Cagle World

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.

–

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.

–

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

Almost a hundred years ago the great American author Sinclair Lewis wrote a political novel called “It Can’t Happen Here.”

The 1935 book was a warning that what was happening then in Europe – the rise of fascism and Nazism – could come to America in the form of a Hitler-type politician who gets elected and then becomes a dictator.

Though the power of the federal government has grown enormously since FDR’s days, we never became a totalitarian country like the fictional one Lewis imagined.

But out here in California, where parents, public schools and the state government are fighting over who has the ultimate control of children, we’re starting to resemble a country from the old evil Soviet empire.

In the latest court case, a judge ruled that the Chino Valley Unified School District has to delay the enforcement of its new policy that requires its schools to notify parents if their child indicates that they identify as transgender or gender-nonconforming.

The case, which is on its way to higher levels of the state court system, has been described in the Los Angeles Times as a fight “pitting parental rights and student privacy rights.”

The school district’s lawyers argue – sensibly – that the parents of a student who identifies as transgender should be involved in any discussion of gender-related issues.

The lawyers in the state’s attorney general’s office, however, argue against immediate parental involvement.

They say vulnerable kids who are questioning their gender identity need time to get emotionally ready before they talk to their parents, and that school teachers can help the process.

The Chino case is just the latest example of the state government trying to take control of children from parents.

In June a bill passed in the lower chamber of the California legislature compels parents to provide their kids with “gender-affirming” care. It also would require judges in divorce cases to side with the parent who most affirms the child’s preferred identity.

And earlier this year, a bill was proposed that would amend an old state law to let kids as young as 12 leave home and consent to live in a group home without their parents’ involvement or knowledge.

The bill, AB65, which its opponents correctly call “state-sanctioned kidnapping,” is stuck somewhere in the sausage-making process and is touted as a way to help kids with mental health issues, particularly gender-related ones.

What the state government here is trying to do to parents of school kids reminds me of what happened to my friends Karl and Sandy in 1984 after they escaped from what was then called the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic.

They escaped with their 1-year-old child, lived in Austria for a year and came to Los Angeles without knowing how to speak English or having any money.

Sandy stayed home with their child. Karl got a job in the kitchen at the Disneyland Hotel and began working his way up to eventually becoming a successful contractor specializing in kitchens.

Meanwhile, the communist government in Czechoslovakia put Karl and Sandy on trial for stealing state property – their child.

The government’s thug’s beat-up Karl’s father but he wouldn’t tell where his son and grandson were.

Karl and Sandy were found guilty of stealing government property and given sentences of 25 and 20 years, respectively, which they would have had to serve if they ever went back to their communist homeland.

This is what scares me. The government of California – like other state governments – is undermining the control of parents and essentially saying their children belong to the state and it knows what’s best for them, not the parents.

That’s how the communist governments in the USSR and elsewhere operated. Are we headed down that totalitarian road, where the government starts arresting parents who disagree with its indoctrination or wrongful edicts?

Sinclair Lewis showed in his fiction how dictatorial things could happen here and I think they already really are.

–

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

Seriously folks.

Maybe we Republicans better stop banging on Old Joe Biden for the serious cognitive issues he obviously has.

Unless we hold the players on our own team responsible for their cognitive issues, we have to stop harping on the obvious mental declines of President Biden, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Diane Feinstein, my home state’s ancient senator.

I’m talking of course about the problem of what to do about Sen. Mitch McConnell’s shaky brain.

The Republican Senate minority leader had another one of his sad and scary public freeze-ups while talking to the press on Wednesday.

McConnell suddenly went silent on camera and stared into the distance after being asked whether he plans to run for re-election in 2026.

Mitch came out of his trance-like state in less than a minute, but the public damage to his image was done.

The 81-year-old Kentucky senator showed the entire world that he’s eligible to move into the Republican wing of the newly built Bidenland Rest Home, where the president, Fetterman and Feinstein are charter residents.

Don’t look now, but the greatest country in the world is being led by a bunch of cognitively “challenged” politicians you wouldn’t trust to walk your dog.

The collective cognitive ability of the Biden-McConnell-Feinstein-Fetterman foursome is about half that of the average person they represent.

It’s not funny, but if a comedian in a club simply put their photos up on a screen together he’d get big laughs.

McConnell’s doctor later issued a statement saying everything’s OK with Mitch’s brain. We all know that’s the usual bought-and-paid-for lie, but it’s the bipartisan way it works.

The doctors, staff people and political pals of ancient politicians in both parties automatically lie through their teeth and insist their bosses’ broken brains are still in tip-top shape.

That’s why Ted Cruz quickly defended McConnell’s mental competence and why the likes of Chuck Schumer and the liberal media stick up for Biden’s every time he says something daffy or untrue.

The truth is, people in power never want to voluntarily step down or step aside.

They never say, “You know what? I’m a million years old and my brain is like a two-year-old’s. After six decades in office, I realize it’s time for me to let someone under 85 do my job. So for the good of the country, I resign.”

Instead, they keep running for office — and we keep electing them.

But I don’t care who it is, what party they belong to or how the political equation in Washington will be affected.

It’s time for a collective bipartisan call for McConnell, Feinstein, Fetterman and Biden to do the right thing and step down.

They’re making decisions and voting on things every day that affect every one of our lives and yet half the time they have no idea what they are doing.

They’re not able to do the jobs they were elected to do. They’re embarrassing themselves. They’re ruining their legacies, which, whatever they are or once were, are long gone.

They’re only going to be remembered how they are now, which is incompetent and addled, not how they were long ago when they started to play the Washington game.

I admit to my guilt. I’ve gone after Biden because of his cognitive disabilities. But if I am going to bang on Biden, I cannot not bang on McConnell.

Because it’s not about the good of the party, it’s for the good of the country.

–

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

As usual, there was too much cross-talk and chaos on stage.

And there was way too much partisan cheering and hooting by the audience.

But the first Republican presidential primary debate on Fox News was an entertaining spectacle.

Instead of watching Tucker Carlson interview Donald Trump on Twitter/X, it was a good way to check out the personalities and political positions of the GOP’s lineup of second and third stringers who have the impossible dream of beating out Trump for the party’s 2024 nomination.

No one jumped off the screen and looked presidential, or even vice presidential, but as I tweeted during the debate, the biggest winner was Nikki Haley.

The only woman in a rough-and-tumble verbal rumble with seven cocky men, she not only held her own, she kicked butt.

As tough and sharp as any man up there, she gave solid answers to questions about why it’s so important for us to support Ukraine and the reality of what Republicans can accomplish on abortion.

Haley said the Republican goal of a federal law on abortion was a pipe dream because it’ll take 60 votes in the U.S. Senate – and that will never happen.

And she was also not afraid to point out the obvious – that Republicans are also to blame for racking up our $32 trillion national debt.

Haley not only seemed to be a happy warrior, she didn’t spit out pre-programmed answers or canned pitches boasting about her experience as governor of South Carolina or UN ambassador.

Speaking of pre-programmed answers, Ron DeSantis – who I like a lot as governor of Florida – was OK. But he was stiff as a surfboard, unlikable and smiled just once.

At one point I think I tweeted, “Please stop yelling at me. Have a conversation with me.”

The 38-year-old frat boy on stage – entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy – tried way too hard to be cute and provocative and he suffered from it, especially in his exchanges with Haley and Mike Pence.

The former VP did a perfectly fine, adult-like job, but No MAGA Republican will ever support Pence for president, vice president or South Bend dog catcher.

Ditto for Chris Christie. The ex-New Jersey governor was the most relaxed of anyone up there, but his whole campaign is basically one slogan – “I hate Trump.” You need more than that to become president.

The good and likable senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, did a perfectly fine job.

But the other two nice Republican scrubs – the North Dakota governor and Arkansas’ ex-governor Asa Hutchinson – were essentially invisible and should have skipped the first try out.

I hope they don’t make the cut for the next Republican debate Sept. 27 at the Reagan Library.

It should be more substantive and less crazy, now that the candidates have introduced themselves to the country and thrown spitballs at each other.

No one had a breakout moment Wednesday night, unless it was Haley.

And I don’t think anyone really did serious damage to themselves – not even Ramaswamy with his crack about everyone else on stage being bought and paid for by donors.

But now it’s time for the candidates to do what might be the most important thing of all – simply prove to American voters that they are likable human beings.

No matter what their policies are, whoever becomes the standard bearer for the Republican Party needs to be likable to win.

Likable candidates are able to attract votes from independents and even Democrats who don’t agree with them politically.

That’s a big reason my dad won in 1980. It’s why Trump won in 2016.

And if a Republican hopes to become president in 2024 and save the country from the Democrats, he – or she – will have to be the most likable.

–

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

Another week, another lame Trump indictment.

Another week, another slimy Hunter Biden report.

Another week, another smash-and-grab at a California mall.

You can’t get away from this crummy stuff unless you turn off the TV, take the alerts off your phone and sleep all day on the beach for a week like Joe Biden.

But I’m totally worn out by the never-ending troubles and crimes of Trump and Hunter.

Nothing that happens to either of them in a courtroom months or years from now will hurt me, cut high gas prices or make my family safer.

What concerns me more than anything now are smash-and-grabs like the one that occurred in Los Angeles last weekend at a Nordstrom store inside Westfield Topanga Mall, which my family goes to all the time.

You’ve no doubt seen the video or one like it – a mob-style robbery by about 30 masked young men who smash display cases, grab expensive merchandise and race out the door.

Between $60,000 and $100,000 in merchandise reportedly was stolen by the well-organized gang.

In case any bleeding heart seriously thinks they were poor, hungry and desperate kids from a ghetto, they jumped into several waiting cars, including a BMW and a Lexus.

Police say they’re looking for the perps, who reportedly sprayed the unarmed “security” man with bear spray.

Of course, we all know the police will catch only a few robbers at best, and if they do they probably will not be prosecuted.

So, let’s get some things straight about where I live in California.

Los Angeles is already an urban, crime-ridden campground and open-air drug den for about 75,000 “unhoused” people with mental or drug problems. A small community of tent people lives by the freeway entrance half a mile away.

And now I have to worry about my family being safe at the local mall? Great.

We know the government people in charge are never going to do what is necessary to end the smash-and-grabs at malls and Beverly Hills jewelry stores.

So the other day I humbly tweeted what I’d do if I owned a retail store or a mall – hire security guards armed with Glocks.

If robbers are going to shoot bear spray at a security guard, I figure a guard needs a Glock to shoot back.

I know how hysterical the media and the left would become the first time a robber was killed or seriously wounded by a mall security guard, but the young workers in the smash-and-grab industry would instantly get the message and pursue other careers.

Of course, we wouldn’t have to resort to shooting robbers with Glocks if the country’s Black leaders stood up for what’s right.

But the Obamas, Oprah, LeBron James, Vice President Harris and dozens of other great Black artists and athletes are AWOL on the subject of smash-and-grabs – and spineless.

They should be all over the major media scolding and shaming the young Black men whom we all know from the videos we’ve watched make up the gangs who pull off the smash-and-grabs.

Does their silence mean Black leaders support the mob robberies? Of course not.

But they certainly must realize that the smash-and-grabbers are doing great harm to every Black person in America.

Their brazen and frightening criminality – which the chicken media won’t point out is committed predominantly by Black males – is hurting the country’s already strained racial relations and only creating more ill feelings and more white racists.

The other day in a tweet I asked if I was a racist because I’ve noticed the color of the smash-and-grabbers.

My conservative Black friends, lawyer Leo Terrell and talk show host David Webb, said no.

But I really don’t give a damn if anyone thinks I’m a racist for noticing what is so obvious.

Maybe the Obamas, LeBron and other Black icons should notice it too – and then use their moral authority and media power to tell young Black men and boys to do the right thing.

–

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

Half the country has no idea why the front page of Thursday’s New York Post was so hilarious.

That’s because, thanks to the liberal media, half of the country still has no idea who Hunter Biden is, or why he is in trouble for raking in millions for his extended family from foreign businessmen by selling access to his father Joe’s “brand” and political influence.

The Post – which is famous for its funny front pages and lively conservative journalism – brilliantly summed up the Biden Family’s international influence-peddling racket on Aug. 10.

Its front page carried the huge headline “JOE FOR $ALE” next to a big photo of a smiling President Biden holding a sign that said “Open for Business – Price $20 million.”

The Post also asked a question that would have mystified the half of the country that only watches MSNBC and reads the New York Times — “Foreign clients gave Hunter a Porsche, a diamond and millions of dollars – What did they THINK they were buying?”

The Blue half of the country would never get the Post’s jokes about Hunter and Joe Biden.

That’s because they have hardly ever heard any news about Hunter or the latest reports detailing how he and his dad worked their lucrative family side-gig.

The Post’s journalists have done heroic work on the Bidens – unlike the liberal mainstream print and electronic media, which is so biased, partisan and dishonest that it has barely mentioned Hunter’s name.

For four years the liberal media have shown zero interest in investigating the sleazy and incriminating contents of his “Laptop From Hell” or covering the ongoing investigations by House Republicans into Hunter’s banking and money-laundering tricks.

The left’s partisan journalists are still so fixated on hating Donald Trump and making sure he never returns to power that they will never cover the blunders, failures and crimes of the Bidens.

Did the Biden administration wreck the economy with high inflation, create a crisis at the Southern border, cripple our oil and gas industries, botch the withdrawal from Afghanistan, fail to prevent the war in Ukraine and mismanage the war on Covid?

The liberal media’s response – “We don’t care. We hate Trump.”

Did the Biden Justice Department overdo the prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters for political reasons? Did the Biden FBI unfairly treat conservative Catholics as possible terrorists?

“Don’t care. We hate Trump.”

Did Biden’s CDC kowtow to the teachers union to keep schools closed for too long and lie to the country about the safety and efficacy of the covid vaccines?

“Dunno. We hate Trump.”

So now, after three years of Biden incompetence and lies, the liberal media refuses to admit that the country is a mess in many economic and social ways.

We have huge homeless populations living on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco. We have smash-and-grab gangs in Beverly Hills that go unpunished and we have chained up ice cream freezers in drug stores.

We have tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from dozens of countries overwhelming cities like New York and Boston. We have Fentanyl Island in Oakland, Ca.

What is President Biden and his administration doing to fix all these national and local problems? Is he to blame?

Don’t expect the liberal media to ever press Biden to answer that kind of question. They’re not interested. All they know is, “We hate Trump.”

The liberal mainstream media hate Trump so much they’d never do or say anything that might help him win or hurt Biden in 2024.

I fear for 2024. I’m truly concerned about Republicans winning back the White House. I don’t think Trump can win and he’s not going to let anyone else try.

My greatest worry is that if he doesn’t win the nomination he will sabotage the nominee, guarantee a Democrat victory and destroy the Republican Party – if he hasn’t done that already.

Then there’d be a legitimate reason for me to agree with the liberal media who say “We hate Trump.”

–

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

“In the eight years that my father was President of the United States I never once sat in the room with business associates and called him on the phone. If I had, the Democrats would have skewered me.”

When I posted that tweet the other day, it got a huge response.

As we know from this week’s big whistleblower news, over the course of 10 years – while Joe Biden was vice president and when he was out of power – Hunter Biden put his father on speaker phone at least 20 times during meetings he was having with foreign business people.

That bombshell proved Joe Biden was lying all those times he told voters and the media that he never once talked with Hunter about his sweet business deals with Ukrainian gas companies and Chinese banks.

It also showed how differently Joe and my father were when it came to using the power and political influence of the presidency to enrich their extended families and friends.

The story of how my father “helped” me goes back to Election Night in 1966.

My dad was running for governor of California. I was 21 and working on a trucking dock in Los Angeles, loading oil well freight from 5 p.m. to 1:30 am.

I had just dropped out of college. And when I did, my parents laid down the law.

They said, “While you were in college, we picked up the tab. But now that you’ve dropped out, you get to pick up the tab. Find a place to live and get a job.”

The victory celebration for my dad was at the old Ambassador Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. I got off early from work and remember going up to my father and congratulating him on winning the governorship.

The next thing I did was ask him for a job.

I thought any politician would immediately open the door and give their offspring a job if they wanted it or needed it. But my father said, “I don’t believe in nepotism.”

I guess I should have asked for the job before I voted for him, but he really believed what he said.

When he became president, I got a call from White House lawyer Fred Fielding. It was a simple conversation.

“You are going to be approached by many people who will want to use you to get to your father,” he said. “They will offer you all kinds of things. Please, before you do anything, pick up the phone and call me. Here’s my number.”

Anytime anyone would call me – and many people did – I’d call Fielding. I’d tell him I was approached by X, Y or Z and what they wanted me to do.

Most of the time, Fielding would say, “You’re calling me, so your gut is probably telling you it’s not a good deal. So go with your gut.”

That’s what I did – and still do – because the attempts to buy the Reagan brand have never really stopped.

In 2019, when Volodymyr Zelensky was running for president of Ukraine I was offered $100,000 just to fly to Kiev to endorse Zelensky.

It wasn’t because I knew anything about Zelensky or Ukraine, it was because of who my father was.

I didn’t have a White House lawyer to call for advice, but I had the knowledge I needed to make the right decision. I went with my gut and declined the Ukrainian offer, figuring it would not look good if I was ever hauled before a congressional committee.

Based on the revelations about the Biden family’s dirty operations, First Son Hunter obviously does things differently. So does his dad.

If I had called my father about endorsing Zelensky he would have told me not to do it, but he was a better kind of president.

He understood he was serving the country. He wasn’t asking the country to serve him – or his family.

–

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 we go again.

The first Republican presidential primary debate is less than a month away and the GOP is hell-bent on making the same mistake it made in 2015.

For its first primary debate back then Republicans had a herd of medium-caliber presidential wannabes that was so large the party had to split them into two tiers based on their polling numbers.

Fox News hosted two crowded debates back-to-back on one night that were more useless than usual.

In the main event, 24 million Americans watched a chorus line of party heavyweights – Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Chris Christie and John Kasich – struggle to out-promise each other while they ganged up on Donald Trump.

In the preliminary debate Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore and George Pataki tried to do or say something memorable that might explain why they, their wives and their mothers thought they were presidential timber.

Today, most of those 2016 dreamers have disappeared from the scene, become answers to trivia questions or appear on Fox News every 20 minutes doing commercials for pain relief or sleep aids.

Those over-crowded Republican debates in 2015 were a waste of time and energy that did the party, the candidates and the country no good. Plus, except for the entertaining Trump Factor, like most debates they were boring and unenlightening.

Apparently, the GOP’s thinking about primary debates this year was, “Hey, let’s make the same mistake again.”

So far, seven of the 11 Republican candidates who’ve announced for the 2024 presidency have qualified for the Aug. 23 debate in Milwaukee.

They are North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and some rude former president named Donald Trump.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former Vice President Mike Pence are still trying to meet all the polling and fundraising requirements they need to be included.

Ditto for former Texas congressman Will Herd and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. Did I actually say the mayor of Miami? Really?

Other than Mayor Suarez, the Republican slate for 2024 is pretty impressive.

It’s a deep, diverse and accomplished lineup of current and former public servants who should be thanked for their service – and then urged to drop out and endorse someone who can win in 2024.

Realistically, except for Trump and maybe DeSantis, the other candidates are kidding themselves and their supporters.

They have as much chance of becoming the 2024 Republican presidential nominee as my gardener and don’t deserve to be included in a debate.

Meanwhile, our presidential debates are not really debates at all.

They’re become places where candidates duck hard questions and instead deliver pre-packaged, poll-tested, 90-second answers that no one remembers the next day.

In a better world, our political debates would be limited to three or four candidates who are competitive.

In a perfect world, they also would be conducted by unbiased, skeptical journalists and would allow plenty of time for candidates to answer important policy questions and challenge each other.

Unfortunately, we live in the real world. Which is why we’re going to continue to get overcrowded debates, poorly constructed debates or no debates at all from the major parties and the major media.

The GOP’s upcoming string of presidential primary debates will be another waste of time and energy.

They will just be a series of TV tryouts to see who has the brains and guts to be Trump’s vice president pick – which makes Pence’s candidacy make even less sense.

I respect Pence, but he’s never going to be nominated for president by a MAGA Republican Party. He’d have 75 million votes against him on Election Day.

And anyway, he shouldn’t be in the primary debates because he’s already been Trump’s VP.

–

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

“Sound of Freedom” is still going strong despite the efforts of the left to kill it.

In just three weeks the action-thriller, about a real-life American hero who went to Colombia to rescue one child from child sex traffickers and ended up rescuing 120 children, has racked up more than $100 million in ticket sales.

Millions of Americans – including my son Cameron and I – have now watched the true story of Tim Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad who has devoted his life to fighting and exposing the trafficking of kids for forced sex or forced labor.

“Sound of Freedom” is a powerful, powerful movie that had people leaving the theater in tears.

But as someone who was molested by a pedophile as a child, and as someone who’s been speaking out about child sex trafficking since 1980, I didn’t need a good movie to tell me about the horrors of human trafficking.

As I said to Cameron, “Most people were shocked by what they saw, but I felt it. I know what kind of evil goes on behind closed doors.”

“Sound of Freedom,” as I wrote last week, was actually made five years ago, but all the major studios and Netflix did not want to distribute it.

It took a heroic effort by Angel Studios, which specializes in religious projects, to raise the money to launch the independent movie in more than 2,000 theaters.

While Angel was profiting greatly and doing the country an important service, the hacks in the leftist media tried to kill “Sound of Freedom” and dodged the issue of child sex trafficking.

Instead, focusing on politics, they’ve called it “controversial,” “divisive,” “a Superhero Movie for Dads With Brainworms” and a piece of right-wing “propaganda” that feeds into QAnon conspiracy theories.

But the left’s attempt to cancel “Sound of Freedom” has not only failed, it has made the movie even more popular with the public – and had a sort of reverse Bud Light effect on its ticket sales.

By dramatizing the tragedy of human trafficking in an emotional way, the movie is having an impact on millions of Americans who’ve never heard of the problem or have no idea of its scope.

It’s hard to document with certainty because human trafficking is mostly illegal or underground, but according to the experts it is a global form of modern slavery that affects 27 million people, takes in $150 billion a year and makes $32 billion in profits.

Half of all trafficking victims are children under age 18 and about 80 percent are women and girls.

About a third of the women and girls are forced into the commercial sex business, and the rest are forced to work in legal and illegal industries like salons, restaurants, hotels, factories and farms.

Human trafficking is complicated. It occurs all over the world. It’s concentrated in Southeast Asia and Africa, but the United States is one of the most active sex trafficking countries.

“Sound of Freedom” tells a very small story about a shameful form of modern slavery that the media hardly cover and government and business don’t do enough to stop.

The movie itself doesn’t have an overt or in-your-face political message, but everyone who sees it gets the message anyway. Especially parents of young children.

One of the most powerful moments for me was when actor Jim Caviezel, who played Tim Ballard, said that the child sex trade was more lucrative than illegal drugs.

You can take a bag of coke and sell it to a person once, the actor explains, but you can take a five-year-old child and sell him or her five or 10 times a day.

The thought of one more child being sold into slavery and into the sex trade should sicken and enrage every American. As they say in the movie, “They’re God’s children. They’re not for sale.”

–

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.