Roger Stone trial highlights volume of contacts he had with Trump and 2016 campaign

[Maxheader]

14. Ask stone about this...

President Donald Trump’s obsession with a border wall with Mexico has now kept the government partially shut for three weeks. But the commander in chief didn’t always think it was such an essential idea. In fact, it started out as a gimmick, or, as the New York Times calls it, “a mnemonic device of sorts.” During the time when Trump was weighing his presidential candidacy, aides wanted to come up with a way to help him remember to talk about getting tough on immigration, which was always seen as a key issue in his campaign.

Political advisers Sam Nunberg and Roger Stone apparently came up with the idea. “How do we get him to continue to talk about immigration?” Nunberg claims he told Stone. “We’re going to get him to talk about he’s going to build a wall.” The plan worked like a charm. Trump talked about immigration in his speeches, and the wall narrative got huge reactions from the crowd, which obviously thrilled Trump. So he kept pushing the idea harder and harder.