The Republican National Committee is operating a secret war room to take out front-running GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to the contender's former political adviser.
In an interview Thursday with CNN, Roger Stone, who still supports Trump, alleges the establishment GOP doesn’t want the brash billionaire to wind up as the party standard bearer.
"You suggest the RNC has a secret war room now making plans to take out Donald Trump. Do you really believe that?" incredulous CNN correspondent John Berman asks Stone.
"I really do," he replied. "They want a candidate in the form of Jeb Bush, who's running behind Trump and much more behind Hillary Clinton or Chris Christie or John Kasich. Yes, that's what they would prefer."
"Give us another loser like John McCain," he added.
"I talk to a lot of reporters on a background, and sometimes off the record, basis," Stone added. "Sometimes, when I say to them, 'Where did you get this hit piece of information on Trump?' They'll tell me, 'Oh, a source at the Republican National Committee.' Come on. This is the game. It's the way it works."
Stone maintains the "political establishment" has been totally caught off guard by Trump.
"They don't know what to do about Trump because they said, 'Oh, the immigration thing will kill him,'" Stone said, according to a transcript
posted by Real Clear Politics.
"First, they said he'll never run, and then he ran. Then they said he'll never file his financial disclosures. He filed and on time. It was Jeb who kept asking for extensions. Then they said he's going to fall flat on his face. And he goes up in the polls. Immigration happens, he soars, they say, he going to crash. Now he takes on John McCain whose records on veterans and POWs is terrible and he is not beloved in the base of our party, and he goes even further," Stone said.
Stone also declared RNC Chairman Reince Priebus "will deny this if anybody even bothers to ask him about it."
And, in fact, the RNC mockingly dismissed Stone’s conspiracy theory, CNN reports.
"It's located at Area 51. Elvis runs it," RNC spokeswoman Allison Moore tells the cable news network.
In the CNN interview, Stone also noted Trump is "appealing to all" the "subsets" of the conservative and Republican base.
And he's doing it with "sweeping ideas" that can bring about "sweeping conservative reform," Stone asserted.
"I don't think this is about 14-point plans and getting down in the weeds about specific types of applications," Stone said. "It never worked for Ronald Reagan. It's about big, sweeping ideas. Secure our borders. There's an idea for you.
"Let me ask you this. Would we even be talking about sanctuary cities in the Congress if Donald Trump had purposely almost single-handedly acting this way?" he added.
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