Roger Stone and Donald Trump attack special prosecutor Jack Smith
Trump appeared on Roger Stone's radio program where he attacked Smith and Bill Barr, who served as attorney general in his administration; Trump also praised a legal commentator called his indictment “extremely damning”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
In his first interview since being indicted on 37 federal counts, former president Donald Trump and his longtime adviser and confidant Stone attacked the integrity of special prosecutor Jack Smith. Early in the interview on Stone's WABC program, Stone questioned the timing of the indictment:
Roger Stone and Donald Trump discussing Trump's federal indictment
Citation From the June 11, 2023, edition of WABC's The Roger Stone Show
ROGER STONE (HOST): Mr. President, I cannot thank you enough. Let's get right into it because there is so much news. I saw you yesterday on the stump. I really think your speech in Georgia was one of the best stump speeches I've ever seen you give. And I'm a long-time observer of the Trump magic. I saw it when we went to New Hampshire in 1988. You were were never that interested in running for president that year. But I really wanted you to run. But I saw the chemistry that you had with voters and ability to reach voters that, let's face it, Mitt Romney, John McCain could never reach. It is therefore extraordinary to me that now with you are the overwhelming favorite for renomination and leading Joe Biden in the general election polls, that special counsel Jack Smith has dropped an indictment on the exact same day that House Republicans discovered undisputed evidence that Vice President Joe Biden and his son each took $5 million bribes to ensure that Biden would pressure a Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor who was investigating corruption in Ukraine involving Hunter Biden and Burisma. Is this a coincidence, Mr. President?
DONALD TRUMP (GUEST): So, I don't think so. I think they are bad people. I think they're thugs. If you remember, this was the Lerner – this was the person that was so bad on the IRS scandal. I guess it's Lois Lerner. It was a disaster for Christians, for evangelicals, and for people of faith. He was horrible. He was just absolutely horrible. I saw him yesterday. He was shaking and very nervous at the podium. He spoke for two and a half minutes and he couldn't get off fast enough because, you know, he has the power of the Justice Department and he plays that because he's a bully. But he's had a lot of losses. And this is a disgrace. This thing is a disgrace. And virtually everybody other than a lowlife like Bill – Bill Barr, who, as you know, I terminated because he was gutless. He wouldn't do what you're supposed to do. But everybody says this is a disgraceful indictment. It shouldn't happen. It was done for political reasons, but it was also done, I guess, to cover up the kind of a massive crime that's now being revealed by the Republicans in the House. It's incredible when you look at what happened, when you look at the kind of money that flows into the Biden family and to Joe Biden, by the way. And so they wanted to do a distraction. They'll probably come up with a jaywalking charge on Hunter in the not-too-distant future, you know, a very small charge. So they can say, well, it's fair, but this is a very unfair situation. We're living in a very, very corrupt country. We have open borders. We have horrible elections. I mean, just horrible elections. You take a look at what went on in the 2020 election and others, but you take a look at that disaster of the 2020 election with all of the things that have been found that the courts don't want to work on, they don't want to discuss. So we're really living in a very corrupt country, but we'll change it around. Roger, we'll make America great again.
Trump picked up on the thread roughly twenty minutes later. Stone then steered the interview into discussing Trump's scheduled Tuesday rally near the federal courthouse in Miami.
Roger Stone and Donald Trump discussing Trump's federal indictment
Citation From the June 11, 2023, edition of WABC's The Roger Stone Show
DONALD TRUMP (GUEST): I tell you what, they must hate – these Democrats, these crazy lunatic Democrats like deranged Jack Smith. He's a deranged person, in my opinion. His wife hates me more than he does. You got to see what the wife – the wife hates Trump more than she hates Trump more than any human being who's ever lived. And it's a shame. It's a shame that we can have this because we did a great job with borders, with taxes, with – with everything. I mean, we did a great job with everything that people can hate so much, but I believe they hate our country.
ROGER STONE (HOST): Mr. President, many of your supporters intend to go to the Miami courthouse on Tuesday to demonstrate their support for you and to protest what they see as unfair and politically motivated charges. I urge all of your supporters ... that if they decide to go, it is essential that they keep it peaceful, civil, and legal.
...
Do you have a message for those who may be planning to go to just to demonstrate their support for you?
TRUMP: I do. We need strength in our country now. Our country is being taken away from us. Our country is going communist, It's going Marxist. It's going really bad. And the people of our country aren't that way. But the people running it are. And we need strength at this point and everyone is afraid to do anything. They're afraid to talk and they have to go out and they have to protest peacefully.
...
And so that was so they had protesters. The problem is they put him so far away that nobody knew about him. They had a tremendously large – Marjorie Taylor Greene was there. You probably saw that. But they had a lot. But they put they try and put him so far away.
Look, our country has to protest. We have plenty of protest – to protest.
Elsewhere in the interview, Trump promoted the work of various Fox News personalities, while slamming his former attorney general, Bill Barr as a coward and unpatriotic, after Barr made comments earlier in the day about Trump's indictment.
Roger Stone and Donald Trump discussing Trump's federal indictment
Citation From the June 11, 2023, edition of WABC's The Roger Stone Show
ROGER STONE (HOST): What amazes me, Mr. President, is the way there's almost a virtual media blackout of the news regarding this stunning corruption by the Biden crime family.
...
Do you believe that former Attorney General Bill Barr is in fact part of the deep state and was actually involved in the cover-up of the Biden bribery allegations, particularly since he when he became aware of it, he never mentioned it to you, the president of the United States, and he transferred the file and the whistleblower evidence from the Pittsburgh U.S. Attorney's Office to the Delaware U.S. attorney's office, where we made hidden and buried in a file and lay dormant with no actions taken to this very day.
DONALD TRUMP (GUEST): I think he's a coward who didn't do his job. He was desperately afraid of being impeached. You remember when the Democrats were saying, we're going to impeach Bill Barr? There was no reason to impeach him, but they were going to impeach Bill Barr, and he was petrified of being impeached. I said I got impeached twice and my poll numbers went up. Not so bad. But, you know, he was a coward. And unfortunately, we have to live with that. We've gotten to know people now and I got to know people in Washington. I went from very seldom being there. I, I was there seventeen times during the course of my life. I never stayed over and I didn't know people. I relied on people for references. And we got a lot of it right. We had unbelievable people, as you know, in the administration. But you also had some that we got wrong and Bill Barr was a mistake and, you know, too bad. But he was a mistake. You're going to have some of them. But what he is what he's done and the way he talks now.
But he's certainly friendly with some bad people because virtually everybody you see, and especially the analysts like Gregg Jarrett is incredible. Jonathan Turley, Mark Levin has been incredible, Sean Hannity, they've all gone through this and they've looked at it very carefully. They were the ones who got the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax right. when that was all the rage, you know, it was all I was colluding with Russia. Turned out to be just – in fact they said no collusion at the end. People, eighteen people, angry Democrats that hated me came up with a report, no collusion, and it was all a hoax, just all a big hoax. This is the same kind of a hoax. And they go from one to the next. They think of it Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, impeachment hoax one, impeachment hoax two, the fake dossier, spying on the campaign. These are very dishonest, very corrupt people.
But Bill Barr is I think he's more weak than anything else. And now he goes and he sits down, and if they can find a chair for him because it's not that easy. And he sits down and he just bloviates and it's disgraceful. He's so – it's actually unpatriotic. It's so bad for our country, just so bad. But, you know, he's got a lot of hatred. I fired him for just not doing his job. And, you know, I'm not going to do this anymore. I said give me a paper of resignation. And he did. He gave me a paper of resignation. And then they say, oh, they left. They didn't leave. I said, give it to me. I could name others, too. I try to be nice by doing that. But I said, give me your resignation. Give me a paper. And you know, so he's got dislike as a lot of people would. But he didn't have the courage to fight it. And when they said the key word, impeachment, we're going to impeach Bill Barr, he became a nothing and he was just a very unpatriotic person. And it's very bad for – very, very bad for the country. And he will say anything they want him to say about me. But the indictment itself is a disgrace. It's a disgrace. And I do believe it was put up at a time where they found tremendously horrible things about the family and other things are coming.
It is unclear if Trump has actually seen the commentary of Jonathan Turley on Fox News about his indictment.