With Barry Goldwater’s words playing in a loop in his head and Richard Nixon (literally) tattooed on his back, Roger Stone, longtime consigliere to Donald Trump, is a true believer in Republicanism. Like many blindly devoted souls, he blissfully avoids facts that might constrain his ardor. Example: Stone refers repeatedly to Hillary Clinton as a “crook,” despite having been an employee and apologist for President Richard Nixon, whose administration literally committed criminal acts that stunned the nation and led to resignation.

Stone initially bonded with Trump over their mutual support for Ronald Reagan’s first successful bid for the White House. In The Art of the Deal, Trump turned on Reagan and he eventually gave the boot to Stone, though he embraced them both once more when it was expedient during his disgraceful run for the Oval Office. (Reagan, who’d been dead for more than a decade, could not be reached for comment on the reunion.)

Trump, who has Nixon imprinted on him figuratively, has not been aided by his paranoia, dishonesty, vindictiveness or capriciousness during the unforgiving light of the general election. Nor has he been helped by his lazy, bigoted depictions of “the blacks” or “the Hispanics.” Like Stone, Trump elides nuances in the name of a blunt-instrument approach to winning power. These are simple men in complicated times.

Edward Luce, who’s had a spectacular season covering America’s Baba Booey of an election, has a lively profile of Stone in the Financial Times. An excerpt:

What about Hillary Clinton, I ask? What happens if she beats Trump? Stone’s words spill out even faster than before. At one point, he sounds so strident that half the restaurant turns to see what the fuss is about. “If she wins, we’re done as a nation,” Stone shoots back. “We’ll be overrun by hordes of young Muslims, like Germany and France, raping, killing, violating, desecrating. You can see that. It’s happening there.” Stone is so enraptured by his dystopian nightmare, he appears not to notice that everyone can hear him. “If Hillary wins, there will be widespread unrest, civil disobedience, badly divided government in which half the country believes she, her daughter, and her husband belong in prison. There’ll be no goodwill. No honeymoon. There will be systematic inspection of all of her actions because someone who has been a crook in the past will be a crook in the future. It will be sad. I’ll probably be forced to move to Costa Rica.”•