Watch here my interview with the infamous conservative political consultant, Roger Stone. We discuss everything from Roger’s take on the excellent movie The Apprentice; his and Trump’s relationship with Trump’s one time mentor Roy Cohn; he reveals Trump texted him last night after the State of the Union speech…and more.

Is it just me or, when I ask him about JD Vance at the 16.50 mark, do you detect a subtle warning to the Vice President to stay out of the limelight?

We move on to chat about the Musk/Trump relationship. Roger refuses to join the doom-mongers. And he takes us inside his relationship with Richard Nixon and recaps how Trump first got on Nixon’s radar.

And I was especially interested when he revealed at 23:55 that Trump still asks him from time to time, somewhat baffled “Why did Nixon throw in the towel?” He makes an interesting observation about how the internet and proliferation of media has been a game-changer.

At the start of the interview he reveals that, in their fifty years of friendship, in all their one-on-one meetings and calls, Trump has never once expressed fear. Rage, yes. Anxiety that he might lose – or, given the legal tribulations of the last four years, go to jail – no. Stone says that the only other president who had a similarly thick skin and unrelenting optimistic outlook (my phrasing) was Ronald Reagan.

He reiterates something that I think we sometimes lose sight of given Trump’s celebrity. That it’s very hard to get to the top in politics unless you can really perform for the cameras.

At the end I remembered something my dad said to me not so long ago. He phoned me up from the UK and said: “I don’t get why the Democrats don’t field the obvious candidate for President.”

Who? I asked.

“George Clooney” he replied.

Watch the conversation at Vicky Ward Investigates