Part One: Roger Stone: Evil Genius or Sad, Broken Boy?

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. 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, 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. 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 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

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.

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

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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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

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

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 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

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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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

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.

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 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, 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 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 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

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

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 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 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 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 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

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 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. 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 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 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

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

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 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. 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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, 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 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 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. 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,

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 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 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 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, 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.

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, 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 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

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,

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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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.

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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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.

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, 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 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.

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, 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,

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

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 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. 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 a book called A Brief History of Ice, where I hurt my friends with dangerous drugs until Thursday. Roger Stone