his
(02:09):
political goals. That's right, he later recalled to the Washington
Post quote, I remember going through the cafeteria line and
telling every kid that Nixon was in the favor of
school on Saturdays. That was my first political trick, which
is cute. It's fun, it's so unner. It's like an
origin story of a villain. Yeah, yeah, where he learns
the the disinformation. I think he was quoted about that story.
(02:33):
He said, that's why I learned the power of disinformation. Yeah,
that you can just if you just And it's speaking
as a tall white guy. This is something I battle
with my whole life. I really like telling a good
lie to people, like like a like like a joking,
like like I'll make up a fact about history or something,
and like and and I love seed it to a
friend and you hear him tell it in like a
party or something, and it's it's a really funny joke
(02:56):
for just you. Not a great thing to do, but
if you're confident and you have the right sort of
look in this society at least, because it works particularly
well in the United States. The same reason why. I like,
if you've got a mixed race group of people and
someone has to go talk to the cops, you picked
the guy who looks like me, I go talk to
the cops, and I it's it's it's fine. I think
roger Stone had that realization and decided to make that
(03:19):
his whole life, rather than be like, what if I
just made some jokes at parties. Yeah, it's it's such
a bizarre thing. Like you, if this was a show
about a nice, normal, responsible family, there would be a
massive teaching moment that was missed. Yeah, where like Andy
Griffith sat down young roger Stone and was like, well,
I know you won that classroom election, but you know,
(03:41):
here's why it's bad the light to everyone. You know exactly,
it's like winning a beauty pageant by going topless, Like
it's against the rules. You can't do that. Yeah, oh
Roger Okay, So uh it is entirely possible that that
anecdote is a lie. I do want to note that
because we're talking about Roger Stone, and every time we
talk about it, literally, of the things in this there's
(04:04):
multiple versions of So I have tried to call the
versions of reality that coincide the most with what I
can back up with like objective facts and what multiple
people have said. But like, if you do your own
research on Roger Stone, you'll run into different variations of
everything here. Because I think he's just been lying consistently
for about seventy years. Agree Y, Yeah, I mean it's
(04:24):
a negative version of one of my favorite Maya Angelou
quotes where she says, people may not remember what you
do or say, but they'll always remember how you made
them feel. Yeah, And he he'll make people the right
people feel the right way, regardless of that if if
the afformission is true or false, or damaging or hurtful,
or even leads to violence, he just doesn't care. He
(04:45):
just does not care. So Roger did start out supporting JFK,
which basically everyone did. It's an interesting note nineteen sixty
one that we do surveys like p and want to
do surveys on like people's level of trust and government.
Nineteen sixty one is the peak in American history of
people trusting the federal government. So it's not weird that
like everybody's on board with JFK in this election now.
(05:08):
Roger Stone claims that his personal political ideology took a
right word turn for the first time at age eleven
when he read Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative.
Barry Goldwater, for those of you who don't know, was
the kind of the Trump before Trump I think he
was a better at appealing to like intellectual conservatives than
Donald Trump was. Um, but he uh, you know the
(05:30):
reason that like you're not supposed to as a psychiatrist
psychoanalyze the presidential candidate. It's called the Goldwater rule because
like so many people thought he was crazy when he
was running. So this guy's book is what like lights
a spark in Roger Stone's brain at age eleven. The
next year, he started volunteering for the Goldwater campaign at
age twelve. So he's like a very young volunteer for
(05:52):
this hard right presidential candidate. And while he's doing all that,
he comes across a book called a text and looks
at Lynden. Now, this bok was self published by a
self described ultra conservative named j. Evett Haley. Haley argues
that lb J was a lifelong criminal and a murderer.
Roger Stone would go on to write his own book
about lb j's role in the Kennedy assassination, accusing the
(06:13):
former president of at least eight murders. Yeah, it's it's
a nutsell book. Not that I don't think lb J
had some people murdered because he was lb J. He
definitely did. But this is you see the start of
like two things that are going to be through lines
in Roger Stone's life here. One of them is, of
course hard right conservatism, and one of them is he
(06:33):
really likes conspiracy theories, which is probably how he's going
to wind up in the Info Wars orbit a little
bit later in this story. So young Roger spent a
lot of his childhood alone. In reading this period of
time seems to have crystallized the ideology that would carry
him through to the rest of his life. Quote from Roger, Well,
you have to understand there were no kids my age,
male or female, for twenty five miles. I suppose I
(06:54):
could have thrown a football with my dad. But my
old man left at five am and came back at
nine pm. But he ate his supper and fell to bed,
and he was with Greece from head to foot, and
he never complained a day in his life. You have
to amuse yourself. This is the way Roger tells a story.
Um kind of how yeah, yeah, my dad never talked
to me because he was working all the time. And
this is good. He never complained that he didn't have
(07:17):
time to raise a child. How can you tell that
story and not be like, maybe that's not a healthy culture,
that's not ideal. Anyway, Stone amused himself by engaging in
politics as often as possible. He volunteered for the Goldwater
campaign at age twelve, as I said, but he also
stayed active in his school's political process. Here's the New
York Times. As a junior then vice president of his
(07:38):
Northern Westchester High school, he manipulated the outster of the
president and his own succession running for re election as
a senior. I left nothing to chance, he said. I
built alliances and put all my serious challengers on my ticket.
Then I recruited the most unpopular guy in the school
to run against me. You think that's mean, No, that's smart.
So yeah. When he was thirteen, Roger Stone started taking
(07:59):
the train into New York City on weekends to volunteer
for the mayoral campaign of William F. Buckley Jr. That
campaign did not work out, but the experience of traveling
from small town America into its largest city to work
in politics had an impact on young Roger as well. Quote.
The key thing I remember about Louis Borrow, his small
hometown is that it was just across the border from
New Canaan. So early on I saw myself as living
(08:20):
in a kind of bridge between two cultures, the right
white working class and the white upper class. Very specific
about white there. Yeah, now, Stone believed both groups fundamentally
hated the government, so they were natural bedfellows. Should all
be able to get on board this whether or not
we're poorer rich white people, but white people is pretty
clearly who's traangling towards now. In nineteen seventy, Stone senior
(08:42):
year of high school, he attended the Connecticut State Young
Republican Convention. The Young Republicans were more conservative than the
mainstream of the party at that time. They're kind of
trying to push the party further to the right. Roger
hadn't been able to afford to book a hotel room
for his trip, so he'd showed up just sort of
assuming he could meet someone and convince them to take
care of it. Still his best friend at the time,
a guy named Dolan introduced him to another teenage young
(09:03):
Republican named Paul Manaford. Yeah, it really is, yeah, villain origins.
Ye crazy, these young guys meeting. They're both wearing ill
fitting suits. Nobody's got a lot of money. Yet I
knew he was involved in politics really young, but my god,
seven from the age of seven off, you know, his
family had to be involved in this, like to kind
(09:24):
of like directionally at least push him in a direction
at seven years old. He doesn't talk about that, not
that I found. So, yeah, I think you got one
of two possibilities. Either his mom and dad were both
way more political than he lets on and he was
pushed in that direction, or he didn't have much supervision
at all, and and way more white collar by the way, yeah,
and way more white collar. Changes his story makes him
(09:46):
a little bit less likable, especially if there's more money
in the picture. And then he wants to talk about
how many guys that work at oil rigs while he's
in a farm miles wells miles and miles away from
neighbors where his family is going. You should get into politics. Yeah,
there there's holes in the stone story and making mythology.
He's definitely making a mythology. And again this is the
(10:07):
picture he wants to Maybe didn't do anything, maybe he
was never involved in young, like I don't know. We're
we're trusting Roger here, and it's well I've seen pictures
of him as a young Republican. Yeah, this stuff is
definitely real once we get to where he's in high
school and he's with like man that stuff. There's a
lot of people, but like when he's talking about being eleven,
twelve years old and stuff like who knows, Yeah, this
(10:29):
might just be the image he wants to sure you
know anyway. Uh, Here's how The Washington Post wrote about
the first meeting of Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. I'm
just gonna say, the greatest friendship of all time. Hey, kid,
how you doing? Stone recalled Manafort, saying, before getting down
to sessing him out, why are you supporting Weaker? Manafort
was referring to low a Weaker, a moderate Republican candidate
(10:52):
for U S. Senator. Manafort clearly was testing the kid,
you think I give a funk about Weaker? I'm here
to elect Mescal, Stone shot back, meaning Thomas Mescal, a
conservative gubernatorial candidate admired by youthful Republicans. So that's like
how they get started as like Maniforts like you like
this fucking rhino Republican in name only and only in
Stones like no, I only like the crazy people like,
(11:13):
that's where I want to go is like the furthest
right we can possibly be. Yeah. So Roger Stone and
Paul Manafort were instant buddies and would be not quite
inseparable but frequent collaborators over the next like thirty some
odd years. How old were they at this point? They
would have been like seventeen eighteen. They're just just babies.
Their babies be at their personalities held firm. I have
(11:34):
too strong opinions here. One of them is that you
shouldn't be able to join the military unless you're thirty,
and the others that you shouldn't be allowed to participate
in any kind of politics until you're thirty. I like
it a lot. You start doing drugs when you're twenty
one a man? Yeah, yeah, let's give them nine years
of experimenting without ingredients. You know what I mean? To
make people make these huge moral decisions before they've lived life.
(11:57):
You're absolutely right. You look at the stuff Been Shapiro
is writing when he's seventeen. He's like advocating war crimes
in Afghanistan. It's like, don't let a seventeen year old
right about politics. Do you know how funked up? That
it's yeah. I mean, that's how we get Paul Manafort
and Roger Stone. So in addition to the Young Republicans,
Stone joined the Teenage Republicans, the College Republicans, and Young
(12:19):
Americans for Freedom. I might have noticed a theme there.
He became tightly wound up in Republican Party politics, enough
so that in nineteen seventy two, the year of President
Richard Nixon's re election campaign, nineteen year old Roger Stone
was selected to be one of Nixon's henchmen. Now Stone
was the youngest member of the committee to re elect
(12:39):
the president, literally known by the acronym CREEP, which does
nobody like checked on this stuff Nixon just as like
sight of yeah, create that's good, that's what we call it,
go commit crimes. Stone recommended that creepire a guy named
Theodore Brill, who was a college classmate and friend of his.
He recommended that Creep pay Brill hundred and fifty dollars
(13:01):
to spy on radical groups. Stone claims that his work
for CREEP was all kids stuff, none of which was
illegal at the time, and all of which would have
been done with or without him. Unfortunately for Roger Stone,
but fortunately for the concept of truth. The FBI was
keeping tabs on him back then too. There exists on
this hellish Internet of ours a website called Property of
the People. They host government documents retrieved by Foyer requests
(13:23):
and the like. They have a super fun article titled
FBI Documents on Roger Stone Reveal Sabotage, espionage, and the
life of a serial bagman. Oh my god, I'm going
into an Internet death spiral right after this episode. It's
a great website. Yeah, well, check him out, please do. Now.
My favorite thing about that title is that Roger worked
for Nixon as a literal bagman, at one point taking
(13:45):
a sack containing a jar of money to donate on
behalf of Republican presidential candidate Paul McCloskey to the Young
Socialist Yeah, yeah, just a jar of change in a sack.
So he donates on behalf of this Republican presidential canon
at Paul McCloskey to the Young Socialist Association. Stone claimed
(14:07):
that he was the Young Socialist Association's treasurer. Now this
was all a lie, obviously designed to make McCloskey look
bad and torpedo his chances of primarying Nixon. The original
FBI documents about this dirty tricker interesting because they give
us some insight into the precise nature of young Roger
Stone's moral compass. Quote. Stone met with Porter in his
(14:27):
office at Creep, where Porter asked him if he would
be willing to travel to Manchester to make a cash
contribution to the McCloskey campaign headquarters. Porter wanted Stone to
disguise himself as a member of the gay liberation movement
when making this contribution. Stone flatly rejected this proposal. However,
he concurred with the basic theme of this tactic. So
basically that's Roger Stone's line at age nineteen, because I
(14:49):
I'll pretend to be a young socialist but not a
member of the gay liberal I mean, you see the pattern, right,
you see the pattern, Like from such a young age,
he's like, I see the power of disinformation. Yeah. And
then forward a decade later and he's still doing the
same He's still doing the same thing, doing the same ship.
Did you ever see Seven Up, the British documentary. It's amazing.
(15:09):
It was like one of the first reality shows and
they interviewed kids at seven years old, and then at fourteen,
and then at every seven years Now they're in their sixties.
They've been doing it the whole time. But it was
a study on social classes. And the interesting thing they
found is when wealthy kids were seven years old and
they asked him what do you want to be? They
were really specific. They're like, I'm going to Cambridge, I'm
(15:30):
being a barrister, blah blah blah and all this stuff.
And they did whereas the kids and the poor neigh
birds were like, I'm going to be a spaceman yeah,
or like I'm gonna be a truck I don't know
what I'm gonna be like. So he's one of those
kids where they knew at such an early age they
were just and he doesn't pick I want to be
in politics. He picks I want to be a dirty
tricks guy in politics, Like I want to be like
(15:52):
the filthiest version of a political guy. It's remarkable that
that's his only ambition in life ever. Now, a researcher
named Emma best Uh found ten separate document releases from
the FBI, all of which mentioned roger Stone. According to
Property of the People's Rite up quote, the documents to tail,
roger Stone's role was a bagman for the Nixon campaign,
(16:13):
in which he funneled over twenty five thou dollars equivalent
to a hundred fifty thousand dollars in twenty eighteen to
fund political intelligence gathering and other dirty tricks, including mole
embedding and a mysterious payment related to the Watergate break in.
The documents include a copy of the FBI's interview with Stone,
as well as other statements to the Bureau about Stone
and Jason Renier, the alias Stone used for his anti
Democratic spy operations. So Stone paid another operative the modern
(16:36):
equivalent of sixty grand to surveillance sabotage the campaigns of
Nixon's Democratic rivals. After the Watergate break ins, he put
together a payment of almost a hundred grand and modern
dollars for an oil executive and Nixon fundraiser named Darius Keaton.
Far from being minor acts of political mouthfeasance as Stone
sort of presented them, Roger Stone seems to have been
an enthusiastic and prolific dirty trickster, happy to do almost
(16:57):
anything for Richard Nixon. Quote in one case, Stone sent
two Democrats invitations to a non existent primary campaign breakfast
and another Stone directed Democratic campaign literature intended for the
black community to be sent to union workers, and literature
intended for union workers to be sent to the black community.
And he had another stone saw to it that phone
lines used by a Democratic primary campaign were tampered with.
(17:18):
This resulted in Democratic failure to connect with many potential voters.
Well other, uh so this is the way he works.
This is the way he works at age nineteen. You
know what's so interesting about him too, is he never
as big as his ego got. For a guy whose
dad never talked to him, right, he always looked to
another man to please. Yeah. He never said I'm going
(17:39):
to be president. No, he never chased it himself. He
was always I'm gonna please dad. Yeah, he all. And
he's always picked a bigger man Tolize, which for most
of his life has been Nixon, a bigger than life man.
And even now he imitates Nixon with the peace signs
that he always throws up with his weird ass wanky arms.
It seems like he's a case study for like a
broken brain, like a father's son fracture. I mean, you know,
(18:02):
to get real here, this podcast Behind the Bastards, because
just as well be called daddy issues. But almost a
hundred percent of these guys had real fucked up times
with their fathers, Like why don't they just strip like
everybody else? You know, Roger Stone actually might have been
able to do that. He's a bodybuilding self proclaimed Well no,
I mean, if you've seen I've seen shirtless picture him
(18:23):
when he's young, he was reasonably swollen even even in
his late forties, really fit looking guy. And if you
see the modern pictures of his back tattoo, you can
see in the building shoulders, he's got a really broad build.
He could have he could have stripped, which is a
noble and honest career. I just mean I worked out
with real bodybuilders that called Jim. His cemeteries all off.
He's got like baby calves and weird well on his
(18:46):
face is weird faces, weird as hairs. Everything's weird. They
all have weird hair. It's like Paul Manaford where spending
a hundred thousand dollars on suits that look like hundred
dollar suits just to just to know that it's I
don't know, they're all weird guys, And that's fine unless
you're ruining the world, which case it's exactly yeah. Now.
All the unfathomable shadiness of Richard Nixon's reelection campaign led
(19:09):
to congressional hearings in nineteen seventy three. During those hearings,
Roger Stone's secret identity as Jason Renier, young Socialist became public.
Knowledge was also revealed that Stone had hired someone to
spy on the McGovern campaign. At the time of the hearing,
Stone had gotten a job on Bob Dole's staff. He
was fired for this and seems to have taken the job.
Losses a sign that a man of his temperament was
better served by working as a consultant than working for
(19:30):
the government. In a two thousand and eight interview with
The New Yorker titled The Dirty Trickster, Stone reminisced about
his time with Creep and justified his actions by saying
the Democrats were weak, we were strong. He was, by
the way, the youngest person caught up in the Watergate
Yeah yeah, yeah, which is a They had him on
one of the charts in the court show that he
(19:51):
had taken money. Yeah yeah, that's how he starts his career.
So in the mid nineteen seventies, after Nixon's impeachment, the
Republican Party was most assuredly not strong. Uh Stone seems
to have elected not to waste his time on the
doomed presidency of Gerald Ford, History's greatest monster. Instead, he
worked to insinuate himself ever deeper into the right wing
organizations that clustered around the GOP. Paul Manaford, on the
(20:12):
other hand, made the error of backing Gerald Ford in
the nineteen seventy six elections. When Ford lost, it did
serious damage to Manaford's reputation as a political strategist. Prior
to Ford's lost, he'd been the clear prick for president
of the Young Republicans. I'm glad that you did. You
know what that works? Yeah, yeah, no, it's yeah. So
we're gonna we're gonna talk about what happens after Gerald
(20:35):
Ford's fall from grace is the wrong word. I don't
think he was ever quite there. Yeah, well, we'll get
into that. But first, are you a fan of some
products service or two? Sure? Well that's what is happening. Now,
let's pay the bills adds time. We're back. We just
(20:59):
uh produced some products and serviced to few services. I'm
feeling good. We're all ready to dive back in here.
I love the economical energy. It's perfect. Man, I'm I
got I got three things to say about economics. Let's
(21:20):
get back to this podcast. So, with Gerald Ford's fall,
Manfort was suddenly persona on grata amongst the Young Republican intelligencia,
whatever you wanna call him, showing either a surprising amount
of loyalty to his friend or just confidence that Manafort
would eventually wind up on top. Roger Stone worked with
Congressional aid Charlie Black on a scheme. Stone ran for
(21:43):
president of the Young Republicans, winning and basically acting as
a stand in for Paul Manafort to preserve his access
to the halls of power. So you see Roger Stone
basically agreeing to become a figurehead leader of this party
so that Paul Manafort can continue to have influence, which
is you don't run into a lot of things that
Roger Stone doing something for someone else. It's so true.
(22:04):
It's so interesting his career. There's been so many times
where he's been fired but kept as an advisor. Yeah,
so outside of all the trickster stuff, he really is
a legit political strategist. Well, that is actually the question
we're gonna have to answer over the course of both
parts of this podcast is whether or not he's actually
any good Because it's kind of a mystery. He certainly
has managed to stay in contact to a lot of
(22:27):
powerful people over the years, the question of whether or
not he actually did very much is really hard to answer.
So we're gonna we're gonna dig into that here. So Manafort,
Black and Stone all worked on Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighty
presidential campaign. Roger Stone managed the Northeast United States and
earned a claim for successfully turning much of that region
against the Democratic Party during that election. He did so
(22:50):
by appealing to groups who were committed Democratic voters, black
and Hispanic people, Jewish people, and Catholics. Stone had stayed
in touch with Richard Nixon because he just loved the
guy so much and he was success slip, bringing the
former president and definite criminal in as a strategist for
the Reagan campaign. Nix And is purported to have put
together the Ohio Strategy, which is less impressive than it sounds.
It boiled down to spending a shipload of money in
(23:11):
Ohio for its twenty five electoral votes. Stone would later
make a big deal out of this essentially as a
way of reinforcing his reputation as a political kingmaker. But
Ronald Reagan won forty nine states in that election, so
it's kind of doubtful that the Ohio strategy and specific
did that much. He didn't really need Ohio. It was
kind of a blowout. Still, Roger Stone had performed well
(23:32):
in a winning presidential campaign. He was offered a sweet
gig in the Reagan administration but turned it down, saying, quote,
I would never take a job in government. I'm interested
in politics. That's what pieces of ships say. Yeah, in
nineteen eighty Roger Stone and his first as the game
we think that they play is not the game that
we recognize now. It's not about beliefs. It's about winning
(23:55):
and preserving access to power and money and stuff. You know,
And I'm sure every one of them. Sure Roger one
or two things he believes in. But to call him
like ideologically or republican or anything else. Now he believes
Roger Stone should be influential libertarian. Now he's been claiming
that for a while fairness, and that is a vague
enough ideology that I might say that's fair for Roger Stone.
(24:18):
It's it's open ended enough, like, yeah, you probably are.
Roger probably also the one party that hasn't rejected him, Yeah,
that need him more than any other party. Probably, No,
I mean they he and John McAfee could make a
powerful presidential combo. McAfee Stone pulled enough hair out of
my head in the last two years combined twitty indictments
(24:41):
between us. I don't need more nightmares. Oh god, it's
it's crazy that that would almost be an upgrade, you know,
you know what it would be. It would be at
least I'm pretty sure they can both spell. We don't
need to get political in this political podcast about politics. Remember,
we're not interested in government, We're interested in Wait, you
(25:03):
know what Roger Stone said. Trump doesn't govern. He's still campaigning. Yeah,
I mean he's he's never stopped campaigning. Although, in a
little bit of fairness, that's kind of how being president
works now, like you're always running until I mean he's done,
I've seen Yeah, but I feel like it just gets
(25:24):
escalated every single election, like the fundraising that starts the
year after the election or anything like that. You know,
there's a lot to say about, you know, the compromises
Obama made and the Affordable Care Act in order to
not get a shipload of insurance industry money thrown against
his campaign, in which is like at least more principled
than anything Trump's done. But like there's a lot of
(25:46):
gross problems in politics. Speaking of which, Roger Stone, it's
a perfect In nineteen eighty, Roger Stone and his friends
formed Black, Manifort and Stone, a lobbying organization Spy mag
Zene would later declare the Torturer's lobby. You'll want to
listen to our two partner on Paul Manafort if you're
interested in that story. Because while Paul instantly abandoned Beltway
(26:08):
politics to work for dictators, Roger State burrowed deep within
the warm, cash rich bosom of the Republican Party. So
Stone makes money off of these. We talk a lot
in the Manifort episode. There's guys like Marcos Regime Mobutu
says Seco, Uh and Zaire and Uh. There's a bunch
of different dictators that Paul Manafort worked directly with during
(26:29):
this period of time. Roger Stone is making profits off
of that. And I'm sure he has some degree because
they're having meetings regularly and stuff. So I'm sure, he
has some input here, but it really is Manafort who's
doing the direct work with these dictators, and Stone and
Black are more involved in domestic politics in the United States.
But yeah, so he's profiting off of murderers, but he's
(26:52):
not working with them to the same extent that Manafort is.
For whatever it's worth, Manafort is an objectively worse person.
Roger Stone, now Rogerstone, became known during the nineteen eighties
as the gatekeeper to Richard Nixon, which is a debatable honor.
He hosted a series of dinner parties and interviews with
a now elder statesman right up until the president's death
in nine In that New Yorker interview, Roger made what
(27:15):
I think is an unintentionally hilarious statement, quote the reason
I'm a Nixon it is because of his indestructibility and resilience.
He never quit. His whole career was all built around
his personal resentment of elitism. He was the poor me syndrome.
John F. Kennedy's father bought him his house seat, his
Senate seat in the presidency. No one bought Nixon anything.
Nixon resented that. He was very class conscious. He identified
(27:36):
with the people who wait TV dinners watched Lawrence Welk
and loved their country. I love this because literally the
most famous thing Nixon did was quit being president exactly
Nixon quit and also saying no one ever bought him
anything when it was your job to buy people for
Nixon during the Reaction campaign. That was literally what you did, Roger.
(27:57):
And isn't he like the creator of the superpacks, like
he's one of the he's he's one of the of
that and of lobbying, like black Man Offorton Stone was
the first really modern lobbying first made a cancer in
our political system because in addition to helping dictators lobby
the US government for foreign aid, they kind of invented
the idea of working with both sides and an election,
(28:18):
so well, no matter who wins, we've got someone who
we can then sell access to. Like yeah, we go
into a lot of detail about in the Maniford podcast
Anti American. It's anti everything but the couple of dozen
people who make money off of it. I don't know
why the Republican Party attacked so many people and who
isn't isn't made in America? But the Democratic Party doesn't
(28:38):
enough attack people who isn't made of America. It's so
un American what he's doing. It's against the policies of
the people that founded this country. Well, I mean, the
only correction I might say is that, like, it's what
you and I don't want to be American, but there's
a lot of people who want it to be American.
And that's like the great conflict of our time. Well,
if all of us voted, I think they vote more
(29:00):
like us the number. I think the numbers are on
our Democratic side. I would agree, but taught us the
numbers ain't nearly everything they ought to be. Like, yeah, yeah,
And Roger Stone is probably one of those people who,
like Mitch McConnell, does not want there to be a
federal voting holiday. Yeah. Amen, you're easy terrified of that.
(29:23):
God people vote. Yeah yeah. I also love Roger Stone's
embrace of like how down to earth Nixon is, considering
that Roger Stone is a man so infamous for his
love of expensive clothing that he calls suspenders braces, which dude, dude,
(29:44):
you know, he swept chimneys when he was five. He's British.
It's like, yeah, I got a whole rant about waistcoats
and vests. But that's not this is not the place
for that. By Roger Stone's reputation as a serious politic
players seemed to be fairly solid. I found a New
Republic article from December of that year that referred to
(30:04):
him as the Enfant terrible of Northeastern politics. Yeah uh quote.
Stone is widely credited with making the difference in Thomas
Keane's narrow victory in the nineteen eighty one New Jersey
governor's race. This was achieved by portraying the liberal Republican
contender as a conservative supply cider. Stone convinced Keene to
campaign on the promise of a tax cut on selected
keen raised taxes. He also convinced prominent friends like Kemp
(30:27):
to do television spots for Keene, assuring him victory and
the Republican primary. I don't advocate candidates changing their positions,
just trimming their sales, Stone says, I do have principles.
That sounds like Roger now. Stone bragg that he had
created a plan to basically build a permanent Republican majority
in New Jersey back in Night five. You may note
that that did not work out. Entirely. But as the
(30:49):
New Republic article made clear, Stone's greatest and perhaps only
real gift was in dropping negative dirt on his rivals.
To the press, quote, he is an expert at dropping
stuff unfavorable to his opponents as a political writer who
has used and been used by Stone for years, and
he is very accurate. You don't last long at that
game if you leak bullshit. So this does seem to
be one of the through lines of his career that, like,
(31:10):
outside of the dirty tricks and stuff, the thing he's
really good at is figuring out dirt on people and
getting it to the right person you could. I mean,
it's it's the intel inside of the Trump campaign. Yeah,
he's a Penteum processor. All the stuff he says is
a stuff. Trump's repeat the Berther thing that was Roger Stone,
Well it was Jerome Corsi who was a Roger Stone contact.
(31:32):
Didn't Roger Stone advise Trump to use that language? It's possible,
I mean very he definitely what we'll get into some
more later about like what he did with Trump, But
like one of the guys really responsible for kicking off
the birth of thing was Jerome Corsi, who was probably
Roger Stone's contact with Wiki leaks and who Roger Stone
had a job at info wars and so it's very
likely that that that that was one of the anyway,
(31:54):
but it's also possible it all goes back to the
same little jacuzzi. Yeah, it's eight or nine. It's a
small all apartment in New York's worth. Yeah, so bizarre
that are responsible for fucking this democracy. So yeah, it's
really remarkable. Roger was not particularly loyal to the people
he worked with, which is perhaps not surprising given Black
Manafort and Stone's reputation for working both sides of the
(32:16):
political aisle. In nineteen eighty four, he wound up working
for Mary Mochurry in a New Jersey senatorial race. One
of his colleagues recalled quote, Roger was characteristically bad mouthing
his clients, saying she wasn't up to it. He was
being paid to say she would do well, and already
who was working to dissociate himself from her in Washington Now.
The article noted that Stone was also famous in the
belt Way for bragging about the work he'd done for
(32:36):
Richard Nixon's campaign. David Keene, a lawyer and lobbyists said quote,
Roger likes the aura of having done something bad in
his past. You get the feeling that he's sorry it
was so minor. He likes to say, watch me, I'm
a tough guys. One of the truer things I've run
into someone saying about Roger Stone. In nineteen eight six,
during another interview, Roger Stone listed Roy Cohne, Richard Nixon,
(32:58):
and the Duke of Windsor as his biggest political idols. Now,
roy Cone was a former McCarthy aid and famed political
dirty trickster himself. The Duke of Windsor was a literal Nazi.
It was roy Cone who would later proved to be
Roger stones liaison the infamy. While working for President Reagan's
reelection campaign, Roger was given roy Cone's contact information on
(33:20):
a list of President Reagan's friends in the city. Since
virtually all of Ronald's friends were dead, and since Roger
was a big Cone fan, he reached out to the
elder Creepsman for some advice. What Cone told him would
set into motion a series of events that have irrevocably
altered the course of all life on this planet. Roy
Cone told Roger, you should talk to this guy. Fred
Trump and his son Donald now Trump had met Cone
(33:42):
at a member's only Manhattan club called Creatively the Club
back in nineteen seventy three. According to Washington Monthly quote,
he Trump asked Cone, the government has just filed suit
against our company saying that we discriminated against blacks. What
do you think I should do? Cone advised him to
tell them to go to hell and fight the thing
in court and let them prove you discriminated. So Donald
(34:03):
had hired Cone to represent him, and Cone became something
of a mentor to Trump as well. He taught the
future president a number of things, including his lessons on
legal conflict. Lessons like this, no matter what happens, no
matter how deep in the muck, you get, claim victory
and never admit defeat. Yeah. Now Stone met with Donald
and wound up getting a hundred thousand dollars out of
him for Ronald Reagan's reelection campaign. Christine Seymour, who worked
(34:25):
for Cone as a switchboard operator, wrote in her notebook
at the time about how Stone referred to Donald Trump quote,
Roger did not like Donald Trump or his new house.
Told me they were losers, but if Roy used them,
he would too. So this depiction of events put forward
by Washington Monthly is not consistent with other descriptions of
the beginning of the Trump Stone relationship. Is one of
the many things there's debate about. An NPR interview with
(34:47):
Morgan Peemy or Paim, one of the directors of the
documentary Get Me, Roger Stone, put forward this version of
events instead. Quote. Roger was the very first person to
suggest to Donald Trump that he should run for the
presidency back in nineteen eight seven. Then he spent the
next twenty nine years cultivating Trump's candidacy until he was
ultimately triumphant. I think he believed from day one that
Trump was a legitimate candidate. Now certainly Trump's previous flirtations
(35:10):
with running for the president, it's hard to look at
vis anything other than publicity stunts. But Roger was always
dead serious about the effectiveness that Trump could convey as
a candidate. Now Stone himself put forward this version of
events as recently as two thousand sixteen, when he was
interviewed on the floor of the Republican National Convention. Isn't
true what people say, you convince him to run for presidents? Yes,
you convince run for presidents. Started you were there. I've
(35:37):
been trying to do I've been trying to get him
to run for a long time. Try to get Hi
run in eighty eight, try to get him run into
two thousands, try to get a run in twty twelve.
He could have bed Romney, although Romney got a long
head start. Push that for a long time. I'm happy.
So it's hard to say where the truth lies here.
(35:59):
To my thoughts, I think the Cone switchboard operator it's
probably closer to accurate that all this stuff about Roger
Stone recognizing Donald was a perfect presidential candidate is a lie.
It was kind of like everything else in his career,
he just sort of went with things as they rolled in.
Certainly in nineteen eighty four when he met Donald, I
(36:19):
don't think he had much respect for the guy. And
there's evidence that Trump didn't like him very much either
until pretty recently. But we'll get into more of that
later now. In nineteen ninety six, the National Inquirer published
an expose on Roger Stone. Stone had been posting ads
in a number of swingers magazines and websites. I heard
about he and his wife, Yeah, yeah, yeah, he and
his wife were looking for single men and couples to
(36:40):
join them in group sex, don't describe himself as a bodybuilder.
There's a lot of detail on Stone's love life that
I'm not going to get into here because I don't
really care. I don't think that's anybody's business, Like just
that that they weren't like molesting kids or anything. They're
just doing weird sex. That's fine. But the uproar overall
this forced Roger Stone to retire from Bobdell's presidential campaign.
Roger initially denied the rumors, claiming first that they'd been
(37:02):
placed to frame him, and then that some help at
his house, like basically like a cleaning lady or something
had like leaked this stuff to the press too, you know,
discredit him or whatever. But he later admitted that the
ads were his and that he'd only denied them because
his grandparents were still alive at the time. He cheerfully
admitted from nine to being a libertarian and a libertine.
(37:22):
In an interview about all this, He also said some
very strange things about famous homosexual and AIDS Victim Roy
Cohne quote. Roy was not gay. He was a man
who liked having sex with men, gays, were weak, effeminate.
He always seemed to have these young blonde boys around.
It just wasn't discussed. He was interested in power and access.
He told me his absolute goal was to die completely broken,
owing millions to the I R S. He succeeded in that. Wow.
(37:45):
I just want to note that Roger has reiterated several
times that Roy Cone is his idol and the person
he aspires to be, Like, did you think he's gay?
I doubt that he's bisexual. Yeah, maybe maybe, uh, maybe
he's dipping toe. It's such a bizarre I'm always fascinated
by people who are hardcore Republicans, staunch Republicans who don't
(38:10):
live the life at all. But then you go, okay,
well he's just doing whatever he needs you to win. Yeah,
I mean it doesn't matter. You've got that staunch economic
wing of the party. A lot of whom you know,
are super socially like whatever. Like you can meet him
at like a kinky eyes, wide shut funk party and
never know that they're like supply side economics guys. You
know what. It confused me because I thought he might
(38:33):
have empathy. No, No, that's what a normal human being has,
and it would be hard with someone with empathy to
participate in in a gay lifestyle and then do things
that hurt gay people. Well I don't. I don't know
that Stone ever did, but that's certainly good criticism of
roy kone because he was a big back of of
the Reagans, which the worst presidents in history for gay people.
(38:54):
You know, and uh Cone died in the AIDS epidemic. Like, yeah,
but when we get back, we're gonna talk about Donald
Trump's first presidential campaign and how Roger Stone helped make
that a reality. But first, the only reality listeners of
this podcast need is the reality of the wonderful products
(39:15):
and services that support this program and or content module.
We're back. So a little bit earlier, we were talking
about sort of the competing theories about when Roger Stone
wanted Donald Trump to run for election and the guy
who did, to get me Roger Stone documentary was like
he saw him as a serious candidate from from the beginning. Always,
(39:37):
even though the first campaigns weren't all that serious, Roger
believed in him. This story is why, I think that's bullshit.
So in n Roger Stone got another chance to help
a Republican presidential candidate and finally make use of his
friend Donald Trump. That year, Pat Buchanan announced that he
would be running for president under the Reform Party ticket.
This worried Republicans because third party candidates are always scary.
(39:59):
We're dealing there with at right now, with Schultz and
the you know, the Democratic primaries and stuff. So Roger's
strategy was to neutralize Pet Buchanan by using Donald Trump
to run against him. From the left. Roger had Trump
embraced gun control and universal healthcare, as well as accused
Pat Buchanan of being a hitler lover, which is actually
kind of fair. Trump dropped out soon after, but the
(40:19):
campaign did its job. As the Weekly Standards Matt Labosh
wrote a week in, Buchanan went on to help the
Reformed Party implode, and Republicans suffered no real third party threat.
So it does seem that in nine at least, Donald
Trump was just a convenient tool for Roger Stone, not
a serious presidential candidate. He represented a good way to
deal with a third party candidate who might have threatened
(40:40):
George W. Bush's election. Roger Stone would go on to
play another major role in the election of the man
the world would come to know as w Bush too,
electric boogaloo and a literal war criminal. Uh Stone's first
job to the Bush campaign was helping them win in Florida.
He did this by buying advertising at a number of
Spanish language radio stations. He in his Cuban American wife
(41:01):
would show up and push a conspiracy theory quote from Roger.
The idea we were putting out there was that this
was a left wing power grab by Gore, the same
way Fidel Castro did it in Cuba. We were very
explicitly drawing this analogy al Gore to make it a
violent power grab Algor the dictator. I have trouble imagining
al Gore, like even shooting a three pointer, Like that's
(41:23):
too aggressive for al Gore. Like I don't. Al Gore
is such a like he's such a lover. I feel
like he's just made to hug, Like he was born
without bones. He's a real hugger. Like if a dog
bit him, he wouldn't even pull his hand away. He
would just would just be like al he would just
be like, how you stretched my legs? This is a problem, Oh,
(41:47):
al Gore, only you'd had any charisma at all. Poor guy,
Poor guy, poor guy, who would have really helped us
avoid some problems. Now, during the infamous two thousand election recount,
Roger Stone claims to have been the organizer of the
infamous Brooks Brothers riot. This was essentially a bunch of
Republican operatives swarming South Florida and Miami to protest the
(42:08):
ongoing recounts. It's called the Brooks Brothers Riot because they
all wore Brooks Brothers suits. Here's that New Yorker article quote.
At one point on November twenty two, Stone said he
heard from an ally in the building that Gore supporters
were trying to remove some ballots from the counting room.
One of my pimply faced contacts said two commissioners have
taken two or three hundred ballots to the elevator. Stone said,
I said, okay, follow them. Half you guys go on
(42:28):
the elevator and half go in the stairs. Everyone got
sucked up in this. They were trying to keep the
doors from being closed. Meanwhile, they were trying to take
the rest of the ballots into a back room with
no windows. I told our guys to stop them. Don't
let them close that door. They're trying to keep the
door from being closed. There was a lot of screaming
and yelling. In fact, the New Yorker notes the Gore
official and the elevator Joe Geller was carrying a single
sample ballot. Now, the dual scenes of chaos, both inside
(42:50):
and outside the building prompted the recount officials to stop
their work. The recount in Miami was never restarted, depriving
Gore of his best chance to catch up in overall
state tally. So, the Brooks Brothers riot is pretty consistently
across the board, considered an important fact in Bush's winning election.
You know, didn't they eventually get to the numbers like
months after people prove the Gore won the popular vote.
(43:13):
Never entirely, but it's pretty like yeah, basically in essence. Now,
Brad Blakeman, a lobbyist and political consultant for the Bush campaign,
claims that Roger Stone is lying about his involvement in this.
You know, obviously the Brooks Brothers ryan happened, But Blakeman says,
Rogers just taking credit for something he didn't do. Do
you think he'd be sued for that? Like, you know,
(43:34):
that's not it should be. That's his whole career. Is
that not illegal? The Roger Stone story. You interfered with
the democratic process. You interfered with a voting process. I
have some issues with the Get Me Roger Stone documentary,
and I do think a better title would have been
is that not illegal? Is that really? That's what? Stop
(43:56):
for a second every time? How does he know the
law better than I don't think he does. I think
he's gotten lucky enough in the past that because I know,
maybe he was illegal what he was doing, but like
nobody charged him with it, and like I think he's
he It's called the first mover advantage in essence, like
if you're willing to take that, you've got like two
animals and there's like a food resource in between them.
(44:18):
The animal that's most likely to go for it. You know,
sometimes he might get challenged by the other animal and
he might get beaten up, but it's more likely that
that other animal will back off and not want to
have a fight, and so it's good to just try
and lunge for the food, which Roger Stone always does. Okay,
so Brad Blakeman says, Uh claims he was the guy
in charge of the Brooks Brothers riot and says quote,
(44:38):
Roger did not have a role that I know of.
His wife may have been on the radio, but I
never saw or heard of him, which again reinforces one
of the most common patterns when you talk about the
life of Roger Stone. It's really hard to tell if
he's a legitimately influential operator or just a prolific liar.
I doubt most of the people who have hired him
can truly tell you. Ed Rowland's former political director for
Ronald Reagan, told The New Yorker and Too thousand eight,
(45:00):
Roger was a fringe player around town. He always had
this reputation of being a guy who exaggerated things, who
pretended he did things. Roger was never on Nixon's staff,
was never on the White House staff. I don't think
you'll find anyone in the business who trusts him. Roger
was always a little rat. In a two thousand and
eight interview, Donald Trump echoed that sentiment. Roger is a
stone cold loser. He always tries taking credit for things
(45:21):
he never did. Everyone who writes or talks about Roger
Stone winds up dealing with this issue. Eventually, no one
can seem to agree on whether or not he's any
good at his job. Even people who's talk about him
being good at his job at one point, we'll talk
about him being a liar and a fraud at other points.
I found one Washington Post article that noted quote in
a Post profile. One Republican luminary called him the party's
(45:42):
single best consultant, and another dismissed him as one of
the great all time frauds of American politics. Sure, I mean,
it's hard to praise someone who hurt you, and it
might be the you know what I mean, Like, I
think there's a part of it too. There's a lot
going on all these guys. I mean, there's so many
times where something has happened in American politics and in history.
I'm like, that's crazy, it's fraudulent, it's wrong, it's corrupt.
(46:04):
And there he is. Yeah, it's always there, and it's
it's a lot harder with like with Paul Manaford. You've
got a bunch of cases where like, uh, there's this
this war going on. Uh, I forget the name of
the dictator, but there's this war going on in like
Central Africa, and like the USSR is backing one side
in the US is backing another side, and then the
USSR pulls their military aid and everyone's like, Okay, the
(46:25):
civil war is going to end, and these guys, Jonah
Savimbi is the guy who was backing, and these guys
are gonna stop. And then Manafort goes directly to the
federal government and lobbies and gets Savimbi to continue having
weapons for another ten years and half a million more
people dying. Okay, that's a direct thing. Paul Manafort did
undeniably extended the length of that war by his lobbying.
It's never that clear with Roger Stone. There's always multiple people.
(46:48):
So that's part of the thing that's difficult, is like
Roger Stone because of just the kind of dirty tricks
he gets up to, is a lot slippery here um,
or at least he was until recently. So that is
where we're going to leave off for today. When I
come back, we will be talking about some things that
are inarguable about Roger Stone. Finally, his foundational role in
the Trump campaign and all of his many, many, many
(47:09):
dumb crimes. So Thursday, the day after tomorrow, No, Sophie,
we don't edit this podcast. What is time? You can't
edit audio that's the most basic rule of this. Are
you doing the lift thing? All right? Listeners, I am
the bestard this week because I made Sophie sad. So
(47:31):
buy a T shirt on te Public. It's the only
thing that brings your joy is our T shirt sales.
T Public public a sound bite that goes with tea public.
That's our sound bite. Now there you go. You can
you feel free anytime? Just public to me? Are you
want to plug your plugables before we we cack out
(47:51):
for the next couple of minutes. Sure? If you guys
are looking for live comedy, do you want to see it?
Arab American who grew up in East l A throwing
his thoughts out. You can follow me at tamer Katan
dot com for all my shows, at tamer cat on
Instagram and then um of course, I'm the creator a
host of my podcast called They Tried to Bury Us
(48:12):
Along with My Mom, where we mean a new immigrant
every weekend hear their American origin story. Check out They
Try to Bury Us. Check out Tamar on Twitter. You
can find this podcast on the Internet and all of
its sources. I'm behind the Bastards dot com. You can
find us on Twitter and the Graham, as the kids
call it these days. At at Bastards Pod, I have
(48:32):
a book called A Brief History of Ice, where I
hurt my friends with dangerous drugs until Thursday. Roger Stone
Hm. I'm Robert Evans, and this is the introduction behind
the Bastards, my podcast where talking about terrible people and
all the things you don't know about them with me today.
My guest for this episode is Tamara Katan, host of
They Tried to Bury us UH podcast about immigrants coming
into the United States that exactly every week is a
(00:21):
different American origin story. So we have a different immigrant
every week. Awesome, it's been great. Well today we're not
talking about an immigrant, but we are talking about someone
who has done a lot of damage to immigrants, not directly,
but just through the people he's supported. Sure. Yeah, we're
talking about Roger Stone. What do you know about Roger Stone, tamer.
(00:44):
I know a little bit about him. I know that
he is uh. He lives in the upside down. As
I think a phrase I said to you outside, I
think he is a white Malcolm X to me, a
political version of aid any means necessary, you know what
I mean, Like before Malc come went to Mecca and
and got balanced in his life without principle, without principle,
(01:05):
by any means necessary. I don't care who I hurt.
I don't care how often I have to lie. I
think that lying is good. I think if you believe
in doing things that are virtuous, that you're a chump.
It's a cancer in our political system. Yeah, and he
is a human cancer. Absolutely. Now, listeners will note that
we did a two part episode on Paul Manafort months ago.
(01:27):
I recommend checking that out too, because they're there are
two halves of the same coin. So we talked about
one coin back. Today we're dropping the other side. So
let's get into it. On August ninety two, little baby
Roger Stone was born to Gloria Rose and Roger J. Stone.
His mother was a journalist who followed local politics. His
(01:49):
father drilled wells. Roger grew up in Louisborough, New York,
and described his family as middle class and blue collar.
So so far, we're doing fine. It's a normal middle
American by way. Roger was eight years old when he
got involved in his first political election. He campaigned for
John F. Kennedy, and even at that tender age, he
knew that honesty was not the way to achieve his
(02:09):
political goals. That's right, he later recalled to the Washington
Post quote, I remember going through the cafeteria line and
telling every kid that Nixon was in the favor of
school on Saturdays. That was my first political trick, which
is cute. It's fun, it's so unner. It's like an
origin story of a villain. Yeah, yeah, where he learns
the the disinformation. I think he was quoted about that story.
(02:33):
He said, that's why I learned the power of disinformation. Yeah,
that you can just if you just And it's speaking
as a tall white guy. This is something I battle
with my whole life. I really like telling a good
lie to people, like like a like like a joking,
like like I'll make up a fact about history or something,
and like and and I love seed it to a
friend and you hear him tell it in like a
party or something, and it's it's a really funny joke
(02:56):
for just you. Not a great thing to do, but
if you're confident and you have the right sort of
look in this society at least, because it works particularly
well in the United States. The same reason why. I like,
if you've got a mixed race group of people and
someone has to go talk to the cops, you picked
the guy who looks like me, I go talk to
the cops, and I it's it's it's fine. I think
roger Stone had that realization and decided to make that
(03:19):
his whole life, rather than be like, what if I
just made some jokes at parties. Yeah, it's it's such
a bizarre thing. Like you, if this was a show
about a nice, normal, responsible family, there would be a
massive teaching moment that was missed. Yeah, where like Andy
Griffith sat down young roger Stone and was like, well,
I know you won that classroom election, but you know,
(03:41):
here's why it's bad the light to everyone. You know exactly,
it's like winning a beauty pageant by going topless, Like
it's against the rules. You can't do that. Yeah, oh
Roger Okay, So uh it is entirely possible that that
anecdote is a lie. I do want to note that
because we're talking about Roger Stone, and every time we
talk about it, literally, of the things in this there's
(04:04):
multiple versions of So I have tried to call the
versions of reality that coincide the most with what I
can back up with like objective facts and what multiple
people have said. But like, if you do your own
research on Roger Stone, you'll run into different variations of
everything here. Because I think he's just been lying consistently
for about seventy years. Agree Y, Yeah, I mean it's
(04:24):
a negative version of one of my favorite Maya Angelou
quotes where she says, people may not remember what you
do or say, but they'll always remember how you made
them feel. Yeah, And he he'll make people the right
people feel the right way, regardless of that if if
the afformission is true or false, or damaging or hurtful,
or even leads to violence, he just doesn't care. He
(04:45):
just does not care. So Roger did start out supporting JFK,
which basically everyone did. It's an interesting note nineteen sixty
one that we do surveys like p and want to
do surveys on like people's level of trust and government.
Nineteen sixty one is the peak in American history of
people trusting the federal government. So it's not weird that
like everybody's on board with JFK in this election now.
(05:08):
Roger Stone claims that his personal political ideology took a
right word turn for the first time at age eleven
when he read Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative.
Barry Goldwater, for those of you who don't know, was
the kind of the Trump before Trump I think he
was a better at appealing to like intellectual conservatives than
Donald Trump was. Um, but he uh, you know the
(05:30):
reason that like you're not supposed to as a psychiatrist
psychoanalyze the presidential candidate. It's called the Goldwater rule because
like so many people thought he was crazy when he
was running. So this guy's book is what like lights
a spark in Roger Stone's brain at age eleven. The
next year, he started volunteering for the Goldwater campaign at
age twelve. So he's like a very young volunteer for
(05:52):
this hard right presidential candidate. And while he's doing all that,
he comes across a book called a text and looks
at Lynden. Now, this bok was self published by a
self described ultra conservative named j. Evett Haley. Haley argues
that lb J was a lifelong criminal and a murderer.
Roger Stone would go on to write his own book
about lb j's role in the Kennedy assassination, accusing the
(06:13):
former president of at least eight murders. Yeah, it's it's
a nutsell book. Not that I don't think lb J
had some people murdered because he was lb J. He
definitely did. But this is you see the start of
like two things that are going to be through lines
in Roger Stone's life here. One of them is, of
course hard right conservatism, and one of them is he
(06:33):
really likes conspiracy theories, which is probably how he's going
to wind up in the Info Wars orbit a little
bit later in this story. So young Roger spent a
lot of his childhood alone. In reading this period of
time seems to have crystallized the ideology that would carry
him through to the rest of his life. Quote from Roger, Well,
you have to understand there were no kids my age,
male or female, for twenty five miles. I suppose I
(06:54):
could have thrown a football with my dad. But my
old man left at five am and came back at
nine pm. But he ate his supper and fell to bed,
and he was with Greece from head to foot, and
he never complained a day in his life. You have
to amuse yourself. This is the way Roger tells a story.
Um kind of how yeah, yeah, my dad never talked
to me because he was working all the time. And
this is good. He never complained that he didn't have
(07:17):
time to raise a child. How can you tell that
story and not be like, maybe that's not a healthy culture,
that's not ideal. Anyway, Stone amused himself by engaging in
politics as often as possible. He volunteered for the Goldwater
campaign at age twelve, as I said, but he also
stayed active in his school's political process. Here's the New
York Times. As a junior then vice president of his
(07:38):
Northern Westchester High school, he manipulated the outster of the
president and his own succession running for re election as
a senior. I left nothing to chance, he said. I
built alliances and put all my serious challengers on my ticket.
Then I recruited the most unpopular guy in the school
to run against me. You think that's mean, No, that's smart.
So yeah. When he was thirteen, Roger Stone started taking
(07:59):
the train into New York City on weekends to volunteer
for the mayoral campaign of William F. Buckley Jr. That
campaign did not work out, but the experience of traveling
from small town America into its largest city to work
in politics had an impact on young Roger as well. Quote.
The key thing I remember about Louis Borrow, his small
hometown is that it was just across the border from
New Canaan. So early on I saw myself as living
(08:20):
in a kind of bridge between two cultures, the right
white working class and the white upper class. Very specific
about white there. Yeah, now, Stone believed both groups fundamentally
hated the government, so they were natural bedfellows. Should all
be able to get on board this whether or not
we're poorer rich white people, but white people is pretty
clearly who's traangling towards now. In nineteen seventy, Stone senior
(08:42):
year of high school, he attended the Connecticut State Young
Republican Convention. The Young Republicans were more conservative than the
mainstream of the party at that time. They're kind of
trying to push the party further to the right. Roger
hadn't been able to afford to book a hotel room
for his trip, so he'd showed up just sort of
assuming he could meet someone and convince them to take
care of it. Still his best friend at the time,
a guy named Dolan introduced him to another teenage young
(09:03):
Republican named Paul Manaford. Yeah, it really is, yeah, villain origins.
Ye crazy, these young guys meeting. They're both wearing ill
fitting suits. Nobody's got a lot of money. Yet I
knew he was involved in politics really young, but my god,
seven from the age of seven off, you know, his
family had to be involved in this, like to kind
(09:24):
of like directionally at least push him in a direction
at seven years old. He doesn't talk about that, not
that I found. So, yeah, I think you got one
of two possibilities. Either his mom and dad were both
way more political than he lets on and he was
pushed in that direction, or he didn't have much supervision
at all, and and way more white collar by the way, yeah,
and way more white collar. Changes his story makes him
(09:46):
a little bit less likable, especially if there's more money
in the picture. And then he wants to talk about
how many guys that work at oil rigs while he's
in a farm miles wells miles and miles away from
neighbors where his family is going. You should get into politics. Yeah,
there there's holes in the stone story and making mythology.
He's definitely making a mythology. And again this is the
(10:07):
picture he wants to Maybe didn't do anything, maybe he
was never involved in young, like I don't know. We're
we're trusting Roger here, and it's well I've seen pictures
of him as a young Republican. Yeah, this stuff is
definitely real once we get to where he's in high
school and he's with like man that stuff. There's a
lot of people, but like when he's talking about being eleven,
twelve years old and stuff like who knows, Yeah, this
(10:29):
might just be the image he wants to sure you
know anyway. Uh, Here's how The Washington Post wrote about
the first meeting of Roger Stone and Paul Manafort. I'm
just gonna say, the greatest friendship of all time. Hey, kid,
how you doing? Stone recalled Manafort, saying, before getting down
to sessing him out, why are you supporting Weaker? Manafort
was referring to low a Weaker, a moderate Republican candidate
(10:52):
for U S. Senator. Manafort clearly was testing the kid,
you think I give a funk about Weaker? I'm here
to elect Mescal, Stone shot back, meaning Thomas Mescal, a
conservative gubernatorial candidate admired by youthful Republicans. So that's like
how they get started as like Maniforts like you like
this fucking rhino Republican in name only and only in
Stones like no, I only like the crazy people like,
(11:13):
that's where I want to go is like the furthest
right we can possibly be. Yeah. So Roger Stone and
Paul Manafort were instant buddies and would be not quite
inseparable but frequent collaborators over the next like thirty some
odd years. How old were they at this point? They
would have been like seventeen eighteen. They're just just babies.
Their babies be at their personalities held firm. I have
(11:34):
too strong opinions here. One of them is that you
shouldn't be able to join the military unless you're thirty,
and the others that you shouldn't be allowed to participate
in any kind of politics until you're thirty. I like
it a lot. You start doing drugs when you're twenty
one a man? Yeah, yeah, let's give them nine years
of experimenting without ingredients. You know what I mean? To
make people make these huge moral decisions before they've lived life.
(11:57):
You're absolutely right. You look at the stuff Been Shapiro
is writing when he's seventeen. He's like advocating war crimes
in Afghanistan. It's like, don't let a seventeen year old
right about politics. Do you know how funked up? That
it's yeah. I mean, that's how we get Paul Manafort
and Roger Stone. So in addition to the Young Republicans,
Stone joined the Teenage Republicans, the College Republicans, and Young
(12:19):
Americans for Freedom. I might have noticed a theme there.
He became tightly wound up in Republican Party politics, enough
so that in nineteen seventy two, the year of President
Richard Nixon's re election campaign, nineteen year old Roger Stone
was selected to be one of Nixon's henchmen. Now Stone
was the youngest member of the committee to re elect
(12:39):
the president, literally known by the acronym CREEP, which does
nobody like checked on this stuff Nixon just as like
sight of yeah, create that's good, that's what we call it,
go commit crimes. Stone recommended that creepire a guy named
Theodore Brill, who was a college classmate and friend of his.
He recommended that Creep pay Brill hundred and fifty dollars
(13:01):
to spy on radical groups. Stone claims that his work
for CREEP was all kids stuff, none of which was
illegal at the time, and all of which would have
been done with or without him. Unfortunately for Roger Stone,
but fortunately for the concept of truth. The FBI was
keeping tabs on him back then too. There exists on
this hellish Internet of ours a website called Property of
the People. They host government documents retrieved by Foyer requests
(13:23):
and the like. They have a super fun article titled
FBI Documents on Roger Stone Reveal Sabotage, espionage, and the
life of a serial bagman. Oh my god, I'm going
into an Internet death spiral right after this episode. It's
a great website. Yeah, well, check him out, please do. Now.
My favorite thing about that title is that Roger worked
for Nixon as a literal bagman, at one point taking
(13:45):
a sack containing a jar of money to donate on
behalf of Republican presidential candidate Paul McCloskey to the Young
Socialist Yeah, yeah, just a jar of change in a sack.
So he donates on behalf of this Republican presidential canon
at Paul McCloskey to the Young Socialist Association. Stone claimed
(14:07):
that he was the Young Socialist Association's treasurer. Now this
was all a lie, obviously designed to make McCloskey look
bad and torpedo his chances of primarying Nixon. The original
FBI documents about this dirty tricker interesting because they give
us some insight into the precise nature of young Roger
Stone's moral compass. Quote. Stone met with Porter in his
(14:27):
office at Creep, where Porter asked him if he would
be willing to travel to Manchester to make a cash
contribution to the McCloskey campaign headquarters. Porter wanted Stone to
disguise himself as a member of the gay liberation movement
when making this contribution. Stone flatly rejected this proposal. However,
he concurred with the basic theme of this tactic. So
basically that's Roger Stone's line at age nineteen, because I
(14:49):
I'll pretend to be a young socialist but not a
member of the gay liberal I mean, you see the pattern, right,
you see the pattern, Like from such a young age,
he's like, I see the power of disinformation. Yeah. And
then forward a decade later and he's still doing the
same He's still doing the same thing, doing the same ship.
Did you ever see Seven Up, the British documentary. It's amazing.
(15:09):
It was like one of the first reality shows and
they interviewed kids at seven years old, and then at fourteen,
and then at every seven years Now they're in their sixties.
They've been doing it the whole time. But it was
a study on social classes. And the interesting thing they
found is when wealthy kids were seven years old and
they asked him what do you want to be? They
were really specific. They're like, I'm going to Cambridge, I'm
(15:30):
being a barrister, blah blah blah and all this stuff.
And they did whereas the kids and the poor neigh
birds were like, I'm going to be a spaceman yeah,
or like I'm gonna be a truck I don't know
what I'm gonna be like. So he's one of those
kids where they knew at such an early age they
were just and he doesn't pick I want to be
in politics. He picks I want to be a dirty
tricks guy in politics, Like I want to be like
(15:52):
the filthiest version of a political guy. It's remarkable that
that's his only ambition in life ever. Now, a researcher
named Emma best Uh found ten separate document releases from
the FBI, all of which mentioned roger Stone. According to
Property of the People's Rite up quote, the documents to tail,
roger Stone's role was a bagman for the Nixon campaign,
(16:13):
in which he funneled over twenty five thou dollars equivalent
to a hundred fifty thousand dollars in twenty eighteen to
fund political intelligence gathering and other dirty tricks, including mole
embedding and a mysterious payment related to the Watergate break in.
The documents include a copy of the FBI's interview with Stone,
as well as other statements to the Bureau about Stone
and Jason Renier, the alias Stone used for his anti
Democratic spy operations. So Stone paid another operative the modern
(16:36):
equivalent of sixty grand to surveillance sabotage the campaigns of
Nixon's Democratic rivals. After the Watergate break ins, he put
together a payment of almost a hundred grand and modern
dollars for an oil executive and Nixon fundraiser named Darius Keaton.
Far from being minor acts of political mouthfeasance as Stone
sort of presented them, Roger Stone seems to have been
an enthusiastic and prolific dirty trickster, happy to do almost
(16:57):
anything for Richard Nixon. Quote in one case, Stone sent
two Democrats invitations to a non existent primary campaign breakfast
and another Stone directed Democratic campaign literature intended for the
black community to be sent to union workers, and literature
intended for union workers to be sent to the black community.
And he had another stone saw to it that phone
lines used by a Democratic primary campaign were tampered with.
(17:18):
This resulted in Democratic failure to connect with many potential voters.
Well other, uh so this is the way he works.
This is the way he works at age nineteen. You
know what's so interesting about him too, is he never
as big as his ego got. For a guy whose
dad never talked to him, right, he always looked to
another man to please. Yeah. He never said I'm going
(17:39):
to be president. No, he never chased it himself. He
was always I'm gonna please dad. Yeah, he all. And
he's always picked a bigger man Tolize, which for most
of his life has been Nixon, a bigger than life man.
And even now he imitates Nixon with the peace signs
that he always throws up with his weird ass wanky arms.
It seems like he's a case study for like a
broken brain, like a father's son fracture. I mean, you know,
(18:02):
to get real here, this podcast Behind the Bastards, because
just as well be called daddy issues. But almost a
hundred percent of these guys had real fucked up times
with their fathers, Like why don't they just strip like
everybody else? You know, Roger Stone actually might have been
able to do that. He's a bodybuilding self proclaimed Well no,
I mean, if you've seen I've seen shirtless picture him
(18:23):
when he's young, he was reasonably swollen even even in
his late forties, really fit looking guy. And if you
see the modern pictures of his back tattoo, you can
see in the building shoulders, he's got a really broad build.
He could have he could have stripped, which is a
noble and honest career. I just mean I worked out
with real bodybuilders that called Jim. His cemeteries all off.
He's got like baby calves and weird well on his
(18:46):
face is weird faces, weird as hairs. Everything's weird. They
all have weird hair. It's like Paul Manaford where spending
a hundred thousand dollars on suits that look like hundred
dollar suits just to just to know that it's I
don't know, they're all weird guys, And that's fine unless
you're ruining the world, which case it's exactly yeah. Now.
All the unfathomable shadiness of Richard Nixon's reelection campaign led
(19:09):
to congressional hearings in nineteen seventy three. During those hearings,
Roger Stone's secret identity as Jason Renier, young Socialist became public.
Knowledge was also revealed that Stone had hired someone to
spy on the McGovern campaign. At the time of the hearing,
Stone had gotten a job on Bob Dole's staff. He
was fired for this and seems to have taken the job.
Losses a sign that a man of his temperament was
better served by working as a consultant than working for
(19:30):
the government. In a two thousand and eight interview with
The New Yorker titled The Dirty Trickster, Stone reminisced about
his time with Creep and justified his actions by saying
the Democrats were weak, we were strong. He was, by
the way, the youngest person caught up in the Watergate
Yeah yeah, yeah, which is a They had him on
one of the charts in the court show that he
(19:51):
had taken money. Yeah yeah, that's how he starts his career.
So in the mid nineteen seventies, after Nixon's impeachment, the
Republican Party was most assuredly not strong. Uh Stone seems
to have elected not to waste his time on the
doomed presidency of Gerald Ford, History's greatest monster. Instead, he
worked to insinuate himself ever deeper into the right wing
organizations that clustered around the GOP. Paul Manaford, on the
(20:12):
other hand, made the error of backing Gerald Ford in
the nineteen seventy six elections. When Ford lost, it did
serious damage to Manaford's reputation as a political strategist. Prior
to Ford's lost, he'd been the clear prick for president
of the Young Republicans. I'm glad that you did. You
know what that works? Yeah, yeah, no, it's yeah. So
we're gonna we're gonna talk about what happens after Gerald
(20:35):
Ford's fall from grace is the wrong word. I don't
think he was ever quite there. Yeah, well, we'll get
into that. But first, are you a fan of some
products service or two? Sure? Well that's what is happening. Now,
let's pay the bills adds time. We're back. We just
(20:59):
uh produced some products and serviced to few services. I'm
feeling good. We're all ready to dive back in here.
I love the economical energy. It's perfect. Man, I'm I
got I got three things to say about economics. Let's
(21:20):
get back to this podcast. So, with Gerald Ford's fall,
Manfort was suddenly persona on grata amongst the Young Republican intelligencia,
whatever you wanna call him, showing either a surprising amount
of loyalty to his friend or just confidence that Manafort
would eventually wind up on top. Roger Stone worked with
Congressional aid Charlie Black on a scheme. Stone ran for
(21:43):
president of the Young Republicans, winning and basically acting as
a stand in for Paul Manafort to preserve his access
to the halls of power. So you see Roger Stone
basically agreeing to become a figurehead leader of this party
so that Paul Manafort can continue to have influence, which
is you don't run into a lot of things that
Roger Stone doing something for someone else. It's so true.
(22:04):
It's so interesting his career. There's been so many times
where he's been fired but kept as an advisor. Yeah,
so outside of all the trickster stuff, he really is
a legit political strategist. Well, that is actually the question
we're gonna have to answer over the course of both
parts of this podcast is whether or not he's actually
any good Because it's kind of a mystery. He certainly
has managed to stay in contact to a lot of
(22:27):
powerful people over the years, the question of whether or
not he actually did very much is really hard to answer.
So we're gonna we're gonna dig into that here. So Manafort,
Black and Stone all worked on Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighty
presidential campaign. Roger Stone managed the Northeast United States and
earned a claim for successfully turning much of that region
against the Democratic Party during that election. He did so
(22:50):
by appealing to groups who were committed Democratic voters, black
and Hispanic people, Jewish people, and Catholics. Stone had stayed
in touch with Richard Nixon because he just loved the
guy so much and he was success slip, bringing the
former president and definite criminal in as a strategist for
the Reagan campaign. Nix And is purported to have put
together the Ohio Strategy, which is less impressive than it sounds.
It boiled down to spending a shipload of money in
(23:11):
Ohio for its twenty five electoral votes. Stone would later
make a big deal out of this essentially as a
way of reinforcing his reputation as a political kingmaker. But
Ronald Reagan won forty nine states in that election, so
it's kind of doubtful that the Ohio strategy and specific
did that much. He didn't really need Ohio. It was
kind of a blowout. Still, Roger Stone had performed well
(23:32):
in a winning presidential campaign. He was offered a sweet
gig in the Reagan administration but turned it down, saying, quote,
I would never take a job in government. I'm interested
in politics. That's what pieces of ships say. Yeah, in
nineteen eighty Roger Stone and his first as the game
we think that they play is not the game that
we recognize now. It's not about beliefs. It's about winning
(23:55):
and preserving access to power and money and stuff. You know,
And I'm sure every one of them. Sure Roger one
or two things he believes in. But to call him
like ideologically or republican or anything else. Now he believes
Roger Stone should be influential libertarian. Now he's been claiming
that for a while fairness, and that is a vague
enough ideology that I might say that's fair for Roger Stone.
(24:18):
It's it's open ended enough, like, yeah, you probably are.
Roger probably also the one party that hasn't rejected him, Yeah,
that need him more than any other party. Probably, No,
I mean they he and John McAfee could make a
powerful presidential combo. McAfee Stone pulled enough hair out of
my head in the last two years combined twitty indictments
(24:41):
between us. I don't need more nightmares. Oh god, it's
it's crazy that that would almost be an upgrade, you know,
you know what it would be. It would be at
least I'm pretty sure they can both spell. We don't
need to get political in this political podcast about politics. Remember,
we're not interested in government, We're interested in Wait, you
(25:03):
know what Roger Stone said. Trump doesn't govern. He's still campaigning. Yeah,
I mean he's he's never stopped campaigning. Although, in a
little bit of fairness, that's kind of how being president
works now, like you're always running until I mean he's done,
I've seen Yeah, but I feel like it just gets
(25:24):
escalated every single election, like the fundraising that starts the
year after the election or anything like that. You know,
there's a lot to say about, you know, the compromises
Obama made and the Affordable Care Act in order to
not get a shipload of insurance industry money thrown against
his campaign, in which is like at least more principled
than anything Trump's done. But like there's a lot of
(25:46):
gross problems in politics. Speaking of which, Roger Stone, it's
a perfect In nineteen eighty, Roger Stone and his friends
formed Black, Manifort and Stone, a lobbying organization Spy mag
Zene would later declare the Torturer's lobby. You'll want to
listen to our two partner on Paul Manafort if you're
interested in that story. Because while Paul instantly abandoned Beltway
(26:08):
politics to work for dictators, Roger State burrowed deep within
the warm, cash rich bosom of the Republican Party. So
Stone makes money off of these. We talk a lot
in the Manifort episode. There's guys like Marcos Regime Mobutu
says Seco, Uh and Zaire and Uh. There's a bunch
of different dictators that Paul Manafort worked directly with during
(26:29):
this period of time. Roger Stone is making profits off
of that. And I'm sure he has some degree because
they're having meetings regularly and stuff. So I'm sure, he
has some input here, but it really is Manafort who's
doing the direct work with these dictators, and Stone and
Black are more involved in domestic politics in the United States.
But yeah, so he's profiting off of murderers, but he's
(26:52):
not working with them to the same extent that Manafort is.
For whatever it's worth, Manafort is an objectively worse person.
Roger Stone, now Rogerstone, became known during the nineteen eighties
as the gatekeeper to Richard Nixon, which is a debatable honor.
He hosted a series of dinner parties and interviews with
a now elder statesman right up until the president's death
in nine In that New Yorker interview, Roger made what
(27:15):
I think is an unintentionally hilarious statement, quote the reason
I'm a Nixon it is because of his indestructibility and resilience.
He never quit. His whole career was all built around
his personal resentment of elitism. He was the poor me syndrome.
John F. Kennedy's father bought him his house seat, his
Senate seat in the presidency. No one bought Nixon anything.
Nixon resented that. He was very class conscious. He identified
(27:36):
with the people who wait TV dinners watched Lawrence Welk
and loved their country. I love this because literally the
most famous thing Nixon did was quit being president exactly
Nixon quit and also saying no one ever bought him
anything when it was your job to buy people for
Nixon during the Reaction campaign. That was literally what you did, Roger.
(27:57):
And isn't he like the creator of the superpacks, like
he's one of the he's he's one of the of
that and of lobbying, like black Man Offorton Stone was
the first really modern lobbying first made a cancer in
our political system because in addition to helping dictators lobby
the US government for foreign aid, they kind of invented
the idea of working with both sides and an election,
(28:18):
so well, no matter who wins, we've got someone who
we can then sell access to. Like yeah, we go
into a lot of detail about in the Maniford podcast
Anti American. It's anti everything but the couple of dozen
people who make money off of it. I don't know
why the Republican Party attacked so many people and who
isn't isn't made in America? But the Democratic Party doesn't
(28:38):
enough attack people who isn't made of America. It's so
un American what he's doing. It's against the policies of
the people that founded this country. Well, I mean, the
only correction I might say is that, like, it's what
you and I don't want to be American, but there's
a lot of people who want it to be American.
And that's like the great conflict of our time. Well,
if all of us voted, I think they vote more
(29:00):
like us the number. I think the numbers are on
our Democratic side. I would agree, but taught us the
numbers ain't nearly everything they ought to be. Like, yeah, yeah,
And Roger Stone is probably one of those people who,
like Mitch McConnell, does not want there to be a
federal voting holiday. Yeah. Amen, you're easy terrified of that.
(29:23):
God people vote. Yeah yeah. I also love Roger Stone's
embrace of like how down to earth Nixon is, considering
that Roger Stone is a man so infamous for his
love of expensive clothing that he calls suspenders braces, which dude, dude,
(29:44):
you know, he swept chimneys when he was five. He's British.
It's like, yeah, I got a whole rant about waistcoats
and vests. But that's not this is not the place
for that. By Roger Stone's reputation as a serious politic
players seemed to be fairly solid. I found a New
Republic article from December of that year that referred to
(30:04):
him as the Enfant terrible of Northeastern politics. Yeah uh quote.
Stone is widely credited with making the difference in Thomas
Keane's narrow victory in the nineteen eighty one New Jersey
governor's race. This was achieved by portraying the liberal Republican
contender as a conservative supply cider. Stone convinced Keene to
campaign on the promise of a tax cut on selected
keen raised taxes. He also convinced prominent friends like Kemp
(30:27):
to do television spots for Keene, assuring him victory and
the Republican primary. I don't advocate candidates changing their positions,
just trimming their sales, Stone says, I do have principles.
That sounds like Roger now. Stone bragg that he had
created a plan to basically build a permanent Republican majority
in New Jersey back in Night five. You may note
that that did not work out. Entirely. But as the
(30:49):
New Republic article made clear, Stone's greatest and perhaps only
real gift was in dropping negative dirt on his rivals.
To the press, quote, he is an expert at dropping
stuff unfavorable to his opponents as a political writer who
has used and been used by Stone for years, and
he is very accurate. You don't last long at that
game if you leak bullshit. So this does seem to
be one of the through lines of his career that, like,
(31:10):
outside of the dirty tricks and stuff, the thing he's
really good at is figuring out dirt on people and
getting it to the right person you could. I mean,
it's it's the intel inside of the Trump campaign. Yeah,
he's a Penteum processor. All the stuff he says is
a stuff. Trump's repeat the Berther thing that was Roger Stone,
Well it was Jerome Corsi who was a Roger Stone contact.
(31:32):
Didn't Roger Stone advise Trump to use that language? It's possible,
I mean very he definitely what we'll get into some
more later about like what he did with Trump, But
like one of the guys really responsible for kicking off
the birth of thing was Jerome Corsi, who was probably
Roger Stone's contact with Wiki leaks and who Roger Stone
had a job at info wars and so it's very
likely that that that that was one of the anyway,
(31:54):
but it's also possible it all goes back to the
same little jacuzzi. Yeah, it's eight or nine. It's a
small all apartment in New York's worth. Yeah, so bizarre
that are responsible for fucking this democracy. So yeah, it's
really remarkable. Roger was not particularly loyal to the people
he worked with, which is perhaps not surprising given Black
Manafort and Stone's reputation for working both sides of the
(32:16):
political aisle. In nineteen eighty four, he wound up working
for Mary Mochurry in a New Jersey senatorial race. One
of his colleagues recalled quote, Roger was characteristically bad mouthing
his clients, saying she wasn't up to it. He was
being paid to say she would do well, and already
who was working to dissociate himself from her in Washington Now.
The article noted that Stone was also famous in the
belt Way for bragging about the work he'd done for
(32:36):
Richard Nixon's campaign. David Keene, a lawyer and lobbyists said quote,
Roger likes the aura of having done something bad in
his past. You get the feeling that he's sorry it
was so minor. He likes to say, watch me, I'm
a tough guys. One of the truer things I've run
into someone saying about Roger Stone. In nineteen eight six,
during another interview, Roger Stone listed Roy Cohne, Richard Nixon,
(32:58):
and the Duke of Windsor as his biggest political idols. Now,
roy Cone was a former McCarthy aid and famed political
dirty trickster himself. The Duke of Windsor was a literal Nazi.
It was roy Cone who would later proved to be
Roger stones liaison the infamy. While working for President Reagan's
reelection campaign, Roger was given roy Cone's contact information on
(33:20):
a list of President Reagan's friends in the city. Since
virtually all of Ronald's friends were dead, and since Roger
was a big Cone fan, he reached out to the
elder Creepsman for some advice. What Cone told him would
set into motion a series of events that have irrevocably
altered the course of all life on this planet. Roy
Cone told Roger, you should talk to this guy. Fred
Trump and his son Donald now Trump had met Cone
(33:42):
at a member's only Manhattan club called Creatively the Club
back in nineteen seventy three. According to Washington Monthly quote,
he Trump asked Cone, the government has just filed suit
against our company saying that we discriminated against blacks. What
do you think I should do? Cone advised him to
tell them to go to hell and fight the thing
in court and let them prove you discriminated. So Donald
(34:03):
had hired Cone to represent him, and Cone became something
of a mentor to Trump as well. He taught the
future president a number of things, including his lessons on
legal conflict. Lessons like this, no matter what happens, no
matter how deep in the muck, you get, claim victory
and never admit defeat. Yeah. Now Stone met with Donald
and wound up getting a hundred thousand dollars out of
him for Ronald Reagan's reelection campaign. Christine Seymour, who worked
(34:25):
for Cone as a switchboard operator, wrote in her notebook
at the time about how Stone referred to Donald Trump quote,
Roger did not like Donald Trump or his new house.
Told me they were losers, but if Roy used them,
he would too. So this depiction of events put forward
by Washington Monthly is not consistent with other descriptions of
the beginning of the Trump Stone relationship. Is one of
the many things there's debate about. An NPR interview with
(34:47):
Morgan Peemy or Paim, one of the directors of the
documentary Get Me, Roger Stone, put forward this version of
events instead. Quote. Roger was the very first person to
suggest to Donald Trump that he should run for the
presidency back in nineteen eight seven. Then he spent the
next twenty nine years cultivating Trump's candidacy until he was
ultimately triumphant. I think he believed from day one that
Trump was a legitimate candidate. Now certainly Trump's previous flirtations
(35:10):
with running for the president, it's hard to look at
vis anything other than publicity stunts. But Roger was always
dead serious about the effectiveness that Trump could convey as
a candidate. Now Stone himself put forward this version of
events as recently as two thousand sixteen, when he was
interviewed on the floor of the Republican National Convention. Isn't
true what people say, you convince him to run for presidents? Yes,
you convince run for presidents. Started you were there. I've
(35:37):
been trying to do I've been trying to get him
to run for a long time. Try to get Hi
run in eighty eight, try to get him run into
two thousands, try to get a run in twty twelve.
He could have bed Romney, although Romney got a long
head start. Push that for a long time. I'm happy.
So it's hard to say where the truth lies here.
(35:59):
To my thoughts, I think the Cone switchboard operator it's
probably closer to accurate that all this stuff about Roger
Stone recognizing Donald was a perfect presidential candidate is a lie.
It was kind of like everything else in his career,
he just sort of went with things as they rolled in.
Certainly in nineteen eighty four when he met Donald, I
(36:19):
don't think he had much respect for the guy. And
there's evidence that Trump didn't like him very much either
until pretty recently. But we'll get into more of that
later now. In nineteen ninety six, the National Inquirer published
an expose on Roger Stone. Stone had been posting ads
in a number of swingers magazines and websites. I heard
about he and his wife, Yeah, yeah, yeah, he and
his wife were looking for single men and couples to
(36:40):
join them in group sex, don't describe himself as a bodybuilder.
There's a lot of detail on Stone's love life that
I'm not going to get into here because I don't
really care. I don't think that's anybody's business, Like just
that that they weren't like molesting kids or anything. They're
just doing weird sex. That's fine. But the uproar overall
this forced Roger Stone to retire from Bobdell's presidential campaign.
Roger initially denied the rumors, claiming first that they'd been
(37:02):
placed to frame him, and then that some help at
his house, like basically like a cleaning lady or something
had like leaked this stuff to the press too, you know,
discredit him or whatever. But he later admitted that the
ads were his and that he'd only denied them because
his grandparents were still alive at the time. He cheerfully
admitted from nine to being a libertarian and a libertine.
(37:22):
In an interview about all this, He also said some
very strange things about famous homosexual and AIDS Victim Roy
Cohne quote. Roy was not gay. He was a man
who liked having sex with men, gays, were weak, effeminate.
He always seemed to have these young blonde boys around.
It just wasn't discussed. He was interested in power and access.
He told me his absolute goal was to die completely broken,
owing millions to the I R S. He succeeded in that. Wow.
(37:45):
I just want to note that Roger has reiterated several
times that Roy Cone is his idol and the person
he aspires to be, Like, did you think he's gay?
I doubt that he's bisexual. Yeah, maybe maybe, uh, maybe
he's dipping toe. It's such a bizarre I'm always fascinated
by people who are hardcore Republicans, staunch Republicans who don't
(38:10):
live the life at all. But then you go, okay,
well he's just doing whatever he needs you to win. Yeah,
I mean it doesn't matter. You've got that staunch economic
wing of the party. A lot of whom you know,
are super socially like whatever. Like you can meet him
at like a kinky eyes, wide shut funk party and
never know that they're like supply side economics guys. You
know what. It confused me because I thought he might
(38:33):
have empathy. No, No, that's what a normal human being has,
and it would be hard with someone with empathy to
participate in in a gay lifestyle and then do things
that hurt gay people. Well I don't. I don't know
that Stone ever did, but that's certainly good criticism of
roy kone because he was a big back of of
the Reagans, which the worst presidents in history for gay people.
(38:54):
You know, and uh Cone died in the AIDS epidemic. Like, yeah,
but when we get back, we're gonna talk about Donald
Trump's first presidential campaign and how Roger Stone helped make
that a reality. But first, the only reality listeners of
this podcast need is the reality of the wonderful products
(39:15):
and services that support this program and or content module.
We're back. So a little bit earlier, we were talking
about sort of the competing theories about when Roger Stone
wanted Donald Trump to run for election and the guy
who did, to get me Roger Stone documentary was like
he saw him as a serious candidate from from the beginning. Always,
(39:37):
even though the first campaigns weren't all that serious, Roger
believed in him. This story is why, I think that's bullshit.
So in n Roger Stone got another chance to help
a Republican presidential candidate and finally make use of his
friend Donald Trump. That year, Pat Buchanan announced that he
would be running for president under the Reform Party ticket.
This worried Republicans because third party candidates are always scary.
(39:59):
We're dealing there with at right now, with Schultz and
the you know, the Democratic primaries and stuff. So Roger's
strategy was to neutralize Pet Buchanan by using Donald Trump
to run against him. From the left. Roger had Trump
embraced gun control and universal healthcare, as well as accused
Pat Buchanan of being a hitler lover, which is actually
kind of fair. Trump dropped out soon after, but the
(40:19):
campaign did its job. As the Weekly Standards Matt Labosh
wrote a week in, Buchanan went on to help the
Reformed Party implode, and Republicans suffered no real third party threat.
So it does seem that in nine at least, Donald
Trump was just a convenient tool for Roger Stone, not
a serious presidential candidate. He represented a good way to
deal with a third party candidate who might have threatened
(40:40):
George W. Bush's election. Roger Stone would go on to
play another major role in the election of the man
the world would come to know as w Bush too,
electric boogaloo and a literal war criminal. Uh Stone's first
job to the Bush campaign was helping them win in Florida.
He did this by buying advertising at a number of
Spanish language radio stations. He in his Cuban American wife
(41:01):
would show up and push a conspiracy theory quote from Roger.
The idea we were putting out there was that this
was a left wing power grab by Gore, the same
way Fidel Castro did it in Cuba. We were very
explicitly drawing this analogy al Gore to make it a
violent power grab Algor the dictator. I have trouble imagining
al Gore, like even shooting a three pointer, Like that's
(41:23):
too aggressive for al Gore. Like I don't. Al Gore
is such a like he's such a lover. I feel
like he's just made to hug, Like he was born
without bones. He's a real hugger. Like if a dog
bit him, he wouldn't even pull his hand away. He
would just would just be like al he would just
be like, how you stretched my legs? This is a problem, Oh,
(41:47):
al Gore, only you'd had any charisma at all. Poor guy,
Poor guy, poor guy, who would have really helped us
avoid some problems. Now, during the infamous two thousand election recount,
Roger Stone claims to have been the organizer of the
infamous Brooks Brothers riot. This was essentially a bunch of
Republican operatives swarming South Florida and Miami to protest the
(42:08):
ongoing recounts. It's called the Brooks Brothers Riot because they
all wore Brooks Brothers suits. Here's that New Yorker article quote.
At one point on November twenty two, Stone said he
heard from an ally in the building that Gore supporters
were trying to remove some ballots from the counting room.
One of my pimply faced contacts said two commissioners have
taken two or three hundred ballots to the elevator. Stone said,
I said, okay, follow them. Half you guys go on
(42:28):
the elevator and half go in the stairs. Everyone got
sucked up in this. They were trying to keep the
doors from being closed. Meanwhile, they were trying to take
the rest of the ballots into a back room with
no windows. I told our guys to stop them. Don't
let them close that door. They're trying to keep the
door from being closed. There was a lot of screaming
and yelling. In fact, the New Yorker notes the Gore
official and the elevator Joe Geller was carrying a single
sample ballot. Now, the dual scenes of chaos, both inside
(42:50):
and outside the building prompted the recount officials to stop
their work. The recount in Miami was never restarted, depriving
Gore of his best chance to catch up in overall
state tally. So, the Brooks Brothers riot is pretty consistently
across the board, considered an important fact in Bush's winning election.
You know, didn't they eventually get to the numbers like
months after people prove the Gore won the popular vote.
(43:13):
Never entirely, but it's pretty like yeah, basically in essence. Now,
Brad Blakeman, a lobbyist and political consultant for the Bush campaign,
claims that Roger Stone is lying about his involvement in this.
You know, obviously the Brooks Brothers ryan happened, But Blakeman says,
Rogers just taking credit for something he didn't do. Do
you think he'd be sued for that? Like, you know,
(43:34):
that's not it should be. That's his whole career. Is
that not illegal? The Roger Stone story. You interfered with
the democratic process. You interfered with a voting process. I
have some issues with the Get Me Roger Stone documentary,
and I do think a better title would have been
is that not illegal? Is that really? That's what? Stop
(43:56):
for a second every time? How does he know the
law better than I don't think he does. I think
he's gotten lucky enough in the past that because I know,
maybe he was illegal what he was doing, but like
nobody charged him with it, and like I think he's
he It's called the first mover advantage in essence, like
if you're willing to take that, you've got like two
animals and there's like a food resource in between them.
(44:18):
The animal that's most likely to go for it. You know,
sometimes he might get challenged by the other animal and
he might get beaten up, but it's more likely that
that other animal will back off and not want to
have a fight, and so it's good to just try
and lunge for the food, which Roger Stone always does. Okay,
so Brad Blakeman says, Uh claims he was the guy
in charge of the Brooks Brothers riot and says quote,
(44:38):
Roger did not have a role that I know of.
His wife may have been on the radio, but I
never saw or heard of him, which again reinforces one
of the most common patterns when you talk about the
life of Roger Stone. It's really hard to tell if
he's a legitimately influential operator or just a prolific liar.
I doubt most of the people who have hired him
can truly tell you. Ed Rowland's former political director for
Ronald Reagan, told The New Yorker and Too thousand eight,
(45:00):
Roger was a fringe player around town. He always had
this reputation of being a guy who exaggerated things, who
pretended he did things. Roger was never on Nixon's staff,
was never on the White House staff. I don't think
you'll find anyone in the business who trusts him. Roger
was always a little rat. In a two thousand and
eight interview, Donald Trump echoed that sentiment. Roger is a
stone cold loser. He always tries taking credit for things
(45:21):
he never did. Everyone who writes or talks about Roger
Stone winds up dealing with this issue. Eventually, no one
can seem to agree on whether or not he's any
good at his job. Even people who's talk about him
being good at his job at one point, we'll talk
about him being a liar and a fraud at other points.
I found one Washington Post article that noted quote in
a Post profile. One Republican luminary called him the party's
(45:42):
single best consultant, and another dismissed him as one of
the great all time frauds of American politics. Sure, I mean,
it's hard to praise someone who hurt you, and it
might be the you know what I mean, Like, I
think there's a part of it too. There's a lot
going on all these guys. I mean, there's so many
times where something has happened in American politics and in history.
I'm like, that's crazy, it's fraudulent, it's wrong, it's corrupt.
(46:04):
And there he is. Yeah, it's always there, and it's
it's a lot harder with like with Paul Manaford. You've
got a bunch of cases where like, uh, there's this
this war going on. Uh, I forget the name of
the dictator, but there's this war going on in like
Central Africa, and like the USSR is backing one side
in the US is backing another side, and then the
USSR pulls their military aid and everyone's like, Okay, the
(46:25):
civil war is going to end, and these guys, Jonah
Savimbi is the guy who was backing, and these guys
are gonna stop. And then Manafort goes directly to the
federal government and lobbies and gets Savimbi to continue having
weapons for another ten years and half a million more
people dying. Okay, that's a direct thing. Paul Manafort did
undeniably extended the length of that war by his lobbying.
It's never that clear with Roger Stone. There's always multiple people.
(46:48):
So that's part of the thing that's difficult, is like
Roger Stone because of just the kind of dirty tricks
he gets up to, is a lot slippery here um,
or at least he was until recently. So that is
where we're going to leave off for today. When I
come back, we will be talking about some things that
are inarguable about Roger Stone. Finally, his foundational role in
the Trump campaign and all of his many, many, many
(47:09):
dumb crimes. So Thursday, the day after tomorrow, No, Sophie,
we don't edit this podcast. What is time? You can't
edit audio that's the most basic rule of this. Are
you doing the lift thing? All right? Listeners, I am
the bestard this week because I made Sophie sad. So
(47:31):
buy a T shirt on te Public. It's the only
thing that brings your joy is our T shirt sales.
T Public public a sound bite that goes with tea public.
That's our sound bite. Now there you go. You can
you feel free anytime? Just public to me? Are you
want to plug your plugables before we we cack out
(47:51):
for the next couple of minutes. Sure? If you guys
are looking for live comedy, do you want to see it?
Arab American who grew up in East l A throwing
his thoughts out. You can follow me at tamer Katan
dot com for all my shows, at tamer cat on
Instagram and then um of course, I'm the creator a
host of my podcast called They Tried to Bury Us
(48:12):
Along with My Mom, where we mean a new immigrant
every weekend hear their American origin story. Check out They
Try to Bury Us. Check out Tamar on Twitter. You
can find this podcast on the Internet and all of
its sources. I'm behind the Bastards dot com. You can
find us on Twitter and the Graham, as the kids
call it these days. At at Bastards Pod, I have
(48:32):
a book called A Brief History of Ice, where I
hurt my friends with dangerous drugs until Thursday. Roger Stone
Behind the Bastards News
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Robert Evans
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