Famed political dirty trickster Roger Stone was caught on camera boasting he’s been manipulating Donald Trump for decades.
“I have a 40-year record of being able to convince the big man to do what’s in his best interest,” Stone bragged in footage from an upcoming documentary obtained by The Daily Beast. “He’s not easy to deal with. It’s complicated. He resents any implication that he is handled or managed or directed.”
The key is in lying to Trump by making the former president think he came up with the idea first.
Stone offered an example:
You have to say, ‘Remember that night we were in Buffalo and you gave that speech, and God, it had to be 10,000 people, the biggest crowd they’d ever seen. And you said XY and Z, and the place went crazy, remember that? I don’t know where you came up with that line, but it’s one of the best things.’
Trump, he said, might reply that he’ll use that line again.
“Doesn’t fucking matter that he never said it,” Stone said. “Doesn’t matter. It’s time-consuming, but it works. I did it for 30 years.”
Stone was convicted of multiple felonies, including witness tampering and lying to Congress, and was sentenced to 40 months in prison. He ultimately was pardoned by Trump in December 2020.
The Daily Beast said the footage is from an upcoming documentary called “A Storm Foretold” by Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen, who told the website that Stone often forgot he was wearing a mic as the crew followed him around.
“I know he had forgotten, because the next morning, he was really, really anxious about what I had recorded,” Guldbrandsen was quoted as saying.
In previously released clips, Stone can be heard saying in 2021 that if Trump runs for office “you’ll get your fucking brains beat in” and calling Ivanka Trump an “abortionist bitch.”
He has in the past said the footage could be “deep fake” videos or “manipulated and selectively edited.”