Roger Stone says there is a real possibility that President Trump will be removed from office if the Senate holds an impeachment trial.
Stone, a longtime Trump confidant, offered advice to the president in a Friday interview with InfoWars that was billed as his first interview on the current impeachment proceedings.
He warned those who doubt the GOP-controlled Senate will vote against Trump, but he also said the president will not go down without a fight.
“I think that those who sit back and say, ‘Well, the House may impeach the president, but surely the Republican Senate will never convict him,’ I think are being naive,” Stone said. “The president is in for an incredible fight because his critics — those in the mainstream media and their handmaidens in the two-party duopoly — are hoping that this tsunami of attacks on him … will wear his support down in the states where there are wobbly Republican senators, so they feel comfortable voting for his removal.”
Stone insisted there is no evidence of Trump committing a crime and urged Trump to leverage his “incredible fundraising juggernaut.”
“I would begin utilizing that money to advertise, both digitally and on radio and on broadcast media, in those states where there are Republican senators who may be thinking about joining this lynch mob,” Stone said.
“As long as the president remains more popular in those states than those individual senators, they will be loath to cast a vote against the president, particularly based on the thinnest read that we have seen so far,” he added.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced an “official impeachment inquiry” one month ago, spurred by a spiraling controversy over a phone call Trump had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Democrats are looking into whether the president abused his power by pressuring a foreign government to conduct investigations that would be politically advantageous to him.
A two-thirds “super majority” of senators present is required to remove the president should the House approve articles of impeachment by majority vote. Twenty Republican senators would need to align with Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats to reach the 67-senator mark to convict Trump.
Stone, who was an aide to President Richard Nixon, said this impeachment proceeding differs from the ones faced by Nixon and President Bill Clinton.
Unlike Nixon, Stone predicted Trump will not resign when facing impeachment. “Donald Trump is a brawler; he has resources,” he said.
