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"That's ridiculous. It's nothing but a vicious rumor. Governor Bush has always defended the right of Malcom Forbes, Jr. to be in this race."
----Karl Rove, appearing on
Meet the Press, Jan 30th, 2000.
"I mean, I've heard the rumor before, but I don't know that I believe it. It does sound like him, but you know, it's always old Bush guys that I've heard [repeating the story]. It's always like, what does Stone have to gain here? He was already with Trump at that point. Why in the world would he meddle around in Iowa Republican Caucus?"
-----Anderson Cooper, 2017
, in
Burned: the Rise, Fall, and Undeath of the Reform Party, by Matt Taibbi
"Roger Stone... What an utter piece of shit."
----- Karl Rove, 2008, in
The Dangers of Faction: Election 2000 and the End of the Sixth Party System, by Douglas Brinkley
January 20th, 2000
Miami Beach FL
A dreary day. Dishwater skies; clouds the color of dryer lint. A rare winter storm, rolling into Miami Beach.
Roger Stone leaned back, put his feet on the glass-topped desk, and grinned.
Fuck the weather.
He wasn’t sure what made him happier--the the brand new pair of Gucci loafers on his feet, or the mailer in his hand. The shoes were almost a work of art: full Goodyear welted sole, interior of kid leather, and an exterior of oxblood cordovan. Practically impossible to crease. They followed his three c’s of style--classy, classic, and customized--a corollary of Stone’s Rules, to the letter.
None of that gaudy “G” logo business, either.
That kind of ghetto shit was for thugs--and trophy wives from Bergen County who didn’t know better.
The shoes were perfect. But the mailer was
gold.
It purported to be from the Log Cabin Republicans, and it had a picture of Steve Forbes, wearing the kind of smile one might display when they were about to get mugged, above a caption that read “Forbes: the Gay Rights Republican.” It looked professional, too. Glossy cardstock. Bright, crisp colors. The margins were right. It even had the little Log Cabin logo right on top. Beautiful. Just
beautiful.
A lazy baritone drawled over the speakerphone. “Is Rove taking the bait?”
“Like a fucking large-mouth bass. Plan Nightcrawler is rolling.” The “Plan Nightcrawler” moniker was an inside joke--Stone’s pet name for his plan to bait George W. Bush into running to the right in Iowa and sinking Steve Forbes in the process. “You should see this mailer Rove’s putting out in Iowa--it’s a fake endorsement of Forbes from the Log Cabin Republicans--fucking beautiful.”
“How do you know it’s Rove?” asked Manafort.
“It’s too professional for it to be any of those other clowns,” said Stone. “Keys is too stupid to think of something like this, Bauer wouldn’t be able to pull off something that looks this good, and McCain’s not contesting the state.”
Manafort made a bored chuckling sound. “What about part three?”
“In the mail. Just in time for church on Sunday.” The caucus was Monday.
Part one of Plan Nightcrawler was the whispering campaign. That had all started when Trump dropped the hints about Forbes’ “flamboyant” father on Imus. Since the Imus interview was all anyone was talking about over the Thanksgiving holidays, pretty soon people started to wonder what
exactly Trump had meant by “flamboyant.” Gary Bauer, the moralizing little gnome, was the first one to say the quiet part loud when--in the December debate--he asked if a “man who had grown up so close to the gay lifestyle” was qualified to be the moral leader of the nation.
Forbes had actually gasped a little bit.
Bush smirked, but he cut in on behalf of Forbes anyway, saying that “just because Malcolm Forbes,
Sr. was gay, doesn’t mean Malcolm Forbes,
Jr. shouldn’t run in the primary.” All the same, over the next two weeks, Bush never missed an opportunity to call Steve Forbes “Malcolm Forbes, Jr.” Then in early January, the Des Moines Register published a poll that put Bush at 38%, Bauer and Keys at 15% each, and Forbes at 9%, with the rest uncommitted or holding fast for McCain. Bush had lost over ten points in a little less than a month, and he changed his tune fast. Pretty soon he had come out for a Federal Marriage Amendment, was loudly declining to meet the Log Cabin Republicans, and expressing principled ambivalence at the thought of appointing any gays or lesbians to any posts in his administration. And now, the mailer.
So there was part two.
Part three was a piece of good old fashioned ratfucking. Even Roger Stone had to admit that it was vintage Roger Stone. It entailed a packet, anonymously mailed by Stone to everyone on the mailing lists for the Iowa Catholic Conference and the Baptist Convention of Iowa. Its contents? A full color copy of the cover (and cover story) for the 38th issue of
OutWeek: the Lesbian and Gay News Magazine. The cover story for that issue was “The Secret Gay Life of Malcolm Forbes,” and it pictured Forbes, Sr. atop a motorcycle, in a biker jacket and a silk ascot, looking about as masculine as Truman Capote in a sundress. Inside was an unsigned letter that asked one question: “After Clinton, is this the family you want in the White House?”
Sure, it was an old story and
OutWeek had been out of print for going on a decade, but that wasn’t the point. Even if it was an old story, it wasn’t the kind of story the folks in Sioux City had heard about. Hell, a lot of folks in Sioux City didn’t even know who Malcolm Forbes, Sr. was. They didn’t read
Forbes in Sioux City. They went to church.
And this Sunday, at least
some of the Catholic and Baptist clergy in Iowa would be talking to their congregations about Malcolm Forbes’ secret gay life.
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“Do you think that Forbes will try and hang on for New Hampshire?” asked Manafort.
“I fucking hope not. You realize how much all those packets cost me?”
“Do you think I care? Your whole point is to get Forbes out and let the anti-Bush crowd coalesce around McCain. If Forbes stays in, he splits the vote. If you can’t get Forbes out, you’re better off staying out of it. Keep your nose clean, Roger.”
“Like you’re one to talk,” snapped Stone.
“Listen, I keep anything that needs to be off-book on the other side of an international border, okay? I’m just saying, you don’t want a repeat of ‘96.”
“Low blow.” In ‘96, Stone was been forced out of the Dole campaign after a personals ad he’d taken out in a swingers magazine was leaked to the media. Some--too many--said it was Stone finally getting a taste of his own medicine. But that was bullshit. Stone wasn’t a public figure. Dole was the public figure. Whether Stone and his wife were swingers wasn’t anyone’s business. “And quit worrying. It’ll work. Even if Forbes stays in, he won’t get shit. He’ll be out before South Carolina. I just want Bush to keep running to the right. Fucking Marriage Amendment. I want more shit like that. Then our boy--”
“
Your boy.” corrected Manafort. “I’m still neutral--and officially, I’m still backing Bush, even if everyone does know it’s bullshit. But Rich is McCain’s campaign manager. He’s a partner too. I can’t be seen taking sides right now. Fingers in too many pies.”
“Our boy, your boy, whatever. Then
Trump can dance in and start talking about states’ rights and how he wants to cut your taxes. Sidestep all that shit.”
“We’ll see. Anyway, what’s happening with the Buchanan situation?”
“Pat’s going to do just what the fuck I tell him to.”
“So Patrick
has been a naughty boy--”
“Haven’t we all?” said Stone with a cackle. Speaking of--he opened his cigarette case and pulled out a joint. “I figure we keep him in the race long enough to make Trump look good--”
“Too cute,” said Manafort. Roger could practically
hear his eyes rolling. “Just bounce him out of the race, and take care of him when the dust settles. There’s too many variables.”
“Maybe,” said Stone through an inhale. “But what the fuck am I supposed to promise him? We’re not bringing him onto the campaign. Not after all that Hitler-wasn’t-so-bad shit.”
“Not my problem. But Buchanan's a tar baby--”
“I’m sure he’d appreciate
that analogy.” Stone went into a coughing fit. Lightning flashed on the water.
“Jesus, Roger--isn’t it like, ten in the morning over there?”
“Ten-seventeen,” Stone corrected. Trailing thunder rumbled through the clouds.
“The point is, you let him keep hanging around, and his sludge is going to stick to you. Listen, I’ve got to go. Abdul’s coming in.”
Manafort hung up.
When Roger had first convinced Trump to dip his toe into the presidential race, it was fifty-fifty as to whether Trump would decide to wade in. Stone had a plan either way. If Trump was leaning no, Stone could just use him to bludgeon Buchanan into irrelevance while Trump toyed with the idea. Although Buchanan would still end up with the nomination without Trump in the race, he would be the nominee of a burnt-out party, at which point Stone would blackmail him into burning down his candidacy along with whatever remained of the Reform Party. That would get him in good with whoever the Republican nominee ended up being--McCain
or Bush--and he could claw his way back into relevance and respectability.
And if Trump
did decide to wade on in, then Roger Stone was going to turn him into the biggest thing to hit American politics since Reagan. No one else could see it--not even Manafort--but Stone saw it. Trump was rough around the edges, but he was also larger than life.
Roger knew politics and politicians.
And Roger knew that being larger than life was the single greatest advantage that a person seeking elected office can have.
For the first few weeks of Trump’s flirtation, it seemed like he was leaning toward no. Trump was finding that the political media were a less tameable breed than the entertainment and local media types he was used to, and he didn’t particularly care for the change. A fight between him and Buchanan, both considered long-shot candidates, was always going to struggle for airtime against Kennedy gossip, the IRA putting down their guns, and the war in Chechnya. Trump’s patience--and attention span--was starting to dwindle, and Stone knew he needed to do something to shake things up.
Thus, the Imus interview.
Trump and Imus went way back. He had been on
Imus probably a dozen times over the years, so Trump was relaxed going on the show. For his part, Imus knew how to get a good sound bite out of Trump. Stone hadn’t told Trump what to say--do that and it was liable to backfire--just that he needed to train his fire on the other candidates besides Buchanan. Before long, Trump had called the sitting president a lecher, said that Bush was mildly retarded, insinuated that Forbes was too effeminate to be president, and that McCain was a dupe in a rigged contest. Guys like Charlie Rose and Tim Russert had no idea how to cover it. It was too newsworthy to ignore, but too incendiary to take seriously. So they did what in Roger’s eyes was the very
best thing they could do--they condemned Trump.
But they didn’t condemn the merits of his arguments--no one really wanted to go to the mat for Bush’s latent intellectualism or Clinton’s self-control--instead, they condemned Trump’s tone. They said that Trump was dragging politics down into the mud--ha!--and that serious candidates didn’t go on shows like
Imus anyway. Call McCain a dupe? No, they said--it was the public that was being duped, and Trump doing the grifting.
It was just the kind of abstract, elitist criticism that struck people with less than two degrees as hollow and hypocritical. Didn’t like his tone? Well, Trump was just telling it like it was. Turning politics into a pigstye? Trump answered that it had always been a pigstye, and that he had personally delivered several buckets of slop to the trough.
But while the straight media was busy making sanctimonious pronouncements, the other media, the media that had to hustle for ratings, realized that Trump meant viewers. After a December poll put Trump at 14%--up from 10% in October,
Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher sent Trump a last minute invite. Trump was already booked to do Leno that night, but Stone agreed to cancel it as long as Maher did a one on one with Trump--presidents didn’t do panels. Trump, who was by now realizing that throwing bombs was a sure way to attract attention, had a full complement of Molotov cocktails at hand when he went to the studio in Burbank.
Gore, who was trailing Bush badly in the polls, was “low-energy, a born loser,” and a “Clinton stooge.” Scattered cheers erupted from the audience. “Not-so-curious George [was] getting crazier by the day.” He was “against the gays, against the women, against the states.” More cheers. McCain was “getting played.” And if the people thought Gore or McCain were the ones to beat Bush, they were getting played too. Cheers all around.
Politically Incorrect’s audience--a liberal audience--had cheered whenever Trump landed a blow.
That they had cheered when Trump was dogging Gore,
that was how Roger really knew that he had something. Even after the Imus interview, things had been touch and go with Trump’s attention span for a minute. Trump didn’t like playing third banana to dorks like Steve Forbes and Al Gore, much less to a swinging dick like W.
Trump made the media rounds, as any “prospective” candidate would, but Stone made a point to steer Trump to edgier, more serious programs, like
Dennis Miller Live, or programs that had a wide audience but weren’t frequented by political types, like
The View. The idea was to steer him away from forums where the main question would be whether or not the run was a publicity stunt. He wasn’t going to avoid guys like Dan Rather or Tim Russert forever. But when Stone did put Trump on Meet the Press, he was going to make sure the first question out of Russert’s mouth wasn’t “is this some kind of joke?”
Although Roger knew Trump could be big, he still wasn’t sure how far he could take him. A spate of polls released around the first of the year all put him at 15% or above--and Zogby had him at 17%--which would theoretically qualify him for the debates that fall. But debates weren’t elections--although Alan Keyes hadn’t gotten the memo--and 15% wasn’t the same thing as 50% + 1, even if the digits all added up to six.
Stone knew he could never get Trump to 50% + 1. Not in a three way race, not as a third party candidate. He didn’t see a way it was even theoretically possible, much less likely. But if a majority was out of the question, Stone was more bullish about the prospect of a third--or a little more than a third. In a three way split--theoretically--a little over a third was all he should need.
For all his strategizing and all his bravado with Manafort, Stone still wasn’t even sure whether forging ahead with Trump was the right thing to do. He had to keep reminding himself that while Trump was still on the fence, he still had a respectable out. Although he’d known Trump for going on twenty years at that point, Roger had been a party man for even longer. This was supposed to be his time in the wilderness. The party bigwigs had all told him he’d land on his feet after he’d been shown the door in ‘96. But none of them had lended a hand to help him get back up--not even Manafort. And if
Bush won the election, Roger might as well go ahead and build a cabin out here in the wilderness, because he wouldn’t be coming home to the promised land any time soon.
The Bushes had never liked Roger, and the feeling was mutual. Stone was too flashy and in-your-face for an aristocrat like Bush, Sr. to ever do more than tolerate; he’d hated it when Lee Atwater--his old campaign manager--partnered with Black, Manafort, and Stone. For his part, Roger thought that Bush was an equivocating weenie who hadn’t deserved a stand-up guy like Atwater in the first place. Once Lee had died, the ties between the Bush faction and the lobbyists at Black, Manafort, and Stone had frayed. When Bush lost the election in ‘92, whatever institutional power they had left--along with Karl Rove--migrated down to Texas and Florida to prepare for the campaigns there.
As for W, all you really needed to know was this: The guy had been born with silver spoons coming out of his ears. His family was rich, powerful, and influential. In 1970, when Bush, Sr. was a sitting Congressman from Texas, W applied to the University of Texas Law School
and got rejected. George W. Bush was even more a creation of Karl Rove than Trump was a creation of Roger Stone.
A lot of people would take that as criticism, but Rove was proud.
Stone didn’t even need to ask him to know.
Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and Karl Rove went all the way back to the Nixon years. Roger didn’t loathe Rove the way Manafort did--those two had something like a blood feud--but he did think he was a fat, arrogant twerp. No matter what sized room he was in, Rove always thought he was the smartest guy in it. The problem was, he’d been playing down in Texas against a bunch of minor leaguers and thought it was the same thing as beating the All-Star Team.
It wasn’t.
Roger realized the joint had died while he was lost in thought. He got it going again and hotboxed it down. The storm had fallen off without him noticing, and blades of sunlight cut through the clouds and reflected the image of his face in the glass top of his desk. It occurred to him that all this time he’d been focused on winning, he’d been thinking of how to make
Trump win and how to make Roger’s enemies lose. He’d been thinking that if Trump won,
Roger would win.
And that was true enough. If Roger could drag Trump over the line with a little over a third of the vote, he would be a living legend among political strategists. He’d be able to name any fee he wanted.
But it wasn’t the only way.
Trump didn’t have to win for
Roger to win. All Roger had to do was make sure Trump outperformed expectations. But that was understating it. Trump couldn’t just outperform his expectations. Trump would need to murder their expectations and throw the corpse into a storm drain.
If Roger could make that happen, he’d still be able to name his price.
But how many votes did that represent? How many states would Trump need to carry in order for Roger to make all the rest of them look like fools?
Roger took another joint from the cigarette case and walked over to his filing cabinet. He pulled election data--folder after folder--from ‘92 and ‘96. This is how it worked. This is how you did it, how you pulled off one of the most important of Stone’s Rules.
This is how you made your own luck.