President Trump’s former political adviser Roger Stone says people should get used to seeing Trump unscripted, as he was during his surprise press conference Thursday.
In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Stone said that after years of working with Trump, he believes Trump’s freewheeling approach to public relations is what makes Trump a success to his supporters.
“All of my other clients have been career politicians and therefore they were more scripted and more coached and more programmed,” said Stone. “That’s not the case with Donald Trump. He is his own man. He’s happy to listen to advice but at the end of the day he decides what’s best and he chooses his own message so you don’t have the scripted nature of it.”
“It’s much more genuine,” he said. “So, if you’re a political consultant for Donald Trump, your job is to give your best advice but at the end of the day he can choose whether he wants to agree or disagree.”
On Thursday, Trump laid into the “fake” national press at a surprise press conference and went on the offense after more than a week of press stories and questions about Russia that are threatening to engulf his administration after less than one month in office.
Facing heightened scrutiny after national security adviser Mike Flynn’s resignation, Trump said the media have been unfair to him, and repeatedly called critical news stories “fake” and lamented what he saw as “hatred” coming from journalists.
Stone said Trump’s relationship with the news media, which characterized much of his campaign, is unlikely to change.
“The majority of the voters are now getting their news from somebody other than the three networks and the two cable networks and the major national newspapers,” he said. “In terms of his criticism of CNN, I think he’s right on the money. They’ve ceased to be a news organization and now they’re an opinion operation.”
CNN banned Stone from appearing on its programming in early 2015. The network told the Washington Examiner that the ban remains in place.
Roger Stone did not last long working for Donald Trump’s campaign, but he says the two remain friends and that he’s still in touch with the president. What Stone and Trump talk about, however, is not something the veteran Republican consultant will talk about.
“Yes, I talk to him from time to time,” Stone told the Washington Examiner. “But I also consider those conversations privileged and personal and I’m smart enough to realize that if I do talk about the content of them, there won’t be anymore of them, so it’ll remain between us.”
Stone has been a friend and consultant to Trump for decades, lasting through each time the celebrity businessman flirted with running for president, right up until he actually did it.
Just two months into the campaign in 2015, Stone and Trump parted ways over, Stone said, strategic disagreement. At the time there were reports of a clash between Stone and then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, which Stone briefly mentioned in his new book, “The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution.”
There are still bitter feelings.
“I do not regret the public ‘breakup’ we had to endure, manufactured in large part by feckless Corey Lewandowski and limp minds of the mainstream media,” Stone wrote in his book. “Lewandowski was eventually canned after his self-aggrandizing sourced reports to journalists — all designed to pat himself on the back — finally reached an intolerable high. Lewandowski simply has no shame.”
Stone told the Washington Examiner he continues to believe Lewandowski “hasn’t served the president well.” A recent report said that Lewandowski, who now runs a consulting firm in Washington, has allegedly told clients that he has access to Trump’s Twitter account, though Lewandowski denied he ever said that.
Still, Stone said Trump’s first weeks in office, despite the outbursts, turmoil and swirling questions about the president’s ties to Russia, have been a success.
“There’s only one Donald Trump and that’s the one the American people elected,” he said. “I actually think that his presidency is going pretty well in view of the fact that he’s remained focused on his issue agenda. All these other side-shows about whether he’s wearing a bathrobe in the family quarters or not, no one cares about that.”
Stone wrote in his book that Trump was “put on this Earth” to be president, referring to a divinity that Trump has rarely acknowledged in public.
But Stone insists Trump, who won 81 percent of white Evangelicals, is a religious person.
“He is a person of faith. He just doesn’t wear it on his sleeve,” said Stone, a Roman Catholic, citing Trump’s attendance at the famous Marble Collegiate Church in New York. “I know it because I’ve seen his speeches to Evangelical Christian audiences in the South and I know it just because I’ve known him for 40 years. He is a devout man. He believes in God. He just doesn’t believe in advertising his religion.”
