Any time a political consultant appears in a movie or television show, he's inevitably not just a smarmy character, but one planning and executing incredibly elaborate schemes usually involving illegal activity. On one of the last seasons of 24, for instance, the president's daughter called up a political consultant friend of hers, who within an episode or two (i.e. within an hour or two) had arranged for an assassin to kill a heavily protected prisoner in the White House itself. Drama has to be dramatic, of course, but the reality is that the work that political consultants do is much more mundane. Some of them sometimes try to pull off triple-twisting double-bank-shot secret conspiratorial maneuvers, but it's pretty rare. There is one notable exception, however: the extraordinary Roger Stone, who brings a mad verve to dirty tricks that few even aspire to. Now, it seems that Stone is advising Donald Trump in his weird publicity-seeking enterprise of pretending he might run for president. Ben Smith shares some evidence suggesting that Stone is trumping (!) up a phony "Draft Trump" movement, to show that regular folks are clamoring to be led into the future by America's most vulgar citizen. Stone really is an amazing character: you can read Jeffrey Toobin's 2008 profile of him in the New Yorker to learn just how amazing. Interestingly enough, Donald Trump is quoted in the article calling Stone "a stone cold loser." But now they may be working together. I'm not saying Stone would actually go so far as to have a guy killed if The Donald paid him to. But I'll bet he could. It's too bad Trump won't actually run.
