A Revealing Lunch With Roger Stone
With the clock running out on Donald Trump’s campaign and a catastrophic loss looking more likely, politicos are snickering that the careers of his advisers and strategists will be sacrificed in the process. But at least one of them, legendary Republican dirty trickster Roger Stone, has plans for life after Trump, including writing a book about the Donald.
Stone belongs to a breed of cat always found in and around both political parties. Some are well-known public figures who clean up their language for TV; others steer clear of the limelight. Off-camera, their favorite word is ratfuck, and their default emotional status veers between satisfaction at revenge served cold and the delicious anticipation of plotting it.
Stone has honed his black-arts legend for 40 years. A notorious dandy in bespoke suits and two-tone suede spectator shoes, the 64-year-old is as proud of his hair plugs and body-builder physique as he is of his vast, expensive tie collection. He also boasts something else that, I must admit, gave me a moderately unprofessional and ridiculously juvenile reason for wanting to meet the man behind the legend. I badly wanted to get him to remove his shirt so I could photograph the tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back.
I had met Stone twice since the Trump campaign started—once at his favorite Manhattan watering hole, 21 Club, where he was nattily attired in double-breasted chalk stripe, and once at a bar
