Posted on 08/11/2015 7:00:39 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
‘I’m the ultimate Trump loyalist,” says Roger Stone, the longtime friend and closest political advisor who departed the billionaire real-estate mogul’s presidential campaign this weekend in shocking and seemingly acrimonious fashion. “Those of us who are Trump loyalists have a hashtag that we use on Twitter — #yuge. Y-U-G-E. Those who use it are the true Trump loyalists.”
On Saturday, Trump’s campaign issued a statement saying it had fired Stone because “Roger wanted to use the campaign for his own personal publicity.” Stone responded by showing the media his resignation letter, which declared that “current controversies involving personalities and provocative media fights” had become a distraction from the campaign’s message.
It’s hard to overstate just how close Trump and Stone have been over the years. Their professional and personal relationship goes back more than three decades. Trump without Stone is akin to George W. Bush without Karl Rove or Barack Obama without David Axelrod. Though Trump has derided Stone to reporters in the past — “Roger is a stone-cold loser,” he told The New Yorker in 2008, “he always tries taking credit for things he never did” — the two men have always made up after such occasional spats, and a permanent split would be stunning.
“It takes a certain kind of consultant who could work for a candidate like Donald Trump and it takes a certain kind of candidate to hire a consultant like Roger Stone,” says Chris Barron, a Washington-based political consultant who has worked with Stone in the past. “Trump may have lost the only consultant in the business who could have done the job he needs done for him.”
Barron describes Stone as “larger than life, incredibly smart, and an outside-of-the-box operator” and suggests that the remaining Trump staffers are “yes men” who would rather tell the candidate what he wants to hear than what he needs to hear.
Trump and Stone first met in 1979, when Stone was working for Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign in New York state. “I was introduced to Trump by Roy Cohn, the legendary attorney,” he says. Cohn had represented both Donald Trump and Trump’s father, Fred Trump, also a successful developer.
“Fred Trump was one of the greatest men I ever met — and they were both strong Reagan supporters,” Stone says. “Fred Trump had been a major Goldwater backer and financier. [Donald Trump] was very helpful to Reagan, in terms of helping us secure office space, telephones, logistics. He allowed us to use his airplane to fly our petitions to Albany in order to file on time to get [Reagan’s name] on the ballot.”
Shortly after the two first met, Stone opened a lobbying practice, and Trump became one of his first clients. Stone represented Trump and his companies in currency transaction disputes pertaining to the mogul’s casinos and Federal Aviation Administration complaints about the height of his buildings.
In 1988, Stone wanted Trump to run for president and arranged for him to give a speech at the Portsmouth, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, which garnered enormous media coverage. Stone says some of his friends in the state organized a short-lived “Draft Trump” movement, but within a few weeks, Trump had determined he would forgo a run to focus on his business career.
‘I have nothing bad to say about Donald Trump. I’ve wanted him to be president since 1988. I just want to see him back on track.’ Twelve years later, when Trump launched a presidential exploratory committee, Stone served as its chairman. He says Ross Perot and then-governor Jesse Ventura both urged Trump to run for the Reform-party nomination that year. Perot’s performance in 1996 had been strong enough to get the party to qualify for federal matching funds, a fairly significant advantage for a third-party candidate. Trump had been “unimpressed” with both George W. Bush and Al Gore, and won the straw poll at the Reform party’s National Convention (a gathering separate from the nominating convention). But again, he ultimately declined to run.
“Three years ago, I wanted him to run for president; I thought the timing was right,” Stone says. “He did look at it seriously; he looked at both the Republican nomination and he took a quick look at the possibility of running as a third-party candidate.” He says Trump has subsequently expressed regret for his endorsement of Mitt Romney, characterizing the former Massachusetts governor as “a guy who chokes before the big putt.”
Stone remains effusive about Trump, and expresses frustration that in recent days the campaign has deviated from what fueled its rise in the polls.
“I think the Trump messaging is what’s driven him to an unprecedented lead,” he says. “He’s already made history in this race. Now the question is to stay on track, stay on those messages. I don’t agree with getting into a cul-de-sac, in getting into arguments about what is politically correct.”
Stone sees Trump’s strength as his willingness to speak bluntly and passionately about a series of national problems, from an awful deal with Iran and a limping economy to poor health care for military veterans and Republican support for trade-promotion authority.
“The country is going down the toilet!” Stone says. “I’m really hopeful that his campaign will go back to those core issues that got him where he is today. If my going rogue is what lays out that path, so be it.”
Though Stone claims three presidential campaigns — he won’t identify them, saying only “you can figure it out, the non-establishment campaigns” — have reached out to him since he left Trump’s operation, he says he’s not willing to work for a candidate other than Trump this cycle, and dismisses the “career politicians” dominating the field.
His personal admiration for Trump remains undamaged despite his decision to leave the campaign.
“I attended both of his parents’ funerals, two of his three weddings; his sister Mary Ann Trump Barry is someone who’s a friend and someone I admire very much, a very accomplished federal judge,” he says. “I have nothing bad to say about Donald Trump. I’ve wanted him to be president since 1988. I just want to see him back on track.”
— Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent for National Review.
In 1989, Roger and his then wife Ann began a group called “Republicans for Choice” which was dedicated to extracting the pro-life plank out of the Republican party platform.
I think he was on Anderson Pooper last night.
Huh?
yuge = you ugly GOPe?
yuge = why U gettin’ EBT?
yuge = #can’tspellyugo?
Roger Stone once advertised himself full frontal in an ad looking for “swingers.”
The interview was funny. As usual, the interviewer was trying to elicit something negative about Trump. It didn’t happen. The only negative about Trump or the campaign was that some staffer had leaked information to the press.
It seems a distressingly large number of his supporters are the same.
This is hilarious! I knew it when I heard about it this weekend and this article confirms it. Trump and Stone are BFFs. I would be surprised if Stone doesn’t do Trump’s hair while Trump eats a stick of frozen cookie dough at sleepovers.
Trump and Stone have a history of these hissy fits with each other, but I would bet my last dollar that they still communicate two or three times a day.
Stone says he has been approached by other campaigns, but he won’t work for them. Of course he won’t, he’s too busy running Trump’s shadow campaign.
Oh, and he’s been approached by more than two or three other campaigns, I bet. And they are now scared spitless that he will name them as examples of the two or three that contacted him. It will make them seem weak and desperate to jump to a former Trump advisor.
And that is the brilliance of this move. If you want to talk to Trump, but you don’t want to be seen talking to Trump, you talk to Stone. But then you put yourself in Trump’s pocket, because talking with Stone means you have to give him all your secrets and hope he won’t find a way to use them as leverage against you. And who is the one who controls all of the levers that Stone sets up? Trump.
That is Trump’s big secret in business and his big plan in this campaign: leverage. If you have it, and know how to use it, you can be like Archimedes and move the world.
Fox News is the perfect example of leverage. After the debate, Trump went to his numbers guys and told them he wanted the ratings number for the debate. He wasn’t really upset or angry at Megyn Kelly, nor at Fox News. Hey, it’s only business. But he needed leverage. When the ratings numbers came in, he sent them to Roger Ailes.
“What do you think of that? I brought in half of those numbers and you know it!” Then he decided to go all nuts about how unfair Fox News was to him. Ailes knew that Trump brought in the huge numbers, but now a lot of advertisers for Fox News were calling Ailes in and saying “Hey, the guy who drew in the biggest numbers of any debate is talking like he won’t come back! We want those numbers for our commercials, so you do what it takes to make sure he will be back!”
Ailes has to contact Trump and ask him to come back on, which Trump then announces to the world. Trump wins.
RE: Roger Stone once advertised himself full frontal in an ad looking for “swingers.”
Do you have the link that reported that?
Hard to see where Knee-Pad media fits in here???
“Do you have the link that reported that?”
It has been posted on just about every thread about Trump.
In 1996, Stone resigned from a post as a volunteer spokesman in Robert Dole's campaign for president after The National Enquirer wrote that Stone had placed ads and pictures in racy swingers publications and a website seeking sexual partners for himself and his second wife, Nydia. While he does enjoy frequenting "Miami Velvet," a swingers club in Miami, Stone initially denied the report.....In a 2008 interview with The New Yorker Stone admitted that the ads were authentic.[24]
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The actual ad is online--but be warned----it's graphic.
Oh please many people who have been fired do resignation letters. Happens all the time.
I think you cracked this one.
How much is he paying his number guys for loading the Drudge Report the day after the debate to get the ratings numbers?
Maryanne Trump Barry is a federal appeals judge serving on senior status with the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She joined the court in 1999 after being nominated by President Bill Clinton.
I’m not talking about the insta-polls, I’m talking about the Nielsen ratings for how many people tuned in for the debate.
“Fox’s GOP debate was watched by 24 million viewers on Thursday night, according to Nielsen data, making it the highest-rated primary debate in television history.
The event, featuring Donald Trump in his first debate, was also the highest-rated telecast in the nearly 20 year history of the Fox News Channel, a spokeswoman said.”
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/07/media/gop-debate-fox-news-ratings/index.html
I was referring to the Nielsen ratings which were plastered all over Drudge.
Oh, I see your confusion. I was saying that Trump walked off the stage, told his number guy to get him the numbers, his guy called a contact at Nielsen and had the numbers at the same time the networks had them.
Trump knew within the hour, not the next day, that he had Fox by the balls.
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