Last week, after the National Enquirer published a salacious story alleging that Ted Cruz had had at least five extramarital affairs, the Texas senator not only denied the story but singled out the person he believed was responsible for planting it: veteran Republican strategist—and on-again, off-again adviser to Donald Trump—Roger Stone.

I spoke with Stone about the Cruz story, but also about the state of the race and how Trump might be preparing for a fight at the GOP convention. A lightly edited and condensed transcript of our conversation follows.

Ted Cruz called you a rat-fucker, accusing you of being behind the National Enquirer’s recent story about his supposed sex scandal. He's denied the story. You've denied the accusation. What do you think is really going on here?

Well, let me ask the most obvious question. If I were going to plant the story as a dirty trick, why would I be quoted on the record in same story? I wasn't born yesterday. Why would I leave a big old thumbprint if I was trying to do something surreptitious? This story, as the actual story says, came from private detectives who were working for a presidential candidate who was not Donald Trump. And I believe that the campaign in question was most likely that of Marco Rubio, based on a lot of published evidence, and the Rubio people, I can confirm personally, were peddling this line to reporters. I think in the end they never got a buyer or they pulled back, and of course his candidacy collapsed so it became moot. Then I think the private detectives may have collected twice on the story. But I responded to a call from the National Enquirer. The National Enquirer actually told me about two allegations that I was entirely unaware of. But this has been kicking around Texas politics for a long time. Even more precisely, major mainstream media organizations like The Washington Post, the Associated Press, and others have been actively working this story, trying to get some confirmation. Now, maybe their journalistic standards are higher than the National Enquirer's, but I never planted anything in the National Enquirer. I never discussed this with Donald, nor with his campaign. So it's entirely unfair. There's as much evidence that I planted this as there's evidence that Ted Cruz has fooled around with five women. Where's the proof? I think I was a convenient scapegoat. I understand the game. Ted's trying to deflect from his own potential culpability here by blaming the whole thing on Trump. And, look, I'm a brand name when it comes to dirty tricks. He called me a henchman, and I don't really object to that, but henchmen get paid, and I have been paid nothing by Trump.

What is the relationship between Trump and David Pecker, the publisher of the Enquirer?

They're evidently friends. I only know that by reading it. I've never discussed Pecker with Trump. I think Pecker is definitely a Trump booster.

Putting aside the sex scandal, do you see any path for Cruz—or Kasich, for that matter—to get the nomination at this point? Or do you think it's Trump's?

I think it'll either be Trump on the first ballot [at the convention] or Paul Ryan on the fourth. If they can manage to euchre this nomination away from Trump by cheating, or because he falls short and can't get the small number of votes he needs to get over the top, which I think is unlikely, then it won't be Ted Cruz. But that's because of his personality, not because of his politics, because he's essentially a globalist—he has a Bush pedigree, came out of the Bush White House and the Bush campaign, his wife worked for Condi, his wife worked for Robert Zoellick, I mean this guy is a self-styled constitutional conservative. What the Establishment doesn't like about him, it's not his politics, it's his personality. But there's no great enthusiasm for him. The Bushes genuinely don't like him. None of the players in the game like him. None of the senators like him. I think he'd get passed over here. He becomes a vehicle to help the Establishment stop Trump. But he would need 86 percent of the delegates going forward to win the nomination. I just think that is highly unlikely.