Roger Stone, a former adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, appeared on Monday morning’s Breitbart News Daily with Breitbart News executive chairman and host Stephen K. Bannon to discuss the big primaries ahead on Tuesday.
Stone anticipated a very good day for Trump, giving him a better chance to win Ohio than Governor John Kasich’s political team would like.
“I see Trump sweeping Florida, without any question, by double digits,” said Stone. “I think that Ohio will be close, but Trump can pull it out. And then the Missouri, North Carolina, Illinois — I still give the edge to Trump.”
An Ohio win would be especially significant for Trump, not just because it could knock Kasich out of the race, but because it would represent Trump’s victory over a polished and powerful Kasich political machine in the state, which recently delivered an overwhelming election victory to the Governor – possibly “the best Republican apparatus in any state in the country,” in Stone’s estimation.
However, he said the large number of Democrats and independents voting for Trump in Ohio has “scared the hell out of” the Kasich machine.
If Trump does as well as Stone expects, he said Tuesday could be the “tipping point against a brokered convention.” He went on to describe the process by which an embittered Republican establishment could use a convention fight to steal the nomination away from Trump, assuming his only serious remaining competitor, Senator Ted Cruz, is able to take enough delegates during the primary to force a convention fight.
Stone predicted the rules could be changed to “unbind” the delegates for the first round of voting, at which most delegates are supposed to vote in accordance with the will of primary voters. He described this idea as “the first step of the Big Steal,” and possibly the trigger for a revolt of Republican voters against their own party establishment.
“A revolt’s perfectly okay with the Establishment, because at the end of the day, they would rather have Hillary Clinton than a nationalist who is unbeholden to any special interest, like Donald Trump,” Stone declared.
“The problem here is, the lobbyists drive the train, and you can’t peddle influence if you have no influence,” he explained, citing a number of powerful GOP Establishment figures who either have, or anticipate, lucrative careers as lobbyists. “And nobody has any influence with Donald Trump, other than the American people. There’s nobody with an inside track, nobody who can say, ‘Well, Donald, you have to do this, because I gave you a million dollars. He’s impervious to that kind of pressure, and that is what drives the Establishment insane.”
Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, “is a crony capitalist,” according to Stone. “You can buy her for money. She’ll do a deal. She believes in nothing, nothing whatsoever.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 weekdays from 6:00AM to 9:00AM EST.
Listen to the full interview with Roger Stone below: