Roger Stone, a longtime friend and former adviser to Donald Trump, once again spoke to conspiracy-theorist radio host Alex Jones on Saturday to rail against the White House staffers he perceives as pushing the president in the wrong direction.
“Inside the White House, they have essentially what is referred to as the ‘gang of three,’” Stone told the InfoWars host in a Facebook live video.
“That really is comprised of Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, Dina Powell—a former Bush operative who spoke at the Clinton Global Initiative conference a couple years ago,” Stone said referring to Powell who recently joined the administration as deputy national security adviser.
“They have gotten lofty positions in [Trump’s] government. Perhaps they thought that this was going to be like some of the Democratic presidents who operate on the basis of somebody else’s talking points,” Stone continued.
“And they have failed spectacularly when it comes to getting Trump off of his agenda. They would like him to be more mainstream, more establishment. They want him to be popular when he goes to Malibu or the Upper West Side. But I don’t think Donald Trump cares about how he’s perceived in those places. He has no interest in kowtowing or ass-kissing for the establishment. So I think that his advisers trying to push him in the wrong direction.”
Stone has been a vocal critic of Kushner’s rise in the White House, recently claiming on InfoWars that the president’s son-in-law was leaking damaging information about White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough. In the weeks after those comments were made, Bannon’s reported influence in the White House has diminished as his faction has continually waged war with the “globalist”-minded wing comprised of Kushner and economic adviser Gary Cohn.
The most illustrative example of Bannon’s fall from grace may have been an interview with the New York Post, in which the president downplayed the importance of a man who served as CEO of his presidential campaign for several months.
“I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump said. “I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn’t know Steve. I’m my own strategist and it wasn’t like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary.”
During the Saturday interview with Jones, Stone seemed to agree with the established wisdom that Bannon has been somewhat neutralized.
“Steve Bannon, who I continue to think is a good man, has been increasingly surrounded,” Stone lamented. “And there’s two possibilities: He could survive but be neutered, sitting in an office with a phone and a desk but have no authority. Or he could choose to leave.”
But Stone didn’t think that the former Breitbart chief would exit the White House any time soon.
“I don’t think he’ll be fired,” he said. “But when the president of the United States in an interview with the New York Post says that he barely knows who you are, that’s a pretty clear indication that your power is on the wane. It really is tragic Alex, that Steve made no effort to bring other trumpites into the circle, to have allies take on the neocons internally.”