Roger Stone claimed that video of the moon landing was “a hoax ... shot in a warehouse in” New Jersey. Stone is a longtime top Donald Trump adviser and one of the Republican presidential nominee’s go-to sources for research.
Stone, who remains in regular contact with Trump (and whose talking points and theories Trump regularly adopts), is an ardent conspiracy theorist. For example, he has claimed that the Clintons orchestrated the murder of four people this year; the Clintons killed John F. Kennedy Jr.; President George H.W. Bush tried to kill President Reagan; President Lyndon Johnson killed President John F. Kennedy; and Sen. Ted Cruz’s father is connected to Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
In a January 2013 Twitter exchange, Stone wrote in response to someone stating that Americans “stepped on the moon”: “whole moon shot thing a hoax. Video shot in a warehouse in NJ.”
The New York Times wrote in 2009 that “polling consistently suggests that some 6 percent of Americans believe the landings were faked and could not have happened” and noted that there “is no credible evidence to support such views, and the sheer unlikelihood of being able to pull off such an immense plot and keep it secret for four decades staggers the imagination.”
Despite his history -- or perhaps because of it -- fellow conspiracy theorist Donald Trump relies heavily on Stone’s advice and has used his work during the presidential campaign.
Trump has picked up Stone’s false claims that the presidential election will be rigged in favor of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. He has also embraced Stone’s book The Clintons’ War on Women, which claims that “Bill and Hillary Clinton systematically abused women and others -- sexually, physically, and psychologically -- in their scramble for power and wealth.”
The Washington Post recently noted that Trump is “proclaiming conspiracies everywhere — in polls (rigged), in debate moderators (biased) and in the election itself (soon to be stolen)” and that Stone has helped influence Trump.
And the Times wrote that “in Donald Trump, conspiracy fans find a campaign to believe in.” Reporting on Stone’s recent appearance at a JFK conspiracy conference in New Orleans, the paper noted that Stone told a fan that the death of Justice Antonin Scalia may have been orchestrated.