Famed political con artist Roger Stone was caught on camera bragging about how he has been manipulating Donald Trump for decades.
“I’ve been able to persuade the big man to do what’s in his best interest for 40 years,” he said in footage of an upcoming documentary obtained from The Daily Beast. “He’s not easy to deal with. It’s complicated. He resents any suggestion that he is being manipulated, managed, or directed.”
The key is lying to Trump by making the former president think he came up with the idea first.
“You have to say, ‘Remember that night we were in Buffalo and you gave that speech, and God, there had to be 10,000 people, the biggest crowd you’ve ever seen. And you said XY and Z, and the place went crazy, remember that? I don’t know where you got that phrase from, but it’s one of the best things.’”
Trump, he said, could reply that he would use that phrase again.
“It doesn’t matter that he never said it,” Stone said. “Does not matter. It’s time consuming, but it works. I did it for 30 years.”
Stone was convicted of multiple offenses, including witness tampering and lying to Congress, and was sentenced to 40 months in prison, but was eventually pardoned by Trump in December 2020.
The Daily Beast said the footage was from an upcoming documentary called A Storm Foretold by Danish filmmaker Christoffer Guldbrandsen, who told the site Stone often forgot he was wearing a microphone while the crew followed him.
“I know he forgot because the next morning he was really really concerned about what I recorded,” he was quoted as saying.
In previously released clips, Stone can be heard in 2021 saying if Trump runs for office, “you’re going to get your f***ing brains bashed in” and Ivanka calling Trump an “abortion bitch.”
He has said in the past the footage could “deep fake“Videos or “manipulated and edited in a targeted manner”.