Top Trump ally: Matt Drudge, Alex Jones 'played crucial roles' in electing Trump

Roger Stone said in an interview published Monday that the "rise of alternative media" should be credited for President-elect Donald Trump's unforeseen election victory.

The longtime Trump confidante specifically identified internet news mogul Matt Drudge and Infowars founder Alex Jones as pivotal forces throughout the campaign.

"I think they both played crucial roles," Stone said on "The Jamie Weinstein Show."

Stone, who briefly advised Trump toward the start of the campaign, continued: "Drudge particularly, but Alex deserves a place only because particularly in the nomination phase when you have conservatives who view Trump as a populace conservative, not a dogmatic conservative, and they're looking for a verifier, they're looking for somebody, some third party to say, 'Yeah, this guy's a good guy.'"

Earlier in the interview, Stone said that he believed Infowars, widely dismissed by journalists as a website that promotes conspiracy theories, was "far more credible than CNN" while covering the election.

"Frankly CNN is more biased than Infowars," Stone said, adding that he considered the cable news network to be a "wall-to-wall [Hillary] Clinton commercial."

Trump has repeatedly attacked CNN, among other media outlets, since entering politics in the summer of 2015. He often has referred to the outlet as the "Clinton News Network" and, according to reports, excoriated its president in a closed-door meeting with television executives earlier this month.