Nick Gillespie on Stone Cold Truth (05/27/2017)

Supplemental document for: "Theory that Roger Stone's back channel to Wikileaks was Randy Credico", link: https://wakelet.com/wake/2d352ae9-febe-44a1-a7bb-51674a2e4bf5

Nick Gillespie on "Stone Cold Truth", co-hosted by Tyler Nixon and Roger Stone. Broadcast date: May 27, 2017.

File link: http://www.mediafire.com/file/80g14inc8c4q78d/0527171%20-%20Hour%201%20-%20Jerome%20Corsi%20Nick%20Gillespie.mp3

Transcript runs from 41:34 to 52:01.

TYLER NIXON
Welcome back to "The Stone Cold Truth", here on the Genesis Communications Network. I am...Roger's co-host, Tyler Nixon, and of course, the master of ceremonies himself, Roger Stone. Joining us, a good friend of mine, going way back, way back to the early days of the Gary Johnson campaign, Nick Gillespie from Reason dot com, editor in chief, a great American, a great libertarian [NICK GILLESPIE laughs], a great voice for freedom in this country. And...welcome Nick. It's always good to have you.

NICK GILLESPIE
Thanks for having me. Once, many years ago, one of Roger's best dressed men in America.

ROGER STONE
I was just about to say...[GILLESPIE laughs] one time, one time you landed on Mr. Stone's "International Best and Worst Dressed List", in the best dressed category. I think it was...best impression of Johnny Cash, I think was the...

GILLESPIE
That's right.

STONE
...was the category.

GILLESPIE
Yes.

NIXON
If anybody could pull it off...

GILLESPIE
...short Western jacket. So.

NIXON
[laughs] Well, they call him- They call you "the Jacket", Nick, I noticed in the Reason commentariat...which is, uh, yes, you are definitely...and you, in my opinion, have the gravity of a Johnny Cash. So.

STONE
Now Nick has a great personal style. So, anyway, I'm gonna let you guys talk about this movie ["Get Me Roger Stone"], as I am obviously a _biased party_.

NIXON
Right.

GILLESPIE
Well, if I can take the lead in that, the thing, and this is what I appreciate about, about the various books that you've put out, Roger, but also, in the documentary, that captures, which I did not fully appreciate, uh, I think, early on, that...you present American politics, you know, there's a, um, finite number of topics or issues, and then it's a question of how the different parties or factions slice them up, to try to get more votes for their side. And what you do, is you totally jumble all those categories, in a way that I think is, frankly, very small l libertarian. I don't think you would disagree with that, but that's what is great about that movie, like it's not really about you being a "dirty trickster", or a character, or even influential to Trump, it's that you're presenting American politics in a different way, where it's like, you know...lifestyle politics and political governance are two very separate issues, and they should be kept separate. Because you don't want people telling you how to run your business, same way you don't want people how to run your personal life, either.

STONE
Well, and there's very-

GILLESPIE
That's- That's the value equation that you're bringing to politics and that's why people are interested.

STONE
There are very, very few pundits who step forward and say, "Let's face it, folks. Both parties are full of crap." Every political institution we have, sadly enough, is lying to you, just from a different point of view. Look, I used to be a lockstep conservative Republican, and the Republicans could do no wrong. Until they nominated Mitt Romney, and then it became abundantly clear to me that the Republican Party had morphed into the exact duplicate of the Democratic Party. The party of big government, and big media, and big business. And K Street, and Wall Street. So, yeah, I'm an anarchist, in a certain sense. And I really just try to get people to understand how the system works, and where it's broken. Because Donald Trump is right about that, the system is rigged. It's rigged against the little person.

GILLESPIE
Can I ask you, on the, from a certain level, and I remember talking with you about people like Hugh Carey, former, old time governor of New York now, I guess, in the seventies, was the system always broken, and it's just that we are now more attuned to the fact that it's always been b.s., or is it that, the system, like, did the system break, some time in your lifetime, it's like, there's a before and after? It's just more corrupt now.

STONE
I think it's always been corrupt, the difference is now you have an alternative media to underline that corruption. [GILLESPIE Mmmhmms] Before, the mainstream media, which had a monopoly on the dissemination of political information hid the facts very effectively from the American people...

GILLESPIE
Yeah.

STONE
...but now, with the rise of a vibrant and robust alternative media, the people are learning more about everything. And therefore the inequities and the corruption in the system has gotten coverage, and come to light in a way that it hadn't previously.

GILLESPIE
Is there a way that, you know, that understanding of corruption, and I'm watching the TV show, "The Americans", which is in its fifth season, and it's about a sleeper couple of Soviet agents in 1980s America, and it's, uh....there's a sense where when people understand a system is corrupt, and the Soviet Union was corrupt so thoroughly that people became despondent, you know, they killed themselves, they cheated everybody, very low trust society, do you think that's happening in America, where, you know, because we're being faced with the complete, you know, debasement of our civic institutions, that we just become, you know, everybody is corrupt and everything is corrupt, and we act poorly? How do we get back to being a high trust country? With the benefits of believing a person's word is their bond, and things like that?

STONE
Well, I think you just explained the election of Donald Trump. Now you may not, you may not agree that that will be the proper manifestation of it, but the people who voted for him believe they were taking the corrective that you're talking about. They believe that that was a blow against the system, and a voice to clean up a corrupt system. Now, if he becomes yet another establishment neo-con president, they will be sorely, sorely disappointed. And clearly, we've talked about this in the first segment, he has many establishment figures around him, [GILLESPIE Mmmhmms] who are seeking to homogenize him into being George W. Bush. But that's not what the people voted for. And therefore you may have a whole another level of disillusionment here, shortly.

GILLESPIE
Yeah. [laughs] Wow. You know, so, just when you think you've reached the bottom, there's always another level you can go to, right? There's always something-

STONE
Well- Sure. And not only that, but then you'll have things like, for example, the firing of James Comey, bolstered Donald Trump among his base. So, although they may be upset about him going to Saudi Arabia, or they may be upset about him appearing to backtrack on climate change, or they may be unhappy-

GILLESPIE
Yeah.

STONE
-that he didn't pass his travel ban...well, he fired Comey, so he's still gotta be pretty good. He's still my- our president. So, I mean, those kinds of political actions buy him time. I do think that when he comes back, we are going to have some announcements about changes in the administration...I would keep an eye on David Urban, formerly Arlen Specter's Administrative Assistant [Stone was close to Specter and ran his 1996 presidential campaign], West Point graduate, a very capable guy who ran the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania, somebody who I was disappointed, didn't join the administration initially, there's some indication that he's going to be in a key position. So, the president's going to get some people around him that are both loyal to his vision, and who know how Washington works.

GILLESPIE
Mmmmm.

NIXON
I'd like to ask Nick-

GILLESPIE
That sounds pretty great. Tyler, are you excited about America? I mean...do you have your own story of disillusionment?

NIXON
Aw geez. Nick, I'm interviewing you, you're not interviewing me. [laughs] I'm kidding. I don't- [this may be a reference to Nixon being suspended from the Delaware bar for two years after charges of illegal possession of drugs and firearms. Link to related court document: http://courts.delaware.gov/opinions/download.aspx?ID=176080 ] I wanted to ask you, actually, because I find your-

GILLESPIE
Sure.

NIXON
You play it down the middle in many ways, the true middle, the libertarian middle, where everybody is, and I don't think you really try to suck up to any- or, give [inaudible] to any side of the media establishment, can you not look at the coverage of Donald Trump, and objectively say, this is just an onslaught against this man? I mean, regardless of his foibles or how much of it might be true or not-

GILLESPIE
No no, I agree, I mean at least since Bush, people have talked about "derangement syndrome", you know, "Bush derangement" or "Obama derangement syndrome", there's no question that the media is in a fit of Trump derangement syndrome, and it's gotten to a point where it's comical, where you know they really, like, even the New York Times, especially the New York Times and the mainstream media, like they attack him, and then they come back with the correctives, and they dial everything back. So...you know, anybody who's associated with him, and I...there's an onslaught, and um, what is problematic for me is, that it- it blurs the places where Trump is actually, I think, advancing individual liberty or freedom, on certain levels, certainly in his approach to regulatory issues, whether it's at the FCC, the FDA, or the EPA, these are all good things, and he's forcing people to kindof own their stuff, about like- You know, we don't need these regulations that went into effect six months ago, and like, we're acting as if they came down from the ten commandments, or something [NIXON laughs] and I think that's great. But then, it also, it gives him cover for a lot of stuff that I think is really negative and bad. When it comes to things like immigration, and I think it also pulls him off the ball of getting out of lifestyle politics. The greatest thing about Trump was, he was the one person who could beat Hillary Clinton because there was- like, on social issues, he was giving same sex benefits to couples when she was still saying, you know, a marriage can only be between a man and a woman. You know, when her husband was making that law of the land through the Defense Of Marriage Act, and what not. And I feel like he has been kindof shoehorned into a bunch of socially conservative positions which are ultimately not good for the country.

STONE
You know, it's interesting, you raise an excellent point. The '94 crime bill, which incarcerated an entire generation of young African Americans is something that he didn't like at the time. Now, suddenly, Jeff Sessions wants him to pin on the sheriff's badge.

NIXON
Well, I want to thank Nick Gillespie. Nick, it's always a pleasure. It's too short. We hope to have you back again soon. Thank you so much, my friend.

GILLESPIE
Thank you.