In an interview with TODAY's Matt Lauer, Roger Stone insists he resigned as senior adviser to Donald Trump, and says that the GOP candidate "has some very specific ideas" for the future of the nation.
“He wants to save this country. He’s very upset about this country,” Stone said Tuesday. “He’s got the greatest life in the world. He doesn’t have to do this. He doesn’t have a burning ambition to be president, but he does want to save the United States.”
News of Stone’s departure from the campaign surfaced Saturday, as Trump defended comments he made about Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly.
Trump said he fired the longtime political strategist, while Stone maintained he resigned.
Stone said he quit after a staffer leaked details to the media about a private phone conversation Trump had with former President Bill Clinton. "It was harmful. It hurt Trump and someone disserved him." Stone also felt that Trump's campaign continued to move away from "big picture issues" by picking fights with the media and other candidates.
While Stone resigned, he continues to be a strong supporter for his former boss. Stone insisted that Trump has a more specific platform that he plans to explain later.
"There's time for that, but not if you are squabbling with media personalities at Fox. That’s why I went rogue, to try to lay out a path," he said. "They need to get back to the big-picture issues, in which Trump has some very specific ideas, and lay them out.
Stone's departure from the campaign occurred as Trump got heat for criticizing the way Kelly handled her job as a moderator during the Republican presidential debate just days earlier, saying: "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her — whatever."
Trump has insisted the comment wasn't a reference to Kelly being hormonal, as many have alleged.
"If I had said that, it would have been inappropriate," Trump told TODAY in a phone interview Monday.
Stone said Trump is prepared to fight an aggressive political campaign and is the only candidate with the wealth to do so. He also has managed to defy expectations.
His critics are "the people who said he would never run, then they said he would never file his financial disclosures, then they said he would fall flat on his face in the poll. They have been wrong, wrong, wrong," Stone said. "The conventional wisdom doesn’t apply to Donald Trump because he is a larger than life figure, but I want him to be more like Reagan. Give us the big picture vision to save this country, because he has the independence from the special interests, the lobbyists, the billionaires, the Koch brothers. We need somebody who will stand up to the system."