Cagle World

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

This week America said its final goodbye to Sandra Day O’Connor.

The first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court was eulogized at Washington National Cathedral on Tuesday by President Joe Biden and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Justice O’Connor was appointed in 1981 by my father, served nearly a quarter century and died Dec. 1 at age 93.

As Chief Justice John Roberts said, she was “a strong, influential, iconic jurist. Her leadership shaped the legal profession, making it obvious that judges are both women and men.”

Most people know about Justice O’Connor making history as the first woman justice.

But few people know the story behind her selection and the role my sister Maureen played in making it happen.

Even Justice O’Connor didn’t know the backstory until I made a point of telling it to her when she visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library out here in Simi Valley.

The deal my father made with Maureen took place during the 1980 Republican primaries when he was running hard for the party’s presidential nomination.

Maureen was closely involved in the Reagan campaign, giving speeches around the country to Republican women’s groups and local party officials.

There was a big problem with her, however.

At the time she was a fiery and ardent advocate of the ERA – the controversial Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution that would have guaranteed equality of rights under the law for all persons regardless of sex.
But my father, Republicans and conservatives in general were strongly opposed to the ERA.

The brain trust of my father’s campaign – Lyn Nofziger, Michael Deaver and Stuart Spencer – became seriously worried about Maureen’s public support for the ERA and called her in for a meeting with her father.

They told Maureen her father could not have her on the trail campaigning for him and the ERA at same time and wanted to know what could be done to get her off the ERA trail.

Now Maureen was a smart and tough cookie. She knew how to play the game to get what she wanted.

At the meeting her father was sitting in front of her, to her left, and Nofziger, Deaver and Spencer were sitting to her right.

She turned to the trio and said, “If you can get your candidate to guarantee me that his first Supreme Court appointment will be a woman, I’ll stop campaigning for the ERA.”

Their candidate – her father – said, “Done. Deal.”

Maureen turned around to her father, who had his hand out. They shook hands, agreeing that if he got elected his first nominee to the Supreme Court would be a woman.

The deal was made between Maureen and her father, not anyone else. And it was done solely to get her to stop campaigning for the ERA.

Maureen kept her part of the bargain. But later that year at the GOP national convention in Detroit she had a little fun at the expense of her father’s handlers.

She had some campaign buttons made – some small and some large – that had “E-R-A” written on them in big letters and passed them out to her friends and family.

I had a small one. My wife Colleen had a small one. And Maureen wore a huge one.

The Reagan campaign staff bosses were worried that she had gone back on her word and was supporting the ERA again.

But she hadn’t flipped. If you got up really close to the button and read the tiny print under the letters “E-R-A,” you got the joke.

It said simply, “Elect Reagan Anyway.”

And that’s the backstory about how my late sister Maureen used her smarts to get Ronald Reagan to put the first woman on the Supreme Court – who turned out to be the great Sandra Day O’Connor.

P.S. It’s because I know the O’Connor backstory and other backstories from my father’s time in office that the people who run the Reagan Library kiddingly refer to me sometimes as “The Prequel.”

Merry Christmas.

–

Copyright 2023 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

We’ve got Israel looking for billions.

We’ve got Ukraine begging for more billions.

And the president and Democrats can’t wait another day to cut fat checks for both countries.

Thank God the Republicans in charge of the House of Representatives are telling Democrats that before we dish out money to help Ukraine and Israel defend their borders, we have to defend ours first.

Naturally, Democrats don’t want anything to do with that sensible deal.

They’re calling it outrageous. They’re saying Republicans are bad guys who don’t care about dead Israelis or who support Russia and not Ukraine.

But wait a minute.

Thanks to the Democrats, our Southern border isn’t even a border anymore. It’s become the wide-open front door of America that 10,000 people from a hundred countries want to pass through – every day.

About 8,500 are being allowed in – checked in, really, to Hotel America – every day. Then they are quickly scattered around to cities like Chicago and New York, where they’re causing social and economic problems that have become so costly even the biased national media can no longer ignore them.

Republicans in the House cannot allow the Democrats and President Biden to get the money they want for Ukraine and Israel now with the promise that they’ll close the Southern border later.

Republicans – and the country – got suckered down that crooked Democrat road in 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act.

Known as the Simpson–Mazzoli Act, it granted amnesty to millions of immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally and gave them a path to citizenship.

My father agreed to sign that act into law in exchange for a promise made by the Democrats running Congress that they would close the border.

Thirty seven years and at least 12 million illegal immigrants later, we’re still waiting for the Democrats to keep their promise.

This president has irresponsibly opened the border wide and invited in all the citizens of the world.

So many people are pouring in that they can’t be properly vetted. We don’t know if they’re criminals, plus thousands of single young men are coming from countries that hate us like Iran and China.

God knows how many terrorists have sneaked in – which explains why FBI director Christopher Wray is saying the threat of terrorism today is at the “blinking-red” level.

It’s no wonder every morning when I wake up it feels like Sept. 10, 2001. I cross my fingers and pray we won’t suffer another major attack by terrorists.

I believe most of the immigrants coming here today from Mexico, Central America and God-knows-where else are good and decent people who’ll make fine Americans – even most of the got-aways.

It’s true that to get here they broke or took advantage of our poorly written or badly enforced immigration laws. But they came for the same good reasons our forefathers did – to improve their economic lives and enjoy our freedoms.

We don’t hear enough about the successful immigrants who came here illegally decades ago, but I run into them all the time.

For example, the guy who put in new counter tops for our house in 2006 was sneaked across the border as a child in the trunk of a Ford Grenada because his parents didn’t want him to grow up in Mexico.

He grew up, was given amnesty by the Simpson-Mazzoli Act and became a premier stone worker – and a good American.

You can’t blame today’s tsunami of illegal immigrants for taking advantage of our broken immigration policy, which has been a bipartisan failure for decades and has been deliberately blown up by Biden’s insane open-door policies.

Republicans are now in a position to end our immigration nightmare. But they have to be tough with the Democrats. It’s been 37 years since Simpson-Mazzoli. It’s time to shut the damn door.

–

Copyright 2023 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

Monica Crowley summed up the sad state of the Republican Party perfectly this week in a single tweet.

Following the House’s 311-114 vote last week to expel the lying GOP weirdo and future criminal defendant George Santos, she wrote:

“Republicans bounced George Santos.

“Kevin McCarthy is leaving this month.

“Bill Johnson is retiring.

“This will leave the GOP with a ONE-SEAT majority.

“Democrats would never do their voters like this.

“These people don’t give a bleep about us or the country. In fact, they revel in sticking it to us and the country.

“Disgusting.”

Disgusting is the right word to describe what Republicans are doing. Pathetic, stupid and hapless apply, too.

Republicans increasingly look like a political party that’s trying to commit suicide – and take the country with it.

They are in the process of proving – yet again – that they are incapable of draining the horrible federal swamp they’ve allowed Democrats to create in Washington.

Given the economic and social mess the Democrats have made in just three years, the GOP should be riding high today and counting on a rout in next year’s elections.

Democrats have not only stuck the country with the most incompetent and apparently corrupt president in our lifetimes, they’ve got us entangled in two wars and thrown open our Southern border so wide they’re letting in ten thousand illegal immigrants a day.

By now, if the Republican Party had even a shred of competency, it should have a 100-seat majority in the House and be in control of the Senate

Instead, the party Ronald Reagan loved but would barely recognize is looking at the possibility of a one-seat majority in the only part of the federal government that can prevent Democrats from damaging the country even more..

What if some House Republican gets really sick or dies next month? We’d have a 50-50 split. Then what could the GOP do to block the Democrats – besides nothing?

The Republicans who are leaving the House say they are retiring. But my wife Colleen is more accurate when she calls them “quitters.”

What they’re doing is like the entire offensive line of a team that’s about to play in the Super Bowl suddenly saying, “We quit.”

What Republicans in Congress desperately need is a real leader with good conservative ideas and a lot of spunk to take on the liberal media.

They haven’t had one of those since Newt Gingrich rose up in the House in the mid-‘90s and pushed his agenda to reduce the size of government, cut taxes and reform welfare.

The GOP’s “leader” in Congress today is Sen. Mitch McConnell, an ancient political tactician with zero ideas and zero public appeal who is barely half a step ahead of bumbling Joe Biden.

A major problem with Republican politicians of our era is that so many of them are only interested in becoming a top dog – a governor or president. They aren’t interested in getting elected to Congress, state houses and city councils.

Democrats are much smarter.

They understand they don’t have to be the governor or president to get their way. All they have to do is win control of the House or Senate or state legislatures.

Winning a governorship or presidency is just a cherry on top that lets them control the entire government – so they can wreck places like California with their bad policies.

It’s become very clear that there are precious few Republicans in Congress now who have the brains, backbones or leadership skills to save us from the Democrats.

If we want a Red Wave next year, it’s going to be up to voters to elect dozens of principled conservatives who know how to lead and fight, not quit.

The scary thing is, I can’t point to a single Republican in Congress right now who’d make a good model for the kind of men and women we will so badly need.

–

Copyright 2023 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

Excuse me for skipping the great debate Thursday night between the governors of Florida and California.

I had better things to do than watch a meaningless political debate between Red State hero Ron DeSantis and Blue State hero Gavin Newsom.

Anyway, I’ve already suffered enough political pain in the last few months.

I’ve watched what seemed like a dozen presidential primary debates – Republican Party exhibition games, really – starring a bunch of second- and third-stringers who haven’t made a dent in the lead of its future 2024 candidate Donald Trump.

And now I was supposed to watch a made-up-for-TV studio wrestling match between two governors who will not be running for president in 2024? No thanks.

I didn’t really need to watch the debate.

Writing this on Thursday afternoon, I can easily predict Thursday night’s winners and losers: Red State people will say DeSantis won and Blue State people and the liberal media will say Newsom won.

But both governors have little to gain by engaging each other now.

Even if DeSantis humiliates Newsom tonight, it won’t help him vault past Trump and win the Republican Party nomination for 2024.

I don’t know what he would gain or why his campaign advisers think meeting face-to-face with Newsom was a good idea.

What are the pluses for DeSantis? To prove Red States do better than Blue States? It’s true, but only people in Red States will believe that.

In any case, DeSantis is already loved in the Red States and he’s proved he’s been a great Republican governor who’s turned a purple state deep red.

But as we’ve said here before, he’s also proved he’s a lousy debater. Why prove it again?

He knows how to defend himself well from attacks by the Florida media. But when he’s in a lineup of Republican candidates on a debate stage he’s been stiff, has had a hard time competing and at times has almost seemed to disappear.

Meanwhile, while DeSantis has been wasting time prepping for an unnecessary debate with Newsom, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has been kicking his butt in the Iowa primary polls.

As for slick Gavin Newsom, he won’t get much benefit from winning tonight’s debate even if he leaves his fellow presidential wannabe in tears.

His twisting road to the White House bypasses DeSantis and goes right through the office door of VP Kamala Harris.

His easiest shot at moving into the Biden administration would be for the Democrat Party bosses to have him replace Harris as VP and have Harris hop over to the Attorney General’s desk after Merrick Garland retires.

I haven’t heard anyone put forth that clever scheme, but I’m not betting it won’t happen.

With Biden becoming more mentally incapacitated by the day in front of the whole world, putting Newsom in the VP spot would be an astute move by Democrats.

Newsom would allay the Democrats’ fear of the 25th Amendment being invoked to remove a re-elected President Biden because they would have someone with a brain who could step in for him instead of Harris, who has no brains.

So, it’s pretty clear that neither DeSantis nor Newsom will benefit much from their “Great Debate.”

The only sure winners will be Trump (again), moderator Sean Hannity, who put the contrived match together, and Fox News, which might score higher than usual ratings.

That’s why instead of enduring another forgettable political debate that ends in a 0-0 tie, I’ll be enjoying the Seahawks-Cowboys game on Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime.

At least I know there will be a clear winner.

–

Copyright 2023 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

Here in sunny Los Angeles, it’s raining.

It’s too bad it didn’t rain real hard last Saturday.

It might have helped firefighters put out the enormous fire under the 10 Freeway near downtown before the heat weakened the pillars and forced the highway to be closed.

The fire – which officials now say was arson – erupted near a village of homeless people living in their colorful tents, trailers and sleeping bags.

It was fed by huge stacks of wood pallets that were illegally stored in the underpass.

Gov. Gavin Newsom promised the freeway will only be closed for the next month or so while repairs are made 24/7.

I’m sure that’s good news for the 300,000 drivers who were using the highway each day.

Gov. Newsom would never dare say that “houseless” persons might have had anything to do with last Saturday’s inferno. He acted like the fire was an act of nature. A lightning strike, or maybe climate change.

He didn’t seem worried about the fate of the homeless people displaced by the freeway fire.

They were a small part of the city’s 70,000-plus homeless population, and they’ll be able to easily find other underpasses and sidewalks.

That happy ending might not happen for thousands of homeless citizens who suddenly disappeared from downtown San Francisco during the last two weeks.

They were living happily in their sidewalk homesteads until China’s Xi Jinping and other leaders came to town for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

The summit has been in the international news this week for several reasons, most of them embarrassing to the United States.

The good news was President Biden met face-to-face with Xi for four hours of serious talk without needing a nap.

The bad news was later, to the horror of the State Department, Biden referred to Xi in a speech as a “dictator,” which was probably the most truthful gaffe Biden has made in years.

The other big news from San Francisco was the mystery of the missing homeless people.

Seemingly overnight, many of the city’s permanent sidewalk population disappeared. So did their drug zones, tents, sleeping bags, junk piles, used needles and feces.

City crews power-hosed sidewalks, erased graffiti, painted murals and colorful crosswalk markings, installed planter boxes with wildflowers and erected fences around the Moscone Center where the summit was being held.

Presto, San Francisco suddenly looked clean, safe and civilized again. It looked like a place tourists from Iowa and dictators from China would feel comfortable visiting.

City hall’s cosmetic overhaul wasn’t anything new. Other American cities have cleaned up themselves in advance of the Pope’s visit, a Super Bowl game or the Olympics.

San Francisco’s sweeping of its unsafe and unsightly streets and sidewalks was so dramatic and quick that even the liberal media noticed, and asked Newsom for an explanation.

Newson, who’s been busy pretending not to be running for president, actually admitted that, yes, it was true that the city he used to be mayor of cleaned up its act for the benefit of Xi and the other leaders.

It was like when you tidy up your house when you invite guests for dinner, he claimed.

I don’t know if the voters of San Francisco will ever wake up, smell the BS and dethrone the Democrats who’ve been wrecking their city for decades.

For 30 years Newsom and his ilk spent hundreds of millions and couldn’t solve the city’s homeless problem. Then Dictator Xi came to town, and a week later a thousand flower boxes bloomed.

No one seems to know where San Francisco’s homeless people went. And so far, I haven’t seen the media demanding to know if they were flown to New York City, spent the week camped out on Newsom’s estate, or what.

But San Francisco’s miracle gave me an idea for any city in America that wants to quickly solve its homeless problem.

Get the mayor to invite Dictator Xi for dinner.

–

Copyright 2023 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

You know how sometimes when you’re going 70 mph and suddenly a stupid fly in the car starts bothering the hell out you?

You know how it keeps buzzing around your head, landing on your windshield, and you have to open the window and try to shoo it out without crashing your car?

Well, Vivek Ramaswamy reminded me of that fly during the Republican primary debate Wednesday night.

The brash 38-year-old easily stole the show in the third Trump-less contest.

And he was dead right on a couple issues – especially when he attacked the liberal media and told the Republican National Committee to fire its loser-in-chief Ronna McDaniels.

Much of the time Vivek was like that fly – annoying.

But he said out loud what Republicans everywhere are saying – We’re tired of losing elections.

The debate came a day after disappointing losses for Republicans, who saw their candidates and/or issues lose to Democrats in Ohio, Kentucky and Virginia.

What happened in Virginia on Tuesday was a perfect example of how hapless Republicans are.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the terrific conservative who surprisingly won in 2021, worked overtime to try to get Republicans to hold on to their majority in the state House and take over the Senate.

But he not only failed to win the Senate, he lost the House and pretty much wrecked any chance of ever getting his policies passed.

Youngkin was seen as a possible 2028 Republican candidate, but he totally blew it.

He should have appealed to the same angry parents that voted him into office because of the way school boards were mistreating or ignoring them.

Instead, he pushed a strict abortion bill, spooking suburban women and causing them to come out in droves to vote against it and Republican candidates.

The losses in the states this week, which had nothing to do with the McDaniels and the RNC, may not mean a thing for the 2024 presidential election. But it was fresh evidence that the GOP has no clear message and no strategy.

Joe Biden is probably the worst and weakest president in recent U.S. history. Even Democrats and the liberal media know it.

But Republicans better pray Donald Trump stays as healthy as a college quarterback – and out of jail – because the debates are showing the second-stringers aren’t ready to play in the big game.

For example, the only people who had their answers on abortion right at the debate were Nikki Haley and Chris Christie. Both nailed it.

They said that striking down Roe and having abortion laws set by the states is what the GOP fought for for half a century, and working for a strict federal abortion law now was not just suicidal politics, it was impossible because it could never get 60 votes in the U.S. Senate.

As for debate, NBC gets points for putting on the fairest and best one so far.

Hardly any crosstalk. The moderators asked each candidate the same questions and gave them time to answer. And the questions didn’t sound like they were written by Keith Olbermann.

As for the debaters, Wednesday’s show could have been a rerun.

I love Ron DeSantis – as governor of Florida. But he’s a lousy debater who’s not getting any better.

Nikki Haley was probably the smartest person on the stage – especially on abortion. She’s so tough, if Trump wins next year, he should make her Secretary of Defense.

Tim Scott I feel sorry for. He’s a great senator but he comes off like a preacher caught in a bar fight.

Chris Christie isn’t going anywhere, but he actually answers the questions he’s asked. Plus he scolded the other candidates for their petty attacks on each other when the real enemy is Joe Biden.

And Vivek, the fly in your car that keeps landing on your forehead, had his moments.

But it was obvious again who won the night – Donald Trump. He always wins when he’s not there.

–

Copyright 2023 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

The world is nothing but murders, massacres and the threat of war.

It’s gotten so bad, you wake up and ask, “Who died overnight?” Or “Whose rockets and bombs hit who this time?”

I’ll go out on a limb here and blame most of the world’s turmoil and tragedy on President Biden and his handlers.

Three years into his presidency, Biden has already got us mixed up in two bloody wars, blown our Southern border wide open, brought us 8% inflation and too much other trouble and pain to list.

President Obama’s warning quip that Joe has a way of screwing up everything he touches came true a long time ago – at home and abroad.

President Biden did nothing when he had the chance to stop the bloody and dangerous war between Russia and Ukraine – before it started.

Now half of the Middle East is about to go to war following the attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel and slaughtered 1,400 men, women and children on Oct. 7.

And while Israel’s missiles and ground forces are in Gaza paying back Hamas for their crimes against humanity, what is Joe doing?

Playing both sides at the same time.

After the attack, Biden quickly pledged to fully support Israel and said it had the right to defend itself by crossing into Gaza and wiping out Hamas.

But this week, as our college campuses and city streets went wild with demonstrators protesting Israel’s bombing of Gaza, the White House announced it was speeding up the development of its national strategy to battle … “Islamophobia.”

For decades the leading victims of religious hate crimes have been Jews, who make up 2.4 percent of our population but suffer 60 percent of hate crimes.

Acts of antisemitism are up 300 percent since last year and have spiked since Oct. 7.

But what Biden was most worried about this week was protecting American Muslims from hatred and violence.

His anti-Islamophobia announcement was designed to please pro-Palestinian protesters and the Democrat Party’s leftwing in Congress – the 10-member Squad of “progressives” led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The Squad is anti-Israel, pro-Palestine and, as far as I’m concerned, pro-Hamas and anti-American.

But what worries me most about them is the Americans who voted them into office.

Each member of Congress represents 600,000 people. Let’s say about half of them turn out to vote.

That means to win a House seat, in a two-way race you have to get at least 150,001 of those 300,000 votes.

If you add up the votes for the eight original Squad members, that means at least 1.2 million Americans are OK with the radical politics of AOC and her crew.

Who are those voters and what are they thinking? We know many of them are anti-American and anti-Israel.

Are they ever going to do more than just march around waving Palestine flags or tearing down posters of Israeli hostage pictures?

Are they potential terrorists? Most likely, no. But I’m still fearful of them.

I also fear for my country because Squad voters and so many politically naïve and indoctrinated college students are so radicalized – thanks to the leftwing professors we conservatives have been trying to warn the country about for half a century.

Meanwhile, I have an idea to get the hostages in Gaza freed and maybe bring a ceasefire to the Middle East before any more people die.

I’d like to trade Joe Biden to Hamas for all the hostages.

I don’t think the thugs who run Hamas would give me anything just for Joe.

So to sweeten the deal I’d throw in $10 billion in cash – but Hamas would also have to take Kamala.

I’ve never worked for the State Department, but I think my plan might work.

Dr. Jill might be upset by the swap, but Joe wouldn’t mind. He wouldn’t even know he was in Gaza. He’d just think he was in one of his summer homes.

–

Copyright 2023 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

“The more we learn about the 2020 election the more ILLEGITIMATE it becomes. America deserves to know whether we have a FAKE president in the oval office.”

How could Republicans in the House struggle for three weeks and then unanimously elect a man who said this kind of irresponsible stuff to be their new speaker?

How could the hapless House Republicans –

Oh, wait a minute. My mistake. There’s a typo in that first sentence.

It should be “the 2016 election,” not the 2020 election.

Oh, and another thing. It wasn’t the new Republican House Speaker, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who questioned the legitimacy of the 2016 presidential election.

It was Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the leading House Democrat – the nice guy who welcomed Johnson by calling him “an extreme right-wing ideologue.”

Jeffries’ knee-jerk negativity was the kind of bipartisan hate mongering that has made Washington such a nasty place.

The Washington Post and other liberal DC/NYC media outlets joined with Jeffries in looking for reasons to degrade Speaker Johnson for being what he is – a religious conservative Republican.

They pointed out that he is liked by Donald Trump, voted against more aid to Ukraine and publicly cheered when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

The fact that Johnson is the son of a firefighter, refreshingly young and not a charter member of the GOP’s ruling cabal didn’t count for the Post and its ilk.

Johnson was demeaned as “a fifth stringer.” He was branded a MAGA extremist and, worst of all, as one of those kooky rightwing 2020 election deniers who were such an existential threat to our democracy.

With Johnson, the lopsided liberal media have continued to push the false narrative that Trump Republicans like him invented election denialism in late 2020.

But the Republican National Committee has easily proved how wrong – and dishonest – the media are with its hilariously damning 24-minute video highlight reel of wild statements top Democrats made about the 2016 election during the Trump years.

Poor Hillary – who has made a career out of repeatedly saying her presidency was “stolen” from her and that the Trump presidency was “illegitimate” – is the video’s Denier in Chief.

But Nancy Pelosi, Jeffries, Jimmy Carter, Kamala Harris and assorted other Russia Hoax-pushing politicians spit out variations of Hillary’s claim that Trump and his evil pal Putin robbed her in 2016.

With this level of partisan hatred in DC, and with Americans being split in half on so many important political issues, it’s no wonder we’re so mad at each other all the time.

“I hate you because you support Trump.”

“You’re wearing a mask, you’re an idiot.”

“You support Ukraine, I love you.”

Today’s national hatefest is Israel and Jews vs. Hamas and Palestinians.

We actually have members of Congress, college students and tens of thousands of Americans charging Israel with war crimes and openly defending – even cheering – the slaughter of 1,400 Jews by Hamas terrorists.

The fierce public debate over the war in Israel has shown us that some dangerous people have infiltrated our schools and colleges and have been teaching our kids to hate.

“Hate 101” is probably a college class by now. “You want to major in ‘Killing Jews’ this semester? We have a professor for that right here at Hate U.”

So is anyone still teaching our kids goodness and decency and tolerance and love for our country and its cherished ideals of personal freedom and equality under law?

Prager U? Sorry, Dennis Prager is great. But we’d need a thousand Pragers to turn back the country’s rising tide of hate.

Americans seem so pissed off at each other all the time that it no longer surprises me when we have a mass shooting like the tragedy in Maine this week.

The way things are going – downhill – it wouldn’t surprise me if hundreds of Americans a day were killed by angry murderers.

That’s what happens when people are raised on the politics of hate.

–

Copyright 2023 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense By Michael Reagan

The world is going to hell and taking America’s wealth, military power and geopolitical influence with it.

Thanks to the terrorists of Hamas, we’re slowly being pulled deeper into a war in Israel that could set the whole Middle East on fire.

And remember the bloody war in Ukraine?

It’s been blasted off the front page, but after 20 months it’s still an ongoing slaughter, despite more than $100 billion from U.S. taxpayers to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia.

It would be fair to argue that if Donald Trump or any random Republican had been in charge of our country’s foreign policy since 2021, these two bloody wars would never have started in the first place.

But now, given the clown show that’s been playing in the House of Representatives for weeks, I’m not so sure.

Republicans have become a running national joke that is bigger than the Biden presidency because they can’t even choose a Speaker for their own party.

As of this writing, everything is still up in the air – or going down the GOP toilet, whichever you prefer.

It’s no wonder so many Republicans I talk to say they aren’t going to vote for Republicans next year.

If Republicans can’t choose a leader of their own party, only a fool would trust them to lead the country out of the deadly swamp Biden and the Democrats have led us into.

Republicans have gone so crazy I fear that in 2024 voters – especially independent and moderate Republicans – are going to elect more people like Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib who are anti-America, pro-Hamas and anti-Israel.

Things look super-grim for the GOP today. But there is still some hope for the future of Reagan Republicanism and the country, I pray.

I saw a glimmer of it Wednesday night when I welcomed 130 high school kids from 18 states and Canada to a conference at the Young America’s Foundation’s Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara.

They came to learn about the values and the virtues of Reagan-style conservatism from guest speakers like former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Boston Celtics star Enes Kanter Freedom.

Their stay also includes a visit to the nearby Reagan Ranch, where they can walk in my father’s footsteps and go into the humble house he lived in.

I often give a welcome talk to the kids visiting YAF and this time I told them how fortunate they were to be able to learn what Ronald Reagan and his kind of leadership were all about.

I told the future conservative leaders of North America to listen closely to the guest speakers this week. But I also told them that if they want to learn how to solve a problem they need to read and understand history so they can learn where the problem came from.

My dad was able to do so much, I said, because, unlike a lot of people in politics, he actually read all of the books in his library. He even memorized some of them.

I also told the kids they have to be able to sit down with people they disagree with and try to understand them and learn from them – not ignore them or cancel them.

I pointed out that my father had two children, Patti and Ron, and neither one of them ever voted for their dad. Yet, at Thanksgiving Day dinner they were still at the table.

As for RINOs – those much-hated Republicans-in-name-only you hear about in the media all the time – I reminded the kids that RINOs helped elect Ronald Reagan twice: With the size of the GOP, you can’t afford to kick people out and still hope to win.

Learning to love RINOs – or at least not to hate them – is something a few dozen Republicans in the House who are acting like high school students need to learn.

Maybe they should come to a YAF conference before it’s too late.

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Copyright 2023 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.

Making Sense by Michael Reagan

It turns out that some of our smartest college kids aren’t just stupid about things like microaggressions and gender pronouns.

The reaction on many campuses to the slaughter of innocent Israelis by Hamas terrorists last week showed that many students are just as a stupid about Israel and the rest of the world.

It was shocking – and sad – to see American college students marching around, openly rooting for Palestine and celebrating Hamas’ “victory” over Israel.

It proved how deeply and dangerously our country’s higher education system has been poisoned by the ideology of people who hate us and our values.

At Harvard this week more than 30 student groups said publicly that “the only one to blame” for the massacre of 1,200 Israeli men, women and children was “the apartheid regime” of Israel – not the Hamas savages who raped and killed women and shot, burned and decapitated babies.

At other supposedly elite schools like Stanford, students were painting pro-Palestine signs on buildings and posting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” on Instagram.

The political and moral ignorance of our pro-Hamas students is really not that surprising.

It is the product of decades of indoctrination by leftwing college professors and administrators who hate America, hate Jews and equate the state of Israel with Nazi Germany.

It’s why many students believe that a terrorist deliberately killing an Israeli child with a gun is morally the same as a Palestinian child dying because an Israeli jet dropped a bomb on a Hamas rocket depot in Gaza.

Our morally deranged class of college students is our own fault.

We are the only country that allows its enemies to move here, live here and plant their own flag here.

Unfortunately, after fifty years, our niceness and generosity has resulted in our ideological enemies being able to infiltrate our education systems and poison many of our youths against us.

We need to wake up and fix that – and this week was a pretty loud and painful wakeup call for all Americans.

It was especially infuriating to watch members of the Squad – Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and their America-hating sisters – refuse to immediately condemn Hamas for murdering women and beheading children.

At this point, if I were in Congress, I wouldn’t sit next to a member of the Squad for fear they’d be wearing an explosive belt and would be willing to explode it.

Those are strong words, but I bet millions of Americans think the same thing but are afraid to say it.

In contrast to the Squad’s moral failure, President Biden deserves high praise for the strong speeches he read to the country this week in defense of Israel and his promises of full American support.

But what still bothers me is my fear that a wave of terrorism is coming soon to the USA and Biden and no one else is doing anything to alleviate my fear.

He and his administration of weak crazies have left our Southern border wide-open for three years.

No one knows how many “sleeper” terrorists have simply walked into our country, which, in case you haven’t noticed, has been swamped by millions of young males from a hundred countries who don’t all subscribe to America’s founding ideals of freedom and equality.

Meanwhile, while our border remains a disaster and we’re being pulled into having to support another war, the GOP is in disarray.

The Republican Party is so bad that despite Biden’s deteriorating brainpower and his foreign policy blunders, he is starting to look like a leader.

At the time of this writing, Republicans still haven’t picked a new Speaker to replace Kevin McCarthy so the House can operate as it should in these trying times.

The whole world is going nuts. America’s got some big decisions to make at home and overseas. And it’s only 13 months to the 2024 elections.

So I hope my father’s old party can get its act together – yesterday.

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Copyright 2023 Michael Reagan, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Michael Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, is an author, speaker and president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation. Send comments to [email protected] and follow @reaganworld on Twitter.