Mount Juliet, Tennessee — Political provocateur Roger Stone on Sunday said that God gave President Trump “the guidance” in July to commute his prison sentence.
Stone, speaking at a church for the first time since his conversion to evangelicalism in January, confessed his faith publicly and told a tightly packed crowd of about 500 people that the 2020 election is a battle between “dark and light.” Stone also said that he believes that Trump “came at the time of God’s calling” to save the country.
“This is about the struggle between good and evil, between the godly and the godless,” he said. “This is not just a struggle for the salvation of the United States of America. This is the struggle for the survival of Western civilization.”
Joined by the Rev. Greg Locke, who pastors Global Bible Vision Church, which hosted the event, Stone raised his arms in the V-style of Richard Nixon’s victory celebration. The crowd cheered as Stone castigated former Vice President Joe Biden, California Sen. Kamala Harris, as well as a score of other Democrats whom he said were enemies of the American people.
Stone also told his own conversion story, interspersed with references to a long tale of political woes that began in 2019 after he was arrested in his Florida home for allegedly tampering with then-Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election.
At one point, after a tirade against “endless foreign war,” illegal immigration, and the departure from the gold standard, Stone took off his trademark white double-breasted blazer to reveal cream suspenders and a sweat-stained dress shirt.
“Folks, I’m just warming up,” he said as he tossed his coat to Locke.
Before the service, which attracted people from places as disparate as Indiana, Virginia, and Kentucky, Locke and Stone faced threats in the form of graffiti. Locke reported last week that the church was vandalized with protests against Stone’s appearance. One phrase read, “Locke + Stone will burn in Hell.” Another message scrawled over the church’s sign facing the road, said, “REPENT.” The phrase “FU” was vandalized on Locke’s outdoor pulpit.
Stone, before the service, said that the messages were “shocking and disgusting.” Locke laughed them off. He noted that they were just the latest in a long line of controversies he has faced since refusing to suspend in-person church during the spring wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Locke praised Stone for coming to his church to speak while other pastors continue to hold their services online.
The two men met earlier this year while Locke was working with the Evangelicals for Trump campaign coalition. Stone, who was then awaiting sentencing after his 2019 conviction of obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering in the Mueller investigation, had just begun rediscovering Christianity.
The self-described “dirty trickster” had been raised Catholic, a faith which he said influenced his early entrance into politics. He told the Weekly Standard in 2007 that when he was in first grade, John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism as well as his “better hair” relative to that of Richard Nixon prompted him to sow disinformation among his classmates in the school’s mock election. Kennedy won, and Stone said he was hooked on politics after that.
Stone soon shed both his Catholicism and his support for Kennedy. By the time he entered political life, as an operative in the Nixon administration, Stone had left behind the religiosity of his childhood.
But it all came flooding back in January when, facing the possibility of up to 50 years in prison, Stone attended a Florida service hosted by Franklin Graham, one of Trump’s primary ambassadors to evangelicals.
There, Stone told the Washington Examiner, Graham instructed him “to put myself in God’s hands,” and “that I should put my faith in God, and confess my sins, acknowledge Jesus Christ in my life.”
Soon after, in February, Stone, who is 67, was sentenced to serve a minimum of 40 months in prison, a punishment which Stone referred to as “tantamount to a death sentence.” Trump commuted Stone’s sentence in July, after intense lobbying from supporters that he pardon his longtime ally.
Stone emphasized on Sunday that through Trump, God “saved my life.”
“God gave Donald Trump the guidance for a courageous act of mercy and clemency in which he spared my life,” Stone said.
