AYMAN MOHYELDIN (HOST): Are you at all surprised that he even opened that door to cooperation, given his public defiance, given the tweets and the statement made by the president to try to kind of shore him up in a way that he hasn't necessarily done with others that have gone in front of the special counsel? Immediately I think of Michael Cohen being called a rat and a liar.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, no I'm not, because I think that he played the same sort of game he's played in the past, which is careful, artful misinformation. I mean, he didn't actually get up there and say he was going to cooperate, he certainly didn't sound like somebody that was contrite or even acknowledged any wrongdoing on his part. So, I think he is -- he loves attention, he understands how to engage with the media, it is a big part of who he is and what his brand is, and that's exactly what you're seeing right now, is somebody that is just keeping himself interesting enough so that the president and the relevant people around him stay engaged enough to, you know, in the event that he needs to break the glass in case of emergency, Stone knows how to get in touch with Trump.
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MOHYELDIN: So Angelo, one of the first things that Stone did after his arrest on Friday was to turn around, give the crowd that famous [Richard] Nixon salute, iconic image, everyone knows it. Stone is definitely a PR guy, he pretty much relishes and worships Nixon, I believe he has a tattoo of him. Was this the best PR move for him and Trump, considering the guy he's emulating was in fact impeached for his role in criminal conspiracy?
CARUSONE: Well, it's funny, the first thing he did before he even did that, that was the first thing he did for the national media, the first thing that he actually did before he even went out there, was call into Alex Jones, of which he's long had a show on Infowars, and do a very long interview. And I think that's critical here, because after the election was all over and all these contacts take place, Jerome Corsi became the White House correspondent for Infowars and was given White House press credentials, even though that has never happened before. Alex Jones continued to have a show there. It was a conduit to reach a very specific audience and to repeat and promote a lot of disinformation and misinformation that was coming out of Russia. Those things continued about the deep-state attacks, all throughout afterwards. So one, I think that that was a pretty big mistake, but it also reinforces the fact that things are not going to change, and it shouldn't. He's been operating for decades with impunity, so why should anything be different now? And then he gets out there and he, you know, not only does he embrace Nixon, but he does it in such a way that even the Nixon Library has to send out these long, random tweets basically disassociating themselves from him.
