Roger Stone denies using racial slur
Roger Stone, the political operative who was spared a prison sentence this month by his friend President Donald Trump, denied Sunday that he had uttered a racial slur on a radio show the night before, calling the accusation a “smear” while also contending the word was not offensive.
During a live interview on “The Mo’Kelly Show” on Saturday night, the host, Morris O’Kelly, who is Black, questioned the role that Stone’s relationship and proximity to Trump played in the commutation of his sentence.
O’Kelly said, “There are thousands of people treated unfairly daily. How your number just happened to come up in the lottery — I am guessing it was more than just luck, Roger, right?”
Stone, who was speaking by phone, responded by muttering words that sounded like “arguing with this Negro”; the beginning of his sentence was hard to hear. It sounded as if Stone was not speaking directly into the phone but rather to himself or to someone in the room with him.
When O’Kelly asked him to repeat what he said, Stone let out a sigh, then remained silent for almost 40 seconds. Acting as if the connection had been severed, Stone vehemently denied that he used the slur.
“I did not — you’re out of your mind,” Stone told the host.
On Sunday, in a statement sent by text message to The New York Times, Stone at various points appeared to acknowledge the slur had been used, blamed technical difficulties on the show’s part, denied he said the word and then argued it was not offensive.
“Somebody can very clearly be heard using the alleged epitaph after he cut my sound feed off three times,” he wrote in the text message, apparently meaning “epithet.”
Saying he supported affirmative action and opposed the war on drugs, Stone wrote that he was not racist and that the episode was “a smear designed to boost” O’Kelly’s ratings.
He also wrote, “Mr. O’Kelly needs a good peroxide cleaning of the wax in his ears because at no time did I call him a Negro. That said, Mr. O’Kelly needs to spend a little more time studying Black history and institutions.” The word, he continued, “is far from a slur.”
The word was commonly used to refer to Black Americans through part of the 1960s, but for decades it has been considered offensive. Stone cited the championing of the term by sociologist and NAACP co-founder W.E.B. DuBois and the continued use of the word by the United Negro College Fund.
DuBois died in 1963. The charity retains its name but has rebranded itself as UNCF to de-emphasize the word.
Asked to respond to Stone’s statement Sunday, O’Kelly said that there had been no technical issues and that the audio was clear.
“I wish Mr. Stone would choose one explanation and stick with it,” O’Kelly said. “The audio has not changed; neither should his explanation.”