Former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone hails the Republican frontrunner’s proposal for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration as “one of the most extraordinary” and “brilliant” moves by Donald Trump.
“What amazes me is, he calls for a complete and total temporary ban on Muslim immigration, but NBC essentially, cleverly edits his words – so they take out the part where he says, ‘until our representatives can get their hands round what’s going on,'” Stone told host Stephen K. Bannon during Breitbart News Daily on Sirius XM Radio. “They then try to say, ‘Trump has called for a total ban on Muslims in the United States,’ and then there’s a media onslaught unlike anything I’ve seen since Nixon was under siege in D.C. in 1974, at the worst part of Watergate.”
Stone said most of the backlash against Trump’s proposal has consisted of “name-calling,” with “fascist” serving as an especially popular epithet.
“People call names when they have no factual arguments,” Stone said.
In truth, the politics of this is extraordinary. If you look a the new Reuters daily tracking poll, two days ago, they had attitudes of Republican primary voters towards Muslims. Believe me, Donald Trump will only be propelled forward by this. The more viciously the media attacks him, and the Reince Preibuses of this world, the Republican establishment types dump on him, the better he’s going to do in these earlier primaries. It’s galvanizing for his supporters.
“I don’t think they understand that… and, lo and behold, a Bloomberg poll yesterday – two-thirds of Republican primary voters agree with Trump,” he continued. “Now Trump has had to go out and say, ‘no, no, I said temporary’ on every major media outlet, because of this smear job here, but all of this really shows you, Steve, how desperate the Ruling Class is to stop Donald Trump.”
Bannon mentioned the response from working-class callers to the show who agreed with Trump’s position, as Stone had described, and proposed that Trump had become the voice for people who were fed up with political establishment.
Stone agreed, and referring to one such caller, said “sadly, I think the media is more interested in taking guys like Danny and getting them under the ether, by feeding them disinformation or partial information, and then immediately giving forums to those who just want to call names.” Stone added:
The country has lacked leadership for so long, and now Trump comes along, he’s displaying alpha-male leadership – he is unscripted, he is unbought, he is his own man – and he’s doing this out of love for America. It’s not because he needs to become famous. It’s not because he needs money.
Bannon and Stone went on to discuss the significant personal expenses and loss of revenue Trump has taken during his presidential campaign, most recently including lost business with Muslim countries angered by his immigration ban proposal.
Stone also mentioned the hard work of retail campaigning in the early primary states, which is unquestionably less comfortable than the luxurious lifestyle Trump normally enjoys, and even noted with a chuckle that Air Force One would be a step down from Trump’s private plane.
Conventional political analysis, especially from the liberal media, suggests working-class people should be repelled by Trump’s ostentatious wealth, but Stone made the interesting point that, on the contrary, many of Trump’s supporters see him as making personal sacrifices to do what he thinks is right. It might also be noted that Trump, despite his storied business career, is seen by most Americans as coming from the “entertainment class” – one of the few groups our media has told us is permitted to be ostentatiously wealthy, without drawing bitter envy and resentment from the middle class.
Stone agreed with Bannon’s proposal that the political and cultural turmoil in the 2016 election would rival, or even exceed, the strife of the Vietnam War era.
“The internal struggle between Left and Right in this country is going to be epic. Here’s the difference, here’s a tool we didn’t have before: last time, they controlled the three major networks, and the major newspapers. This time, the Internet changes all of that,” Stone predicted. “Now everybody, at a minimum, is evenly armed. We, too, can communicate the truth.”
Given these new political-media rules of engagement, Stone found it no surprise that Big Government is eager to regulate the Internet. “When they say ‘regulate,’ they mean censor,” he warned. “They regret that the Internet ever happened, and now they’re trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube, on both ends – they’re going to try to stifle free speech, and they’re going to, quote-unquote, regulate content. Regulate means censor. That’s what they mean, folks.”