FORMER TRUMP ADVISER: RUBIO “MUST WIN FLORIDA PRIMARY” OR ROMNEY ENTERS RACE
by Sharon Rondeau
(Feb. 27 2016) — On Friday night, Alex Jones of Infowars hosted former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone, who reported that the billionaire Koch brothers and other “billionaires and millionaires” met in New York on Thursday night in an orchestrated effort to derail the presidential candidacy of billionaire businessman-turned-politician Donald J. Trump.
Stone said that the power brokers “gave Rubio a condition” to win the Florida primary in exchange for their support to defeat Trump’s momentum in the caucuses and primaries. If Rubio does not win Florida on March 15, Stone said that Mitt Romney will enter the race in two northeastern states and California.
Last week, NBC’s Chuck Todd painted a similar picture of Romney entering the race in California “if Trump nomination is imminent.”
Despite polls predicting Trump ahead of Rubio and others by double digits in Florida, whose primary is March 15, Rubio has pledged to win his home state. “Take it to the bank,” Rubio is quoted as having said.
Stone predicted a “phony” campaign emerging against Trump powered by the Republican elites attacking Trump’s business record.
Last week, Romney told Fox News’s Neil Cavuto that he “had reason to believe” that Trump is hiding something by not releasing his recent tax returns. Despite Trump’s claim that he is currently being audited and cannot release the returns now, Romney tweeted on Thursday night, “No legit reason @realDonaldTrump can’t release returns while being audited, but if scared, release earlier returns no longer under audit.”
Stone has published a book in which he claims that former President George W. Bush and members of his family were involved in crimes. He reports that following the publication of his book on the Clintons, he was banned from appearing on CNN.
On January 25, Stone wrote an article titled “Will The GOP Establishment Steal The 2016 Nomination From Trump?” “Is a back-room deal in the works to have a ‘brokered convention’ to deny Trump the GOP nod? I think there is such a plan and it must be exposed,” Stone wrote. He continued:
…My sources inside the Republican party are warning me:
The insiders have a stunning plan to stop Trump even if he wins the primaries.
The plan involves stalling Trump short of a majority on the first ballot, since many of the delegates pledged to him would no longer be legally bound to support him on subsequent ballots. There are many, many Trojan Horse delegates inserted by the GOP establishment who could bolt from Trump after that first ballot.
Stone, a former Nixon administration aide and long-time Republican insider, told Jones that he has known Trump for 40 years and that Trump has “put his life in danger” to seek the Republican nomination “because he doesn’t want to see the United States of America go down the drain.”
“He loves this country; he’s tired of seeing us lose,” Stone told Jones. “There’s no way to co-opt him.”
Stone deplored what he said were “dirty tricks” on the part of Ted Cruz, referring to mailers in Iowa labeled “Violation” intended to intimidate voters into voting in the caucuses, which took place on February 1; and Cruz’s staffers’ circulating a rumor that night that Dr. Ben Carson was exiting the campaign to direct votes to Cruz.
Stone has called Cruz “Calgary Ted,” referring to Cruz’s birth in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, which has raised the question of his constitutional eligibility which Cruz maintains is “silliness.”
During the conversation, Jones stated that Stone resigned from advising Trump “so that you could just say whatever you really thought.”
Stone cited a CNN political consultant having “call[ed] for somebody to put a bullet in Trump” and a New York Times writer “calling publicly for his [Trump’s] assassination” as evidence that the political elites and power brokers are clearly panicked at Trump’s success in the primaries thus far.
Last October, a Republican strategist said on MSNBC, “the GOP establishment donor class must find a way to ‘put a bullet’ in GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.”
“They are having heart attacks over what he’s doing,” Jones responded to Stone.
Stone claimed that Marco Rubio’s wife, Jeannette, called Cruz’s wife, Heidi, to “desperately beg” her to convince her husband to exit the primaries to assist Rubio’s bid. Stone also reported that Cruz’s “emissaries” offered to Trump to exit the race if Trump would agree to “commit to a Supreme Court nomination” of him.
Stone believes that former presidential candidate Mitt Romney is thought by the establishment to be the last, best hope of the “Stop Trump’ movement.”
At 11:56, Stone said of the RNC, “They’re going to rewrite these rules to allow a candidate like a Mitt Romney…to have his name put in nomination…they’re going to monkey with the rules…so that delegates that were honestly won by Donald Trump…they’ve already started…look for a rumble at the Republican National Convention.”
Stone is encouraging people to “go to Cleveland,” where the RNC will convene to award delegates and make a nomination in July.
Stone advised concerned listeners to “go to stopthesteal.org,” a political action committee seeking to “stop the Republican establishment from stealing the Presidential nomination from Donald Trump!”
“It’s time to make American great again,” Stone said in his closing comment, echoing Trump’s campaign slogan.
The filing deadline for the Republican primary in California is March 26. The New Jersey filing deadline is April 4. Mitt Romney could conceivably file in those states and appear on the ballot. But the New York deadline is February 4. Romney’s name cannot therefore appear on the New York primary ballot. The filing deadlines in most states have already passed. There is no doubt that the “establishment” hates and fears Trump and would like an “escape clause” if Marco Rubio cannot defeat him. Rubio is unlikely to win Florida (in fact, he may not win any state), but it is simply impossible for Romney to get on enough ballots to give him the delegates needed to win the nomination. If the establishment attempts to somehow block Trump at the convention with last-minute rule changes and dirty tricks and give the nomination to Rubio or Romney, all Hell will break loose—and the Republican Party will have destroyed itself.