Roger Stone, a former adviser to President Trump, lost an invitation to speak at a Florida Republican group’s annual dinner due to negative remarks he made about former first lady Barbara Bush.
The Okaloosa Republican Executive Committee “uninvited” Stone over comments he made to the right-wing conspiratorial website InfoWars about Bush, who died Tuesday.
“I understand I’m going to take a lot of crap for speaking the truth about Barbara Bush,” Stone said in an interview with InfoWars host Alex Jones. “She was a mean-spirited, vindictive drunk. She is ascending into hell right now. She’s not going to heaven. She was a bad person.”
Stone also reportedly wrote on Instagram that “Barbara Bush drank so much booze, if they cremated her … her body would burn for three days.”
Stone was slated to be the keynote speaker for the group’s Lincoln Reagan Day Dinner on May 12, but chairman Mark Franks said that in light of his comments, he “ended our contract” with Stone.
“It’s tough to lose a speaker when you’re three weeks out, but this is what I felt needed to be done out of respect for Barbara Bush,” Franks told the Northwest Florida Daily News. “I thought he’d be entertaining, but for me this went over the line.”
In an email to the paper, Stone insisted he was the one who decided to cancel the contract because “the sponsors wanted to censor my public comments.”
“The day that some officious country club Republican in Fort Walton Beach tells me what I can and cannot say in public will be the day that hell freezes over,” Stone said.
Barbara Bush’s funeral will be held Saturday in Houston.
