Longtime Donald Trump ally Roger Stone has a secret trick to get the former president to say whatever he wants: just lie to him.
That’s just one of the revelations in the bombshell documentary, A Storm Foretold, which chronicles the self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” before and after the 2020 election. The documentary recently premiered in Denmark but hasn’t been released in the United States.
In footage obtained by The Daily Beast, the Danish filmmakers who produced the film caught Stone explaining how he’s long manipulated Trump. And the filmmakers, Christoffer Guldbrandsen and Frederik Marbell, brutally contrast Stone’s disparaging remarks with those he delivered in October 2019 at a right-wing conference at Trump’s Doral golf club in Florida.
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“I want to talk to you about Donald Trump,” Stone tells the crowd of MAGA-hat-wearing attendees. “Someone who is a force of nature in himself. Someone who marches to his own drummer. Someone who is not handled, not managed. Not controlled. A man who cannot be bossed. And cannot be bought, which has made him one of the greatest presidents since Abraham Lincoln.”
The film then cuts to Stone being recorded at a distance, with the Trump ally going in and out of the frame, while he tells another person the real truth about handling Trump.
“I have a 40-year record of being able to convince the big man to do what’s in his best interest. He’s not easy to deal with. It’s complicated,” Stone said. “He resents any implication that he is handled or managed or directed.”
Stone then details a hypothetical situation where he—serving as an adviser—might be able to plant an idea inside Trump’s head.
“You have to say, ‘Remember that night when we were in Buffalo. And you gave that speech, and God, it had to be 10,000 people, the biggest crowd they’d ever seen. And you said XYZ, and the place went crazy, remember that? I don’t know where you came up with that line, but it’s one of the best things.’”
Stone then theorized how Trump might respond to the lie.
“Yeah, I’m going to use that one again,” Stone said, playing the part of Trump.
The longtime Trump ally claimed he had used the tactic for decades.
“Doesn’t fucking matter that he never said it—doesn’t matter,” Stone said. “It’s time-consuming, but it works. I did it for 30 years.”
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Guldbrandsen said he believed Stone had forgotten he was wearing a microphone when he admitted he makes up lies to influence Trump.
“Those are kind of mishaps,” Guldbrandsen said. “I think he had forgotten that he was wearing a mic. I know he had forgotten, because the next morning, he was really, really anxious about what I had recorded.”
Even before its U.S. release, the documentary has already put Stone in hot water. As The Daily Beast reported last October, Stone was caught in the film calling Ivanka Trump an “abortionist bitch” and suggesting he wanted to “fight” Jared Kushner after not receiving a Trump pardon. Stone also said Trump would get his “fucking brains beat in” if he ran for president a third time.
In another scene obtained by The Daily Beast, Stone rips into Trump over his taste in movies.
“So here’s a weird thing,” Stone said while in a car driving with the filmmakers. “Trump is obsessed with the movie Sunset Boulevard. He watches it over and over and over again.”
“Isn’t that weird?” he asked. “That’s weird, right?”
Stone did not return The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
While Stone has long been a Trump adviser, and was largely responsible for Trump’s first run for president in 1988, his relationship with Trump is best described as complicated. Over the years, Stone and Trump have had repeated falling-outs and reunions. But with a contentious 2024 presidential GOP primary, Stone currently seems to be back in Trump’s good graces, as Stone directs his self-touted “ratfucking” talents toward the former president’s main GOP rival: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
This latest clip, however, where Stone claims he can manipulate Trump, might once again put him in another difficult spot.
