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Roger Stone caught on tape admitting that Trump had lost [1]

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Date: 2023-08-22

Early on Monday night on the East Coast, MSNBC’s Ari Melber detonated what, by all rights, should have been the equivalent of a quarter-stick of dynamite. One of the most odious members of Donald Trump’s inner circle, Roger Stone, was caught on tape admitting that Trump had indeed lost the 2020 election. What is more, Stone admitted that he had known Trump had lost even as he was one of the loudest voices chanting “Stop the Steal!”

Melber aired a number of clips from “A Storm Foretold,” the Danish-produced documentary that was the product of three years of all-access footage of Stone starting after his 2019 indictment. If that film’s name sounds familiar, part of that footage was shown during the Jan. 6 Committee’s hearings. But the footage Melber showed last night—the first time it has been seen legally in the United States—may be even more damning. In a sane world, this footage would send Trump and a large portion of Trumpworld to prison.

Watch the footage here.

Melber focused on footage of Stone in his hotel room watching the participants in the “Save America” rally marching to the Capitol. He was rather peeved that he wasn’t on the list of speakers; apparently he found that out for certain when he discovered he wasn’t getting transportation to the Ellipse as Rudy Giuliani and others had.

While watching the procession to the Capitol, Stone gave a, shall we say, unflattering take on Trump’s operation.

The whole thing was a con job. No, it’s infuriating, it’s just childish and it’s amateurish. It’s why they lost. They don’t know what they’re doing.

Melber noted that Stone’s take stood in marked contrast to his role as one of the loudest promoters of the “Stop the Steal” canard. He also put this take in context with footage shot on Oct. 20, 2020. Stone was on his cell phone telling someone that he was focused on helping Trump win, but was doing so “unofficially” and “informally.” Why? As he saw it, the Trump campaign was “so extraordinarily f***d up.” When pressed, Stone mused that a Trump win wasn’t a slam dunk.

Will he win? I don’t know? Can he win? It’s possible. I really expect a 2000-like result, with a long drawn-out squabble over who won. This is not a campaign structured for a dogfight, and that’s what we have now.

From where Melber was sitting, Stone and others in Trumpworld were trying to create the illusion of a 2000-style dogfight—the fake electors, getting state legislators to intervene, spreading BS about Trump having a second term stolen from him, the lot.

The significance of this? We already know, based on the published record, that Trump knew as early as Nov. 12 that his last legal bolt had missed. His legal team filed challenges to 191 ballots in Arizona—not even a fraction of Biden’s 10,000-vote lead. On Nov. 13, according to special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment for the insurrection, Trump’s legal team conceded that their client had lost Arizona—knowing full well that there was no realistic path for Trump to get to 270 without winning it. On Nov. 14, Trump’s campaign communications team compiled a memo debunking all of the chatter about Dominion Voting Systems floating around the deplorable tubes—in essence, finding that the Big Lie was, well, a lie.

And now, one of Trump’s closest confidants openly admits that Trump had lost. And if Stone knew, it’s pretty safe to assume that a lot of other muckety-mucks in Trumpworld knew as well. Just thinking about it has me shaking with anger. Despite knowing they had lost, Stone and others were whining about the election being stolen, causing innocent people to be harassed, trolled, and threatened. It's too damn obscene for words.

When I first read about that memo debunking the Big Lie, it was all I could do to keep from screaming out loud, “You evil sonofabitch!” This video from Stone proves not just beyond reasonable doubt, but all doubt, that Trump is indeed an evil sonofabitch—and had a lot of other evil SOBs in his inner circle.

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[1] Url: https://dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/22/2188912/-Roger-Stone-caught-on-tape-admitting-that-Trump-had-lost

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