Cagle World

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.

–

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.

–

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

OK, my fellow Republicans, you got rid of Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Eight of you joined with every Democrat in the House of Representatives – the only part of the federal government we control – to vote McCarthy out, 216-210.

In the process you threw the House into chaos, killed any hope of passing important bills anytime soon and made yourselves the laughing stock of the political world.

OK, so you made history. Now what’s your plan? And where is it?

What? You have no plan? You don’t even know who you’ll replace McCarthy with yet?

Many Republicans wonder why their party loses so many times to the Democrats, but not me.

Unlike us, Democrats know how to run a party. They hang together and vote as a solid bloc.

Even their wackiest leftwing representatives – A.O.C. and the rest of her socialist Squad – fall in line when it comes time to vote for or against legislation.

And no matter what a fellow Democrat does to make a fool of himself or break a law – even pulling a fire alarm in the House to delay a vote – they close ranks and defend their own.

Meanwhile, Republicans – as they proved this week – couldn’t keep Matt Gaetz and his little gang from teaming up with every House Democrat to take down Speaker McCarthy.

Think how absurd this was.

We have an open border overrun by millions of illegal immigrants. We have crime and homelessness in the streets of our biggest cities. Inflation is raging, we’re supporting Ukraine in a war against Russia and we’re staring down a recession.

So what bright idea do House Republicans come up with? Let’s get rid of the speaker – our speaker.

And they did their coup with no replacement in mind. No plan in place. Now any legislation that was in the pipeline has been disrupted until McCarthy’s successor is chosen.

Gaetz, the narcissistic mastermind of the revolt who wants to be Florida’s next governor, doesn’t want the job. Who would?

It’s a tough job, especially when it’s so easy under the current rules to be sacked by a handful of rebels who can’t figure out that the Republican Party – and the country – is more important than they are.

Some GOP members in the House reportedly were mad at McCarthy and wanted him out because he hadn’t impeached President Biden yet.

But that was a Republican pipedream that was never going to happen. In case those guys didn’t notice, Republicans don’t control the Senate.

Republicans don’t control the Senate today for one big reason – they blew the U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia in 2020-21.

If you remember, a certain former president who shall remain nameless urged Georgia Republicans not to vote because he said the elections were rigged and their votes would not be counted fairly.

As a result, many Georgia Republicans stayed home and both Democrat candidates went to Washington.

If the GOP had held the Senate, none of this chaos and juvenile party infighting in the House would be happening today.

Republicans would be passing important bills in the House and Senate and forcing the president to either pass them or veto them.

Instead, the House Republicans are in disarray and the Democrats are high-fiving each other and downing shots of tequila.

If Republicans don’t like the way things are going now, wait until we lose the House, the Senate and White House in 2024.

That’s the national disaster we’re headed to. The public has seen our clown show in the House. It’s just another reason for millions of people to not vote for Republicans next year.

To the public Republicans look like children and the Democrats – the party that is hurting the country in so many bad ways – look like the adults in the room.

And since Americans are not going to vote for children to control their country, a lot of Republicans in Washington better grow up. Quick.

–

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

From the first dumb question to the abrupt ending that caught everyone by surprise, the GOP presidential primary debate produced by the Fox Business channel was a total disaster.

I know. I was there Wednesday night – in Row 5 of the Air Force One pavilion in the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif.

At the beginning of the debate it was a special treat to see and hear the praise that the Fox people bestowed on my father, his historic accomplishments and his strong and personable brand of conservatism.

But from then on it was all downhill.

Everything about the debate was dumb, wrong or poorly designed – the seven-candidate format, the trio of incompetent debate moderators, the high-speed stream of questions they asked and the rude behavior of the cross-talking candidates.

Unless something changes, it was a lineup of potential future losers to Donald Trump – Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, ex-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Ex-South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, businessman/commentator Vivek Ramaswamy, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and ex-VP Mike Pence.

They all tried to slip in their canned quips and pitches for their leadership abilities, but no one learned anything in two excruciating hours – except that it’s impossible to have a good political debate with seven people.

Other than Pence and professional Trump hitman Christie, the “Not-so Magnificent Seven” spent most of their time interrupting each other and beating up Joe Biden for all the problems his policies have brought America.

If I had to pick the top three “winners,” I’d go with the governors – Burgum, Christie and DeSantis. They should be in the next primary debate and the rest should go home.

Nikki Haley was very good at first. But then halfway through the debate she did her impression of a mad housewife.

She picked a fight with Kid Ramaswamy and hit Sen. Scott upside the face with a mean tirade that made no sense to any of us in Row 5.

At one point we were all confused because she and Scott were acting like a married couple having an argument over drapes.

The big winners, for sure, were the elephants who weren’t in the room – Trump and Biden.

By far the night’s biggest loser was Fox Business.

It proved it is no smarter or better than any of the liberal networks who’ve hosted previous presidential debates.

On paper it should not have been so awful.

Stuart Varney is great as the likable anchor of Fox Business’ morning show. And Dana Perino is the quiet star of Fox News’ deservedly popular show, “The Five.”

But neither of them had never moderated a political debate – and it immediately showed.

They had no control over the cross-talking candidates and acted like they had a quota of 100 questions they had to ask.

Half the time they were more concerned with firing off the next question than allowing a real debate to get started on important issues like our support for Ukraine or parental rights in schools.

It almost seemed like the people in charge at Fox had never seen a multi-person political debate before.

They should have made sure that on the important issues each candidate got a turn to answer the question, not just two or three, which would have prevented most of the annoying cross-talk.

And whoever thought that it was a good idea to put Ilia Calderón of Univision in as the third moderator should be fired.

Supposedly intended to appeal to Latino voters who increasingly are attracted to the GOP, her accent was so heavy that those sitting around us often couldn’t understand what she was asking.

Some friends who watched the debate on TV told me they turned it off after 20 minutes, but I was trapped there in Row 5.

The good news is that Air Force One that my father used didn’t fall on our heads. Thank God the food and wine was great again.

–

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

Too bad Donald Trump won’t attend the second Republican presidential primary debate next week at the Ronald Reagan Library.

His friends and enemies in the media will miss him and the high ratings he automatically generates, but he’s leading by a huge margin in the polls and he doesn’t need the TV time or media attention.

And though nothing he ever says at this point in his political life can hurt him among his 74 million followers, Trump figures any minor benefit from being in a primary debate is not worth the risk of having some hopeless longshot show him up on stage.

Trump’s decision serves his campaign’s purposes in the same way President Biden helps his campaign by refusing to take part in a primary debate.

But by skipping the primary debates Trump is making a serious mistake that undermines the strength of the Republican Party – which already is weak and in deep doo-do.

Trump’s decision is unfortunate because Republicans need to watch real debates among all their party’s frontrunners.

We need to see if the other candidates can stand up under constant attack, because whoever becomes president will be constantly attacked by Democrats, the liberal media and foreign leaders.

Trump handled himself pretty well under a lot of pressure during his four years in office, but that was three years ago.

How will he do today? We should be able to watch the 2023 Model Trump in action, but we won’t because he’s playing safe and selfish.

To me, what’s even more sad – and worrisome for the GOP’s chances in 2024 — is hearing Trump say he won’t promise to support whoever the party’s nominee is if it isn’t him.

There are some conservative pundits in the media-sphere who agree with Trump.

They’re telling the MAGA Republicans listening to their shows that there’s no one but Trump to vote for and everyone else is a RINO.

They’re saying they won’t vote for anyone but Trump, which is dumb. And then, when the Republicans get crushed in 2024 because people don’t show up at the polls, the same pundits will cry that we were cheated.

My father would be appalled at these suicidal Trump-only Republicans. He always supported the nominee of the Republican Party and set the bar when it comes to party solidarity.

He supported Gerry Ford in 1976 after he lost the GOP nomination and the Reagans all went out and campaigned around the country for Ford.

The Republican Party was united in my father’s day because it had strong leadership – people like him.

If true conservatives want to take America back, if we want to win in 2024, if we want to right the sinking ship of state, we have to fully support the GOP nominee. Anyone who disagrees has no right to call himself a Reaganite.

Republicans are in serious trouble. We haven’t won a plurality of the presidential popular vote since George H.W. Bush did it in 1988.

We need to win back the majority of voters if we ever hope to regain the White House. And if Republicans can’t do that after the harm Democrats have done to the country for the last three years, when will they ever?

If enough Republicans keep going down that dead-end road where they’ll only support their favored nominee, the party has a pretty good chance of losing everything in 2024 – the White House, the House and the Senate.

And if you think the U.S. is in terrible shape now and can’t possibly get any worse, just wait.

If the Democrats take control of all three branches of the federal government next year, by 2028 they’ll have turned the whole country into the United States of California.

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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

Thank God for Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana.

I wish every major television and radio network in the country had covered what the smart and colorful Republican did in the Senate this week.

As part of a hearing looking into the alleged threat to freedom posed by parents who want to have sexually explicit gay and trans books removed from their school libraries, Kennedy bravely quoted some choice excerpts from two of the books.

While he read out loud from “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “Gender Queer,” every adult in the room with a brain and a lick of common sense squirmed uncomfortably in their seats.

Kennedy and other senators of both parties agreed that the sleaze he read was not fit for young children – or any non-adult.

But unless you watch Fox News or other conservative TV or radio places, you did not hear Kennedy’s graphic descriptions repeated or even described in detail.

The mainstream electronic news media – CBS, CNN, NPR, PBS, etc., etc. – ignored Kennedy’s readings. The partisans running the New York Times didn’t even cover the hearing.

That kind of information blackout is nothing new to conservatives.

The left-wing media can always be counted on to not tell their audiences what is actually written in the quasi-pornographic LGBT books that parents around the country are criticizing.

Their partisan reporters and pundits don’t even bother to read the books or try to defend them.

They just immediately slime the concerned parents and Republicans as dangerous book-burners and political extremists. Or, hypocritically, they’ll criticize an angry mother for talking dirty at her local school board meeting.

It’s part of the upside-down political insanity of our times that parents are now being told they are not allowed to have sexually graphic books removed from their own public schools.

So how can parents protect their school kids from the left’s indoctrination campaign – short of homeschooling them or moving to Portugal?

Without a national political revolution that sweeps away the leftists and wackos running our governments and ruining our public schools, it looks impossible – especially out here in the crazy, mismanaged and hyper-sexed state of California.

For example, last week a California judge ruled against the school district in Chino that had issued a policy saying parents had to be informed if their kids had changed their gender identities or pronouns in school.

Earlier this week the mayor of Burbank proudly defended himself for raising money at a private party by having himself spanked on camera by a drag queen.

The liberal media naturally thought what the mayor did was very cool, of course, and Democrats defended him.

And, of course, they claimed the secret video — seen by more than 8 million people so far – was being used by Republicans as clickbait to “promote an agenda of fear, homophobia, transphobia, and bigotry.”

The latest sex-and-gender idiocy dreamed up by the people in charge of the state of California is the declaration that next August will be officially recognized as Transgender History Month.

Isn’t that great?

I was already looking forward to June of 2024, the state’s second annual “LGBTQ+ Pride Month.”

All these stupid things happening in California make me feel sometimes like I’m living in Sodom and Gomorrah — run by insane leftwing Democrats. It’s too bad I don’t know someone important and powerful who can turn a few hundred of them into pillars of salt.

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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.