On the eve of Donald Trump’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court, the former president’s longtime ally Roger Stone complained that if the judge in the case were to impose a gag order on the habitually talkative defendant, it would not only amount to “canceling” Trump—but could be classified as “election interference.”
Stone appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show, where the Fox News host began by offering an incredibly skewed characterization of a gag order.
“It’s almost hard to believe that the Republican Party’s leading presidential candidate… could be told by a judge that he will go to jail if he dares to defend himself in his own criminal case,” Carlson said. “Could that actually happen? Well, it happened to Roger Stone and nobody seemed to care. We did. Nobody else did.”
During Stone’s 2019 trial for obstruction, witness tampering, and making false statements in relation to the Mueller investigation, Judge Amy Berman Jackson handed down a gag order after Stone posted an Instagram photo showing crosshairs beside Jackson’s head. (Carlson was mum about Stone’s post as the reason for the gag order, instead whining that CNN wasn’t issued a gag order as well.)
If Trump were made to comply with one, Stone said, it would be “a testimony to his effectiveness as a counter-puncher.”
“He’s used social media and his interviews to very effectively question the falsity of these charges, question the political motivations and funding of [Manhattan] District Attorney Alvin Bragg, and question the bias of this judge,” Stone said. In a Truth Social post last week that his lawyer couldn’t even be bothered to defend, Trump shared an article with a linked image depicting him wielding a baseball bat next to a photo of Bragg. Trump has also smeared Bragg as an “animal,” and claimed that Judge Juan Manuel Merchan “hates” him.
“But more importantly, not only do I think the gag order would be unconstitutional—nowhere does it say you lose your free speech rights if you’re charged with a crime—but more importantly, it’s election interference,” Stone claimed, to Carlson’s agreement, citing Trump’s candidacy and fundraising hauls.
Stone then deployed one of conservatives’ favorite words in describing the effect of a gag order: being “canceled.”
“So I think canceling him now—gagging him now—is a reaction to the way he has rebounded and actually benefited from what is a naked partisan attack against him,” Stone said.