STONE COMMUTATION, PORTLAND: THINGS ARE GOING WEIMAR
The recent commutation of Roger Stones’ s sentence triggered the usual fruitless speculation about the “strategy” behind it. Generally, the current incumbent of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is no more capable of thinking beyond today than an Adderall-crazed lab rat desperate for another food pellet. But there is something behind this, and it’s not what the commentariat generally thinks.
The immediate, and most obvious, explanation for this politically risky move was that Trump was paying back his loyal consigliere for years of service and, more importantly, keeping his pie-hole shut. Nonsense. On the first point, Trump is famously incapable of loyalty, gratitude, or any other emotion that doesn’t result in cash or an erection. As to the second, Paul Manafort was similarly laconic, yet remains in Federal custody, albeit now on home release.
Roger Stone has built his latter-day career as a self-professed “dirty trickster.” One stops for a moment to ask why he says so out loud—do spies put “spy” on their business cards?
But leave that aside. Let’s turn for a moment to Stone’s arc. He started out in politics as a Nixon campaign intern—he famously has Tricky Dick tattooed on his back, which no doubt would have proven a point of interest, if not a spooge target, in the showers had he actually begun his sentence—where he carried out some amusing low-grade antics in Nixon’s service. He parlayed that into a career as a K Street lobbyist in the 80’s, where his partner was—what? Paul Manafort. Despite the appeal of these nesting Ukrainian dolls, let’s take a look at the irrelevant, albeit extremely entertaining, interruption in his political career.
in 1996, Stone was a consultant with GOP Senator Robert Dole’s Presidential campaign. That hit a tabloid wall when it was discovered that Stone and his second wife had taken out space in a swingers’ magazine looking for an “exceptional well hung in shape men” for threesomes.
To be clear, Stone was advertising for men to fuck his wife while he watched. While Trump’s GOP may be cool with that, Dole’s wasn’t. Despite frantic deployment of the Trumpian tactic of blame-shifting—Stone claimed that the usual “disgruntled employee” with a “drug problem” had somehow coopered all this up—-his conservative political career appeared to be done. (He finally admitted the truth in 2008.)
Despite his ouster from mainstream politics, Stone’s public malice continued unabated. For example, he organized the celebrated Brooks Brothers Riot that disprupted the 2000 Florida recounts; has been accused of forging the 2004 Killian Memos that called into question W’s military service but, when proved fake, ended Dan Rather’s career; and was involved in the prostitution scandal that ended the political life of New York Governor Elliot Spitzer. And all the while cultivating a public persona as Best Dressed Man of 1939.
Stone’s bizarre and squalid career was famously documented in a 2016 Netflix film, “Get Me Roger Stone.” The burden of the title was, in part, that Stone wanted to be the guy you called when things were totally sideways and the only way out was to stick some dead male escorts in your opponent’s bed. A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for, right?
And that—in part, maybe—is what the commutation signifies. Or so argued GMRS producer Dylan Blank in a recent NYT op-ed.
See, even though he rages and kicks at his campaign staff like Henry VIII in a neurosyphilis seizure, whatever rational part is left of Trump’s brain recognizes that he is in very deep electoral shit. Which shit exposes him not only to the ultimate narcissistic injury of a landslide loss, but worse, the existential threat of post-Presidential prosecution for himself and his family. He just can’t afford to lose. Thus he reasons that in order to prevail in this battle of all against all, he needs the help of the dirtiest dirty trickster he can get—Roger Stone.
Hence the commutation. Trump needs Stone’s help.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE: THE PROUD BOYS
Trump’s reliance on this Homburged freak may be based on something else as well. Since 2016 Stone has cultivated an association with the Proud Boys, a ”Western Chauvinist”—i.e, white nationalist Islamophobe fascist—network of street fighters founded by Gavin McInnes, who in a move whose reasons defy inquiry, sought to refute claims of homophobia by sticking a dildo up his ass in a TV interview. (Click here for images you will not be able to unsee.) The Boys’ initiation includes getting the shit beaten out of them while reciting pop culture trivia and taking a pledge to limit masturbation to once a month—particularly burdensome in view of the rudimentary social lives of most alt.right bros. In addition to these entertainments, the Proud Boys have engaged in a lengthy campaign of public violence and intimidation, including an appearance with their fellow very fine people at Charlottesville in 2017.
Stone’s engagement with the Boys is not merely casual. He is, in fact, an affiliate member, having sworn the Boys’ oath not to apologize for creating modern civilization. (I am not making this up.) In return for the sheen of “respectability” Stone has lent them, the Boys have served as bodyguards, escorting him to and from his frequent judicial hearings and proclaiming his innocence from the courthouse steps. In chorus.
Is it a coincidence that Trump sprang a right wing thug with a following of street-fighting fascists? Incidentally, note the fellow on Stone’s left, in the buttoned-up polo? That black-and-gold shirt is the PB’s unofficial uniform.
So let’s see. We’ve ruled out gratitude or loyalty as motives for the commutation. What does Trump need from Roger Stone that he can’t get someplace else? His expertise in the political black arts doesn’t pass muster—he’s not the only asshole in Washington, or these days, nor even the biggest. And let’s not forget that Trump is more than willing to recruit aid from shithole countries happy to remake America in their own image. So no, there’s nothing about Stone’s skill set that makes him indispensable. So what does he bring to the table that Trump wants?
Just this weekend, Trump tipped his hand. Deploying masked, anonymous federal troops in unmarked vans to Portland, with the blessing of his lovable roly-poly Interior Minister Barr—who’d previously okayed the use of tear gas against peaceful protesters so Trump could waddle across the street for a photo op— was the warmup for his election day ace in the hole: full on street violence. Weimar style.
Voter suppression has been the centerpiece of GOP election strategy for decades. It’s unavoidable—as "The Wire’s Baltimore mayoral candidate Tommy Carcetti noted, his hopes were slim because “I wake up white in a city that ain’t.” A party of old white men in an increasingly brown country faces an obvious, existential challenge. One it will ultimately lose, of course, but until then, it can eke out a few more good cycles, with their resultant Federalist Society judges, regulatory rollbacks, and hedge funder tax cuts. But only by making damn sure that minorities don’t vote. Especially in swing states.
Previously, the GOP had played what now seems like softball—gerrymandering, closing polling stations in minority districts, sowing confusion as to the election date. But that won’t work this time. Trump’s response to plague and racial crisis and his plummeting polls has thus far been to flounder and howl like a manatee chopped up in the prop. But in the clutch, unconstrained by any respect for norms, terrified by the prospect of post-presidential prosecution, he’s going to toss the GOP playbook and move with the Nazi.
The Brownshirts, or SA, were Hitler’s paramilitary before his 1933 seizure of power. They were beerhall bullies whose job was “security,” ostensibly protected the Nazi leadership at their public events, in reality intimidating its leftist opponents. It played a critical role in the elections of 1928, 1930, and 1932, showing up at the polls to fight Communist supporters and blocking access to voters in left-leaning districts. And of course, after Hitler was securely Fuhrer, they were the principal executors of the Kristallnacht pogrom.
So here’s what’s going to happen. On Election Day, in urban polling places in swing states, Proud Boys are going to show up as “pollwatchers.” And as soon as black and brown people start showing up in numbers, they’re going to start kicking ass. It doesn’t have to happen a lot. It doesn’t have to happen everywhere. But it will do a lot of damage to turnout. And the thing about Election Day is that it’s just one day, and no do-overs, full stop. So whatever damage is done can’t be undone, ever. So a second term secured by street violence can be reversed only by impeachment. And we know how that went.
Think it can’t happen? See below. Especially the last line: “You still think you can control them?”
