Roger Stone facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Roger Stone
Stone in 2024
Born	Roger Joseph Stone Jr. (1952-08-27) August 27, 1952 (age 72) Norwalk, Connecticut, U.S.
Education	George Washington University
Political party	Republican (before 2012, 2015–present) Libertarian (2012–2015)
Spouse(s)	Anne Wesche ​ ​ (m. 1974; div. 1990)​ Nydia Bertran ​ (m. 1992)​

Roger Jason Stone (born Roger Joseph Stone Jr.; August 27, 1952) is an American conservative political consultant and lobbyist. He is most remembered as a political consultant for the campaign of 45th U.S. president Donald Trump.

Early life and education

Stone was born on August 27, 1952, in Norwalk, Connecticut, to Gloria Rose (Corbo) and Roger J. Stone. He grew up in the community of Vista, part of the town of Lewisboro, New York, on the Connecticut border. His mother was the president of Meadow Pond Elementary School PTA, a Cub Scout den mother, and occasionally a small-town reporter; his father "Chubby" (also Roger J. Stone) was a well driller and sometime chief of the Vista volunteer Fire Department. He has described his family as middle-class, blue-collar Catholics. His ancestry includes Hungarian and Italian.

As a student at George Washington University in 1972, Stone invited Jeb Stuart Magruder to speak at a Young Republicans Club meeting, then asked Magruder for a job with Richard Nixon's Committee to Re-elect the President. Magruder agreed and Stone then left college to work for the committee.

Career

Stone began his political career working on the 1972 Nixon campaign. After Nixon won the 1972 presidential election, Stone worked for the administration in the Office of Economic Opportunity. After Nixon resigned, Stone went to work for Bob Dole, but was later fired.

In 1975, Stone helped found the National Conservative Political Action Committee, a New Right organization that helped to pioneer independent expenditure political advertising.

In the 1976 Republican Party presidential primaries, he worked in Ronald Reagan's campaign for U.S. President. In 1977, at age 24, Stone won the presidency of the Young Republicans in a campaign managed by his friend Paul Manafort.

Stone met Donald Trump in 1979 when Stone was the New York regional political director seeking to raise money for the 1980 Reagan campaign. Stone recalled in 2017 that he and Donald Trump "hit it off immediately."

Stone went on to serve as chief strategist for Thomas Kean's campaign for Governor of New Jersey in 1981 and for his reelection campaign in 1985.

In 1987 and 1988, Stone served as senior adviser to Jack Kemp's presidential campaign. In 1995, he was the president of Republican Senator Arlen Specter's campaign for the 1996 Republican Party presidential primaries. Specter withdrew early in the campaign season with less than 2% support.

Stone with President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush in 1982

Roger Stone and his wife Ann Stone with President and First Lady Reagan in 1984

Stone greeting President Reagan in 1985

Stone served as an adviser to the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. He left the campaign on August 8, 2015, amid controversy, with Stone claiming he quit and Trump claiming that Stone was fired. Despite this, Stone still supported Trump.

In 2017, Stone was the subject of a Netflix documentary film, titled Get Me Roger Stone, which focuses on his past and on his role in the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

On January 25, 2019, Stone was arrested at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home in connection with Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation and charged in an indictment with witness tampering, obstructing an official proceeding, and five counts of making false statements. In November 2019, a jury convicted him on all seven felony counts. He was sentenced to 40 months in prison. On July 10, 2020, days before Stone was scheduled to report to prison, Trump commuted his sentence. On August 17, 2020, he dropped the appeal of his convictions. Trump pardoned Stone on December 23, 2020.

Stone with a fan in 2014

On April 25, 2022, the Ontario Party announced that Stone had joined their campaign team as a Senior Strategic Advisor for the 2022 Ontario general election.

Personal style and habits

Stone's personal style has been described as flamboyant. In a 2007 Weekly Standard profile written by Matt Labash, Stone was described as a "lord of mischief" and the "boastful black prince of Republican sleaze". Labash wrote that Stone "often sets his pronouncements off with the utterance 'Stone's Rules,' signifying to listeners that one of his shot-glass commandments is coming down, a pithy dictate uttered with the unbending certitude one usually associates with the Book of Deuteronomy." Examples of Stone's Rules include "Politics with me isn't theater. It's performance art, sometimes for its own sake."

Stone does not wear socks – a fact that Nancy Reagan brought to her husband's attention during his 1980 presidential campaign. Labash described him as "a dandy by disposition who boasts of having not bought off-the-rack since he was 17", who has "taught reporters how to achieve perfect double-dimples underneath their tie knots". Washington journalist Victor Gold has noted Stone's reputation as one of the "smartest dressers" in Washington. Stone's longtime tailor is Alan Flusser. Stone dislikes single-vent jackets (describing them as the sign of a "heathen"), saying he owns 100 silver-colored neckties and has 100 suits in storage. Fashion stories have been written about him in GQ. Stone has written of his dislike for jeans and ascots and has praised seersucker three-piece suits, as well as Madras jackets in the summertime and velvet blazers in the winter.

In 1999, Stone credited his facial appearance to "decades of following a regimen of Chinese herbs, breathing therapies, tai chi and acupuncture." Stone wears a diamond pinky ring in the shape of a horseshoe and in 2007 he had Richard Nixon's face tattooed on his back.

Books and other writings

Since 2010, Stone has been an occasional contributor to the conservative website The Daily Caller, serving as a "male fashion editor". Stone also writes for his own fashion blog, Stone on Style.

Stone has written five books, all published by Skyhorse Publishing of New York City.

• The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ (with Mike Colapietro contributing) (Skyhorse Publishing, 2013)
• Nixon's Secrets: The Rise, Fall and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate, and the Pardon (Skyhorse Publishing, 2014)
• The Clintons' War on Women (with Robert Morrow of Austin, Texas) (Skyhorse Publishing, 2015)
• Jeb! and the Bush Crime Family (with Saint John Hunt) (Skyhorse Publishing, 2016)
• The Making of the President 2016: How Donald Trump Orchestrated a Revolution (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017)
• Stone's Rules: How to Win at Politics, Business, and Style (Skyhorse Publishing, 2018)
• The Myth of Russian Collusion: The Inside Story of How Donald Trump REALLY Won (Skyhorse Publishing, 2019) (paperback edition of Stone's 2016 book The Making of the President 2016 with an added "Introduction 2019")

See also

In Spanish: Roger Stone para niños

• List of people granted executive clemency by Donald Trump