Inside Trump Nation with Roger Stone, Who's Doing Just Fine

Early Monday evening, about four dozen mostly Latino Donald Trump supporters crammed into a small meeting room on the second floor of John Martin's Irish Pub and Restaurant in Coral Gables, Florida. In the back, four African American men in white T-shirts stood up and brandished placards that read, "Blacks for Trump," alongside a wheelchair-bound, heavily sunburned white dude in a green Boston Celtics cap holding a "Veterans for Trump" sign.

The crowd erupted in applause when the guest of honor, Trump's erstwhile (and unofficial) political adviser Roger Stone, strolled up the stairs. Invited by the Women's Republican Club of Miami to talk about his new book, The Making of the President 2016, the snow-haired Republican strategist confirmed breaking news reports that he'd turned over documents requested by the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of its inquiry into alleged collusion between Russia and members of the Trump campaign during the presidential election.

"Let me say that I am fully compliant with the request from the Senate Intelligence Committee," Stone, who is also under FBI scrutiny as part of the Russia probe, bellowed into a microphone. "I have also received a request from the House Intelligence Committee. I am anxious to testify. I require no subpoena. I am happy to come voluntarily. I am not asking for immunity, and I will not plead the Fifth Amendment."

That last flourish was apparently a dig at Michael Flynn, the disgraced retired general and national security adviser who is also at the center of the Russia probe and is expected to plead the Fifth rather than play ball with Congress.

The audience cheered Stone's bluster, with a few men yelling, "Woo hoo!"

The two-hour gathering provided a snapshot into the current state of Trumpism, one in which the avalanche of breaking news about the burgeoning Russia-White House scandal has done little to bury enthusiasm for the president among his base. Despite Trump's historically low approval ratings, his grip on his staunchest supporters remains solid. According to CBS News' Nation Tracker poll, 19 percent of Americans are still bona fide Trump "believers."

Alex Lacayo, a Nicaraguan-born US citizen sporting a white "Make America Great Again" baseball hat, counts himself as one such Trump zealot. Over the past five months, Lacayo has joined Trump supporters outside of the president's Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago resort to counter protesters, and has followed Stone around at his book signing appearances in South Florida.

"Even if Trump came up with a cure for cancer, the media would claim it is not true," Lacayo told me. "If the media doesn't change its tone toward Trump, you are guaranteeing him another term. There is a lot of anger out there uniting people behind the cause."

Denise Galvez, a public relations and marketing consultant who founded Latinas for Trump, said she doesn't pay attention anymore to negative news about the president. "It is pretty obvious if you scan the headlines of major newspapers that the coverage slants negative in a way that is so offensive," she told me. "Until they show me there is an actual crime to pursue, I think it is all noise."

Stone was the perfect man to rouse up the rabble. The 64-year-old political operative became a household name in American politics as the "dirty trickster" of Richard Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign. And even though he was the youngest witness to testify in front of the Watergate grand jury at age 19, Stone remains a Nixon apologist, still sporting an infamous tattoo of Tricky Dick on his back. "It is true that Richard Nixon made numerous mistakes and gave his enemies a sword," Stone told the John Martin's crowd. "But his great sin: He was a peacemaker."

Following Nixon's downfall, Stone worked on the campaigns of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and peddled influence for the DC lobbying firm of Black, Manafort and Stone, which represented third-world despots like Zaire's dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and had ties to Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines. (Manafort is now dealing with his own unique kind of scrutiny.) But Stone's biggest prize was Trump, whom he began urging to run for president way back in 1987, according to some reports.

At the Irish pub, Trump's sensei transported his audience to the Stone Zone, as he calls it, where alternative facts are gospel, Nixon is held up as the Beltway version of Mahatma Gandhi, and the current sitting president is America's anointed messiah.

"The president is absolutely right," Stone said. "The charge of Russian collusion is a scandal without evidence. It is a canard, a falsehood, a fairy tale, and a steamy pile of BS."

Stone said the parallels between Nixon's downfall and the attempted "deep-state takedown" of Trump—where spies and FBI agents supposedly undermine the will of the people—are "eerie."

He boasted that Trump did not need the Russians to help him defeat "an old, tired, corrupt candidate who was out of ideas and out of energy." The crowd confirmed Stone was referring to Hillary Clinton when they began chanting, "Lock her up! Lock her up," a popular rallying cry at Trump campaign stops, and one recently appropriated by airline passengers pissed off at some old guy wearing a Make America Great Again hat.

"I couldn't agree more," Stone said. "Bill and Hillary Clinton are not liberals. They have no ideology other than the ideology of money. They would steal a hot stove… What we were told at the end of Watergate is that no person is above the law. It is time for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to convene a grand jury and send for Hillary, Bill, and [their daughter] Chelsea."

He also took a few swipes at two of Trump's current White House staffers, the Donald's son-in-law Jared Kushner, and the chief-of-staff, Reince Priebus. "The president has not been well served by a number of his advisers," Stone said. "Did anyone here vote for Jared Kushner? Did anyone here vote for Reince Priebus? It is time to clean house in my opinion."

Many of the attendees nodded in agreement, with a few more "yeah!"s for good measure.

Just before wrapping up his remarks to sign copies of his book he's hawking, Stone reiterated to a gaggle of reporters that he wants to testify before Congress.

"Can we do it tomorrow?" he asked. "There is not a shred of evidence behind this entirely Democratic [Party] meme, this narrative of Russian assistance of Donald Trump."

Follow Francisco Alvarado on Twitter.