"On one of my first days as a Sunday Times reporter in New York I interviewed the terrifying Trump consigliere Roger Stone at JG Melon and the reliably bonkers film director Oliver Stone over afternoon tea at the Plaza.
I’ll always remember this baptism of fire in uptown Manhattan as the day of the two Stones: Roger yelling at me over a cheeseburger about how the Clintons belonged in prison, Oliver ranting to me over Earl Grey about how the CIA killed Hugo Chávez by inserting cancer into his rectum.
“You might as well retire from covering America now,” a friend observed over decompression drinks that evening. 'It can’t get any crazier.'"
"Venezuela’s recent descent into chaos is widely viewed as a damning indictment of what happens when far-left politics are allowed to run free. Many blame the policies of the preening Hugo Chavez, who led the country for 14 years until his death in 2013. But not Oliver Stone. The mustachioed Platoon director told me over tea in Manhattan that he sees the dark hand of the American deep state at work in the death of a man he considered a friend, and the carnage that followed. “He died suspiciously young,” Stone says. “Rectal cancer. You have to ask these questions.”
Does he really think the Americans assassinated Chavez by inserting cancer into his bottom? “I don’t have proof,” he says. “There’s medical ways. We used all kinds of medical techniques — in the Congo, in Cuba. We’ve had biological warfare on our minds. There’s lots of ways the CIA can do things. There was certainly much animus towards him.” I suppose some things are always America’s fault."
My advice to Oliver Stone: If you are going to say something stupid, do it in front of people who won't put it in the newspaper.
Previous Blog Posts on Oliver Stone's Politics
Previous Blog Posts on Oliver Stone's JFK