President Donald Trump's close adviser Roger Stone — better known as a notorious right-wing hatchet man and conspiracy theorist— doesn't seem to have learned much from his boss's own bad experiences with Twitter. If he had, he might have avoided his embarrassing weekend incident, one in which he may have admitted to colluding with Julian Assange to leak emails that damaged Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
Stone took to Twitter to reiterate Trump's false claim that President Barack Obama had wiretapped him, posting, "The buck stops here. Obama responsible for illegal surveillance of @realDonaldTrump - must be charged, convicted and jailed." After that, he got into a heated exchange with a feminist professor Twitter user, whom he called a "stupid ignorant ugly bitch," and later, a "stupid stupid bitch."
He did, however, remove the offending tweets, although the Twitter user, Caroline O., had already taken screenshots of them.
He has since taken to Twitter to deny that his focus on Caroline O.'s gender instead of her arguments constituted misogyny.
During that exchange, Stone also bragged about having a "perfectly legal back channel to Assange." It is unclear how any funneling of stolen emails could be legal, especially considering that Assange has well-established links to Russia and The New York Times has reported that Stone is "under scrutiny" for possible links to Russia. During the 2016 campaign, Assange leaked politically damaging emails about Hillary Clinton's campaign that the intelligence community agrees were hacked by the Russian government in the hopes of helping electing Trump to the presidency.
Stone also picked a fight with acclaimed author J. K. Rowling, best known for the "Harry Potter" series, after she saw his exchange with Caroline O. and tweeted her dismay. Stone responded by taunting Rowling in a tweet. To date, that post remains on his profile.
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