American Presidents: Totalus Rankium - 40.3 Ronald Reagan

Episode Date: July 8, 2023

In Part 3 we cover the end of Reagan's presidency. At the start of his presidency he got all he wanted to do done. So what now? Russia! (and corruption - a fair bit of that) 

Welcome to Totalus Rankium. This week, we're free. Hello and welcome to American Presidents Totalus Rankium. I am Jamie. And I'm up ranking all of the presidents from Washington to Biden and this is episode 40.3. It's the final part of Ronald the Reagan. All those decimals. This is good. This is good. This is good. Plan this time. Planned three-parter. It was all very stress-free. It's fantastic. Nicely spaced out. We're in the third part, Jamie.

This episode, we are going to find out all about how good Reagan was whilst he was president in his, well, second half of his first term and his second term. And then we are going to judge him. But before we do any of that, let's get this show on the road, Jamie. Wham. Just a Wham concert playing on the TV. That's what is happening.

Okay. Wham. Wham concert. Yep. It's playing on the TV. There's just a guy with his feet up on a table watching Wham on TV. And the camera. Wake me up before you go, go.

That's it. It's good. It's all playing in the background. And then it zooms into the TV screen and it goes into the TV screen. So you're now with Wham. I always wanted to be with Wham. It's a nice effect, isn't it? And where are Wham playing, Jamie? In a place with a stage.

There's lights. No, no. Well, there are lights, but it's not a stage. They're playing on top of a wall, Jamie. Oh. They're playing on top of the Berlin Wall. The famous, most famous Wham concert. The thing they are known most for.

And they were singing Wake Me Up Before You Go Go. And as they were singing it, just panned down slightly. Loads of cheering people. And there is Ronald Reagan strutting his groovy stuff to Wham and just repeating Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. In the same tune as the wham song, though. Gorbachev, tear this wall down. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Exactly. You have to do the da-das because you don't have any of the words. Yeah. And then it just does that and then the song ends and everyone cheers and chants,

Reagan, Reagan, Reagan, Reagan, hooray! And then George Michael jumps off the wall and Reagan catches him in his arms. Oh, beautiful. And then it just goes wham on the screen. And then that falls over and behind it is the words, Ronald Reagan, part three. Nice.

Yes. You did some good rescuing there. That was good. Yeah, it was good. And then just behind that, you see George Michael push Reagan off the stage for reasons we will see later. I just get the impression George Michael would not have been a fan of Ronald Reagan, but we'll get into that. We will get into it. Right. Okay. So we left Ronald Reagan standing to ride the high of the improved economy as he managed to cut taxes, reduce the government, and increase military spending. Yeah.

Remember, he got his list of three things, and they're all ticked off by Lionel's butler. He's done it. Everything's going well. But it's not all going his way, because if you remember, the national deficit is so high, he was forced to bring taxes back up. Something that really upset him.

Had to rub off his big tick off the taxes thing. Aw, it's a shame. Still, with the economy doing well, few people mind about the large deficit anymore. And generally, Reagan's popularity is going up. His major goals are achieved. So what's he going to do for the rest of this episode and for the next six years?

Russia. Yes. Well done. Yay! Cool. Got it. Got it in one. Yeah, Reagan had not become any less obsessed with Russia and those damn commies. He was determined to do something about the Cold War. Now, as covered last time, he was under the belief that if the

United States kept racing full speed in the arms race, the Soviets would just give up and go home. They're already home. Well. Well, some. Yeah, exactly. Now, there's little else he can do with this at this time. He's already up to the military budget, so okay.

Well, what else can I do, he thinks. Maybe I could do something internal. Like an operation? An operation on America, Jamie. Oh. Because there is a cancer in America. And that cancer. Is it the commies?

No, no, no, no. This is an internal one. It's inside the country. It's drugs, Jamie. It's drugs. Is this the war on drugs? It's the war on drugs. Because drugs are bad.

The oh-so-successful war on drugs. And it's the war on drugs. Now, are bad. The oh-so-successful war on drugs. And it's the war on drugs. Now, if you remember, back in Nixon's episodes, back in 71, Nixon had mentioned the war on drugs. And as covered, this was all about, in fact, I'll quote here, prevention of new addicts and the rehabilitation of those who are addicted. That war on drugs was a war on addiction. Reagan also wanted to crack down on drugs,

but he had a much more simple view on how to stop the drugs in America. Arrest everyone. Sometimes it's if you know, Jamie. No, his view was just say no. Oh, that makes sense. Of course, you just have to say no. Well. If only it was that simple.

I say this is Ronald Reagan. It's actually Nancy Reagan who came up with this. Nancy Reagan was the carrot in the war on drugs. I mean, she wasn't much of a carrot. She was one day asked by a schoolgirl when she was touring and speaking on the dangers of drugs. Madam First Lady, what if I'm off for drugs, says this young girl. And Nancy replied, just say no. And everyone around her went, oh my God.

Overnight, all the social and economic problems that led to detrimental drug use just disappeared throughout the country. Wow. And no one had a drug problem anymore. That is amazing. Yeah, no one had a drug problem anymore. That is amazing. Yeah, no one had thought to just say no before. So, no, that's great. Or that didn't happen.

I can't remember which one it is. I'll have to look it up. The Just Say No campaign, according to at least two studies in around 2014, found that... It was really, really dumb. Well, it found that the campaign had no provable impact on drug use As you may be shocked to learn Critics described it as reductive, simplistic However, in its defence, it did what it set out to do

It made the Reagans seem to care about drugs It put their fight against drugs at the front of conversation. So Nancy was the nice side, the carrot, the, hey, isn't it nice? We care, and we're saying just say no to drugs to your kids. However, the real war on drugs was taking place not with the carrot but the stick. And this was things like the federal budget for the FBI to tackle drugs went from 8 million to 95 million between 1980 and 1984. That's a lot of money, especially back then. Yeah, it's over 10 times

as high. All of a sudden they've got a lot of money to tackle the drug problem. Laws were strengthened to criminalise drug takers. Mandatory minimum sentences were brought in for drug charges as were civil asset forfeitures. So if you're caught doing stuff with drugs, well, that's it. That's your house gone. Isn't this a bit anti- conservative? Because that's very big government getting involved, isn't it?

Interesting you say that, yes. Okay. It's a bit of a paradox in conservative thinking. A bit of a paradox in conservative thinking. A bit of a whole abortion thing as well. Yeah, you don't want big government, apart from in a few cases where suddenly big government is needed. In this case, it's to tackle crime, and we don't want crime, so a big law enforcement is what we want. But yes, you could argue there is a bit of a contradiction there,

is what we want. But yes, you could argue there is a bit of a contradiction there, but the conservatives in the GOP at the time certainly wouldn't see it as a contradiction. That all fits what they believed. Many celebrated this as a crackdown. Fantastic. Few Americans, however, thought that drugs were a major problem when Reagan started as president. It just wasn't really high on people's worries. They lived through the 60s, so. Well, yeah. After a few years of Reagan fighting the war on drugs, however, a lot of people in the country did see it as a problem. It was talked about a lot more, so lots of people saw it as a problem. Now, that's not to say that the moral panic was entirely fabricated. There was definitely an increase of cocaine pouring into the country.

That was very real. That's not a real drug. That's just a party drug. It's fine. I won't get into that just now, in fact, because once the detail of the new laws came in to deal with these drugs, and once people started looking at them, it became clear to many that the war on drugs had a huge, huge racial problem. Ah. Yeah. to many that the war on drugs had a huge huge racial problem ah yeah because as it happened

like you just said cocaine it's just a party drug isn't it you're thinking of all the yuppies on wall street with their cocaine aren't you i'm thinking a wall of wolf of wall street exactly that was powder cocaine oh do you mean like chrisley crack ah no that that's a different thing the the powder cocaine if you were caught with it, you had a mandatory five years in a federal prison minimum. Bloody hell. But you had to be caught with 500 grams or more. That's a lot, though.

That's half a kilo. Yeah. So if you were caught with half a kilo of powdered cocaine, five years in federal prison. I guess because if you've got that much, you're more likely to be selling it rather than just snorting it in one go. However, there was a different type of cocaine

that was very popular at the time, and this is crack cocaine. This was crystallised cocaine. This also had the mandatory five years in federal prison if you were caught with it. This time, however, instead of 500 grams, it was five grams. Oh. That's the equivalent of five paperclips in your hand.

And you don't want to snort them or smoke them either. No. So if you had five grams of crack cocaine, five years in prison. If you had half a kilo of powdered cocaine, five years in prison. Oh, I see the problem here. I'm just going to give you a wild guess. Which version of cocaine do you think just happened to be more popular with the black population? Hmm. I am not sure. And which one do you think just happened to be most popular with the white population?

Hmm. Which one do you think just happened to be most popular with the white population? Yeah, as you can imagine, all the white politicians in Washington using coke didn't want the sentences for them to be too severe. So they bumped that right up thinking, well, I use the stuff, but I'm never carrying around half a kilogram. So that's fine. The other one, no. Oh, that's bad.

That's what they use in the ghettos. Yeah, this had a very swift and hugely impactful consequence on American culture and society. Now, we certainly do not have time to go through how the war on drugs damaged America. If you want to know, go and watch The Wire. Read David Simon's The Corner if you want to know more details, or many other documentaries, podcasts, books, all all sorts lots of people have discussed this

but the war on drugs has been widely considered as a complete and utter failure of course it is yeah is there a government's way of looking like they're doing something as well if it was just that it was fine but unfortunately it just got twisted in this racial way where it was actively harmful towards the black population. So a couple of things, just so you can see how bad it was. The number of black people imprisoned on drug charges went up 500% in the years after these new laws. Guess what the increase in white drug users was? Was there net loss?

No, it was zero. No change at all. Yeah. This led to the idea that drugs was a black problem. Look at all these black people being arrested for drugs. Oh, black people must all be drug users, thought people not paying attention. This just fed racial

stereotypes into the country. It still exists to this day. It was a failure that only exacerbated problems in a country that was already suffering racial problems. And it did next to nothing to solve the problems with drugs. Still, it must be said, a lot of this is in hindsight. Many people at the time during Reagan's administration thought that the war on drugs was what was needed.

They're taking it seriously because they're telling us they're taking it seriously. Yeah, so it certainly wasn't seen as a bad thing at the time. And in fact, some people to this day still think that the country should go back to doing it. But it's, like I say, it's safe to say it wasn't great. Still, Reagan, he's done his bit. He's said no to drugs. He's letting his underlings work out all the ins and outs on that. So he's on to new things. The three big things, like I say, they're out the way. What else can he do? Deregulation,

he thinks. Regulations are really bad, aren't they? They stop people making money. Yeah. Yeah. After all, the free markets could only be free if the government stopped interfering them. So in 82, he signed into law an act that meant that banks could provide loans without having to worry about all that pesky business of them being financially safe. Don't need to actually make sure the loans are, like, solid. So, yeah, just do as many loans as you want. The idea for the bill was to revitalise the housing industry by making it easier for mortgage companies to give out loans. Give out all the loans you want and then you'll get more money back. That's how money works.

Yeah, it's like free money almost. Yeah, and then, if you're really clever, you can start selling on that debt that you've accumulated, because it's like money, isn't it? If someone owes you money, it's like you've already got the money. That's fine, just keep passing it around until the music stops. It will be fine, la la la la la. Yeah.

In reality, the ripping away of safety rules in the sector very quickly led to corruption and then ultimately the savings and loans crisis that would hit Bush senior in the next presidency. Again, at the time, many people thought this was a good move. In retrospect, it caused problems. We're jumping a bit into the future here, but some historians have definitely drawn a fairly straight line between Reagan's deregulations and the financial crash of 2008 as well. So, yeah, that's a bit more dicey, pulling it back that far.

But as we will see as we go through the next couple of presidencies uh it's it's that's not fanciful it's almost like the first bit of rock tumbling down a snowy landscape yes exactly we're starting to see politicians saying things like do we really need to actually pay attention to the financial sector or can they regulate themselves i'm sure everyone's everyone's moral and thinks of the greater good of the country so of course sure we'll be fine but for now just like with the war on drugs a lot of people are fairly happy with what's going on here especially if you work in finance by the way oh cock a hoop you are because guess what you've just got a lot richer well done

yay yay i'm gonna buy some extra big shoulder pads to celebrate. Yes, I'm going to perm my hair. Mullet! Oh, there must have been so many mullets, Jamie. Why haven't we mentioned the mullets yet? I mean, it's still only 82, so it's probably got a few more years to go. Okay, the next three people I mention, they've got mullets. Okay.

Fingers crossed for Trump. Apart from Reagan, it's got to be a new person. margaret thatcher oh well that's three people they've all got mullets all right so anyway all this is internal stuff but like i say reagan's not really interested in this right now he wants to sink his teeth into russia as we've seen reagan has views on russia he has had views on russia for quite a while now. They've been building up for the last few decades, ever since the war. Around this time, ABC asked Reagan about Russia. The news reporter who asked him obviously had a mullet.

That's one. So there you go. You've got a guy in a mullet asking him about Russia. And a moustache. And a moustache, yeah. A denim. Double denim. He's wearing double denim. I feel sick.

That's how they rolled in ABC News back then. Anyway, Reagan replied this. The only morality they, being Russia, they recognise is what will further their cause. Meaning they reserve unto themselves the right to commit any crime,

to lie, to cheat, in order to attain that. So he just openly said, Russia are a bunch of lying cheats. Around this time, he calls them an evil empire. He really has views on Russia. Do you think it's like a really panicky foreign secretary, like, seriously, seriously, chill? Although the foreign advisors he had at the time would have been cheering him on from the wings at this point.

Yes, no one was trying to hold Nixon back. Anyway, this idea that the Russians were all liars and cheats and would do anything to further their cause was a reference to the writings of Nikolai Lenin. Now, there's a slight problem with quoting Nikolai Lenin. Can you guess what it is? Doesn't really exist. Yep, you got it, Nikolai Lenin. Now there's a slight problem with quoting Nikolai Lenin. Can you guess what it is? Doesn't really exist. Yep, you got it. Nikolai Lenin does not exist. He's not a real person. Reagan didn't seem to realise that Nikolai Lenin wasn't Vladimir Lenin. And Nikolai Lenin had never existed. Reagan had a handful of quotes from Nikolai Lenin that he liked to use every now and again.

All of them made up. And they all said things along the lines of, we're all a bunch of b****** and we want to see America burn. I'm very much paraphrasing there, but that's pretty much what they were. Yeah, made up quotes. It would appear these came from a pamphlet that Reagan was given at some point from the John Birch Society. If you remember, I've mentioned the John Birch Society before. It was a far-right, ultra-conservative advocacy group. That's how they describe themselves.

Right, okay. You can decide for yourself what kind of people were in that group and what other groups may or may not have overlapped that group maybe white hooded well who knows who knows it would all be alleged yeah allegedly yes allegedly anyway it's the john birch society very much powerful men in suits yeah yeah definitely anyway uh this is how it was as re Reagan took power for the first few years. He referred to Russia, like I say, as an evil empire. He seemed to fully believe false information that had been fed to him.

He just hated Russia. He thought Russia were going to destroy America. His advisers mostly were in agreement with the president. No backing down. Keep pushing the Russians until they fall. No looking weak by talking about disarmament. Like Carter did. You just look weak and then they'll push us over. However, where Reagan disagreed with most of his advisers was how strong Russia was.

His advisers, who were cheering from the wings as Reagan went in hard on Russia, thought that Russia was strong and getting stronger. They feared that Russia was going to win the Cold War. And that's why Reagan had to go in hard. Reagan himself, however, actually had a different view. He wanted America to get stronger because he believed Russia was weak. In fact, I'll quote here, what I want is to bring them to their knees so they will disarm and let us disarm. We can do it. We have them on the ropes economically. That's quite astute and also quite positive outlook, actually. It's like, we want to disarm.

That'd be great. Yeah, Reagan's policy was arming his way to disarmament. I mean, that never, ever, ever works. But you understand the thought process. I mean, it's a gamble. It's a huge gamble. It's very few people agreed with him

that that is what was going to work. His advisors thought they should be getting stronger because they wanted to win an all-out war when it came. People saying he should cool it with the rhetoric were worried that Russia were getting stronger and would start fighting. Very few people at this point agreed with Reagan

that Russia were about to fall over. Give them eight years. However, there was one person who supported him. Oh, hang on, hang on. We've only had one mullet so far, haven't we? Yeah. I genuinely did not know this. Here we go, we've got our second mullet.

Who was the person who agreed with him? Was it the leader of a foreign nation? It was a leader of a foreign nation. Was it female? was was it was it female it was female was it margaret thatcher you have successfully given margaret thatcher a mullet well done yes i've done what the miners couldn't oh yeah margaret thatcher oh jamie we're talking about margaret thatcher yeah um okay what year are you born 85 85 that was born yeah a couple years so uh yeah margaret thatcher the prime

minister of britain the iron lady maggie thatch yeah um the two of them had met in 75, and he was touring the world, and Thatcher was the leader of the opposition in 75. They met, and it turned out they had some very similar views when it came to society and economy, and the economy. Poor people suck. They both thought, Jamie, that the best way for people to succeed was to encourage them to work harder. That's how I'm going to put it. Yes.

Yes. Yeah, they both had very similar outlooks. They both got on with each other well. Then Thatcher went to America to visit Reagan a month after his inauguration. This is in 81. Okay. Yeah. She was from 79, wasn't she? Yeah, so she's Prime Minister

at this point. He's now President. Turned out well for both of them. The two of them get on like a house on fire. The house on fire that they've left. The help is still in there. That just started at roughly the same time as Reaganagan uh dismantling the welfare

state of britain and those of you living uh not in britain or maybe you're in britain and you don't know our country's uh history too well oh wow did thatcher manage to do that uh she absolutely ripped away uh the welfare state over here. She believed that capitalism and free markets were the way to build a better society. And, oh, who else thinks that? Yes, that's Reagan. So, yeah, the two of them get on very well. It's not to say they always agreed with each other, though.

When Thatcher decided to send the armed forces of Britain to defend the Falkland Islands, Reagan didn't want to get wrapped up in the politics of this. This was one of his closest allies in Europe interfering with a country in the Americas. Now, if you think about this podcast and American history, America historically has always had problems with Europe interfering in the Americas. And Reagan didn't want to jump up and down too much and say, yes, of course we support you, Britain. That isn't the American way. And that kind of makes sense.

I mean, I kind of get it as well, because you can probably say, oh, I disagree with what's happening, but we're not going to send our troops to die for a British island that's almost two-thirds the way around the world. Well, what did happen is Reagan attempted to get Argentina to talk diplomatically, settle this with words and let's not start fighting. It didn't really go anywhere.

So it was decided eventually that America would very lukewarmly support Thatcher. We just won't make a big deal of it. We're just, I suppose. They just got one guy in Albuquerque to go, woo. Yeah, something like that. I mean, back in Britain, Thatcher managed to win her next election based on this

because, oh, she was unpopular until the Falkland War. So it worked for her. But in America, it was just this weird thing that was going on that Reagan tried to just ignore, really, because it was a bit embarrassing. But apart from this, Reagan enjoyed that he was usually in step with the prime minister, who seemed to be at least well-respected internationally, even if she wasn't necessarily popular in her own country.

Her popularity fluctuated wildly. Yes. But internationally, she was seen as a force to be reckoned with, and other leaders of countries respected what she had to say. This lady's not for turning. Yes, exactly. And don't forget, Reagan's still struggling with this, am I being seen as a serious political player,

or do people still think of me as an ex-movie star? So having Thatcher's support, he did actually enjoy it. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Britain and America, special relationship, arguably closer than we have seen them. Which is nice. Isn't that nice, Jamie? Hmm.

Yeah. Anyway, in order to keep the pressure on, keeping back the Soviet menace, the CIA were given the go-ahead to start covertly sabotaging Soviet infrastructure. Did they block all their toilets? Oh, slightly bigger than that. In 82, a nuclear-sized explosion occurred in Siberia as a result of the CIA

just dabbling. What? Yeah. So did they blow something up that was Russian or did they send a missile over? It was a computer virus. This is the early days

of computer viruses and computer warfare. Yeah, they managed to get a computer virus and this is the early days of computer viruses and computer warfare yeah they managed to get a computer virus into um the soviet's network and uh yeah it massive explosion wow in siberia i guess they learned from that though because now all the nuclear things are off like the grid almost that are isolated so you can't really... Yes. It's hard to connect in remotely. Hardly any of them use AOL anymore. No. Yeah, exactly. Ask Jeeves.

It was only revealed much later in time that this was actually America's doing. At the time, throughout all of Reagan's presidency, that was just seen as an accident. But just now, America were up to that. But where Reagan really wanted to push back against the Soviets was Central and South America. This was where he was most worried about the Soviets. He had in his head another one of those fake Nikolai Lenin quotes that he thought was real about how they really wanted South America. In

fact, I'll give you the fake quote here. We won't have to take the United States, the last bastion of capitalism, because it will fall into our hands like overripe fruit if we take South America. That's some confidence right there. Yeah, so... From the fake writer. Yeah, so Reagan thought, oh no, they're going to come and take us like overripe fruit unless we kick them

out of South and Central America. I'm not a banana! Reagan thought JFK had messed up with the Bay of Pigs. Well, so did everyone, to be fair. No, no, no, wait, wait. Not because it was a whole mess, but because Reagan thought the president didn't push hard enough. He should have leaned into the Bay of Pigs much more,

is what Reagan thought. Remember, Reagan was no fan of JFK whatsoever. Yeah, so yeah, he wanted to be a lot harder. Now, currently, Cuba's not the hotspot. That's in the past. The hotspot at the moment is Nicaragua. The country had fallen to a communist coup not long before, and Reagan was worried that this would lead to a spread across the continent of communism and those countries would rush to the Soviets. Therefore the administration started highlighting the evils of the new government in Nicaragua and the virtues of the group trying to overthrow them. This group trying to overthrow them were called the Contras. The Contras were a right-wing

counter-revolutionary force in the country and they were made up from the remnants of the old Somoza dictatorship. So that was who was in charge before. But also... I do like a Somoza. Anti-Somoza groups who also felt like the current coup wasn't working out for them. So basically anyone who hadn't won the coup was now after the people who got the coup. And yeah, this created what we now call the Contra. And as you can imagine, coups and counter-coups, they're never very nice, are they?

They're always a bit messy. Yeah. So no one comes out of them looking good. But the Contra were definitely a bit dodgy, shall we say. Don't think innocent freedom fighters. Oh. Yeah. Think war crimes.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Mercenaries kind of thing? Well, no. Not mercenaries. No, they were fighting for a cause. They routinely were murdering civilians. That never helps your cause.

No, executing officials, judges, doctors, etc. Why doctors? It's just what they were doing. They were terrorising, basically, trying to bring the new government to its knees. However, Reagan decided that backing these people was the best way to get rid of the communist interest in the area. So the CIA were ordered to provide weapons and train the Contra. So horrified were many members of Congress that Reagan was simply going to finance

a group of people routinely committing war crimes that Congress passed a law prohibiting the Department of Defense to spend any money on the Contra. That's how bad this was seen as. That's quite bad. Yeah, it's like, yeah, okay, they're fighting communists as well,

but no, we will not fund those people They are doing bad things over there So what do you think Reagan did? Did he do it over rule, like, because it's, you know No, no, the law went through But he realised that he could get one finger and put it in one ear Get the other finger and put it in another ear And then make the noise, la la la la la

And then carry on Ah, fair enough Yes, la, la, la, and then carry on. Ah, fair enough. Yes, he simply ignored it. Solves that problem, doesn't it? He raised funds through back channels instead of through the defence budget, which, as we are going to see towards the end of the episode, this is going to come back to bite him just a little bit.

But for now, all you need to know, the CIA is still offering the Contra advice that they should gather up the local population for public tribunals to, and I quote, shame, ridicule and humiliate officials. And the CIA were also recommending gathering the local population to witness and take part in public executions. Bloody hell. Yeah, this is not nice. This isn't good stuff. public executions.

Bloody hell. Yeah, this is not nice. This isn't good stuff. Meanwhile, Reagan ordered the CIA to deal arms in various other countries to keep the Soviets on their toes. The Mujahideen in Afghanistan were given Stinger missiles. Arms were given to rebels in Angolia and Cambodia. And generally that was going on. So I'm going to come back to this towards the end of the episode, but just know it starts

pretty much straight away. Yeah. But all this is in the background. The main problem is Russia itself. This is all the periphery stuff. Reagan had come across something that really, really excited him when it came to Russia and the Cold War, because large anti-nuke protests had started taking place throughout the country and throughout Europe. Reagan's increase in military spending had led the world to believe, or at least large parts of the world to believe, that he wanted to make lots more nukes.

And a lot of people didn't want more nukes. No, that's almost anti-peace, you could say. You could almost say that. So large anti-nuke protests were coming up. Reagan was convinced that these protests were coming from communist insurgents in the country, stirring up trouble. It can be no other thing except communists, because every American wants to blow and destroy everyone. He's still in the Red Scare in Hollywood.

That's where he is, his mindset here. However, one day in 82, a nuclear physicist pitched an idea to Reagan that seemed perfect. This man was called Edward Teller, and Teller told the president that they could, with, to be fair, sufficient research, develop a space-based anti-nuke defence

system using x-rays. And at that point, the strobe lights came on, and the woo-woo-woo- lights came on and the came on yeah some ufos came and hovered outside the white house oh it was all very sci-fi and very very cool that's not quite cool though to be fair yeah space lasers jamie space lasers were going to shoot down the nukes essentially these aren't lasers rob oh well i know it i know it destroyed your joke, I'm sorry, but. That's what Sensible Samuel said at the side

and Ray told him to shut up. It's space lasers, damn it. And they are shooting nukes out the sky. Yeah. This became known as the Strategic Defence Initiative or the SDI. However, it mostly got called by its nickname, which was Star Wars.

I've heard of that. Yeah, well, we'll get into it in a moment. Yeah, it's a great series of films. Yeah. This was a new idea to the arms race. Instead of talking about mutual destruction, this could render the Soviets' power useless overnight. And this is key without having to threaten to kill people yeah is

it truly just defensive way of doing it and you get rid of nukes completely yeah why don't we all have this it sounds brilliant doesn't it i mean reagan was there as excited as you are right now those around reagan looked into the idea going well this is amazing so uh let's see. Oh, dear. That's a shame, isn't it? Turns out this is a pipe dream. This isn't realistic. We don't have the technology to do this. However, his advisors did stop and think about it and go, it's not useless because, okay, we won't be able to do this.

Almost certainly we won't. However, it could be used as a bluff. If they poured money into the research, if they gave or poured this money and started researching this really seriously, the Soviets would think that they had the technology. And then who knows? Like a fake satellite.

Yeah. With a microwave in it for the x-ray. Oh no. It was an x-ray machine. Yeah, exactly. And if the Soviets think that we've got the technology, we will have a bargaining chip. And who knows, who knows, if we do throw enough money at it,

maybe the boffins will have a breakthrough and they will actually do it, the mad fools. Unlikely, but what's the worst that can happen? We have got a stupid budget at the moment because Reagan's given us so much money. So let's do it. Also, X-rays are really weak. They don't travel very far like they dissipate like i say uh most people realize very quickly this was never going to work yeah i mean even i realized that then surely but

one person who didn't realize this even after he was told was reagan himself he was a full believer he believed that the united states could develop such a thing. Damn it, we put a man on the moon, we can do one of these. Do you think out of his desk he'd open his drawer saying, right, because the new X-rays are coming through, I've made a hat out of tin foil. I'm going to wear it, just in case. Just in case. And he puts a little one

on Lionel's head as well. Yeah, can't be too careful. Yeah, no, he believed in America. He believed in American ingenuity. That's the thing, you just have to believe. Just have to believe. So let's do it. So he went public and he told everyone about it.

We are going to come up with a way of stopping nukes from firing them from space. In this speech, he asked the scientists of America to bring the world the means of, and I quote, rendering nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. And this is the speech that became known as the Star Wars speech, because frankly, it sounded like something out of Star Wars. In retrospect, that was a bad choice of music for him to come on. Yeah, probably. Anyway, Reagan's cock-a-hoop with this.

He's just announced to the world that he's going to get rid of the nuclear threat. All those bloody protesters can go home now, yeah? He thought. Meanwhile, pan over to Russia. Lots of laughing. Oh no, not lots of laughing. That would have been okay. Lots of laughing would have been fine. No.

Screaming. Panic. Oh. Yeah. The Soviet leadership just went into overdrive. Brezhnev, by the way, had died recently after 18 years of being in charge. Now a man named Yuri Andropov was in charge. According to the intelligence that the Soviets had, this was a precursor to an American first strike.

Reagan coming out and saying this is an indicator that the Americans were about to start all-out nuclear war. They had the capability to attack, we already know that, they said, and now they are coming up with the technology to stop us retaliating. And as soon as they've got that in place, there is nothing stopping them from just wiping us off the map. You could understand that point of view. Yeah, definitely. The scientific community in Russia were then asked by the political leaders in Russia,

are they bluffing? Can they do this? Can they really shoot our nukes out of space? This was the laughing part, I'm guessing. Well, the scientists over there went, don't think so. I mean, we certainly can't do that. There's no way in hell we'd be able to do that. So I don't see how the Americans could do it.

But that Reagan sounded really confident, didn't he? Maybe they've had a breakthrough we don't know about. And that just gnawed on the Russians. Maybe the Americans had a breakthrough. The SDI, if achieved, would rip apart the balance of power. And that scared a lot of people, not just in Russia, across the world. It's like, at the moment, things are tense, but they're balanced. But if America suddenly become that much stronger, who knows what will happen.

And word that everyone is now feeling very nervous gets back to Reagan, and he was a little bit shocked. He thought his message was one of peace, and it would make everyone happy. Yeah, I guess so. Because he's like, actually guess so because this is the way he's solving the problem yeah you can see why he'd think that it's not a stupid thing for him to think but also you can see why the russians are thinking the way out there oh it's oh it's all tense um yeah but it's fine he quickly comes up with a solution he stated that if america managed to develop a system that could shoot down nukes from space he would give the technology to the Soviets.

That's quite clever. Everyone can have it. If we've all got it, no one can use nukes. Problem solved. Yeah, that's what I was saying earlier. So if we all had that blanket in the whole planet, problem solved. Pan over to Russia.

More screaming. This confirmed in the Soviet leadership's minds, oh my God, oh my God, they're going to kill us all. This is clearly a bluff. There's no way the Americans are just going to give us their best technology. So they're clearly lying. Why are they lying? It's because they want to kill us.

So tensions rise some more. Joe, this is really funny. Thinking back to our Star Trek podcast, the Romulans were based on Russia in the 60s. Ah, were they? By being a bit untrustworthy and not

quite believing everything. Yeah, Cold War stereotypes of the other side. Yes, and we'll be going into that soon. Oh, interesting. Little tease there for the first real episode of Star Trek A little tickle Oh, nice

Anyway, meanwhile At home in the White House Things are also tense You didn't use your third mullet, Jamie I said the next three, but you can just choose You can choose the next person to have a mullet So we're in the White House, things are tense No, the Russian guy, the Russian leader Him Andropov Yeah have a mullet all right uh so we're in the white house things are tense reagan's style no russian guy the russian russian leader him uh andropov yeah massive mullet okay

an altar mullet so like the back is down to his like waist oh wow okay yeah fair enough i mean he's gonna die very soon so you might regret wasting your mullet on him but that's fine no he he regrets wasting the mullet okay fair enough. Anyway, why are things tense in the White House, Jamie, I hear you ask? Well, Reagan's style of leading by giving the big picture and letting his underlings just get on with things unsupervised had led to, shall we say, a little bit of corruption. Oh. Yeah.

We've praised his style of leadership in previous episodes he's just said yeah this is how i view things and then he's hired people to get it done and i i stand by that praise i think it's it's worked well but this is definitely the downside because he then doesn't check in and several people were being a little bit corrupt several people were forced to resign at this point for things like envelopes of cash being found after interviews had been arranged with Nancy. Things like that. Nothing earth-shattering at this point,

just some low-level corruption. But just know it's going on. I will go into more detail when some bigger things happen later. Around this time, Reagan hired a new Secretary of State, and this is a man named Schultz. Schultz, unlike almost all of Reagan's advisors, did not come from the far right of the GOP. Remember, Reagan was very much the child of the far right of the GOP. They put him there.

Schultz wasn't one of them, though. He was more moderate, less hawk-like. Schultz started to talk to Reagan about the possibility of maybe, Reagan, we could open up some communications with the Soviets. Because at the moment, all we're doing is getting rumours of them panicking every time you open your mouth. Screaming is ridiculous. Yeah, so maybe now we are developing the SDI, which apparently we are, can we maybe think about going back to reducing the amount of nukes at the same time,

and opening up channels of communication? Yeah? Reagan was actually open to this idea. He wasn't quite as hardline as some of his advisors. Okay, I can talk to them. In fact, Reagan thought if he could talk to one of the leaders of Russia, then actually tensions would cool down almost immediately, because he would just be able to convince them that he wasn't a threat. So Schultz puts out feelers. He gets a response. Okay, if you guys want to talk, we're open to it. Reagan wrote in his diary, and I quote, I think I'm a hardliner and will never appease, but I do want to try and let them see that there's

a better world if they're shown by deed that they want to get along with the free world. So we're starting to see Reagan soften slightly here. Reagan writes a letter to Andropov, which he first showed to his national security advisor. This was a man named Clark. Clark wore a Stetson. He wore cowboy boots. He hung a Colt.45 on his wall,

and he called the gun the Judge. Ah, so he's a bit of a... So I'm just going to let you guess what political views he had. And, yeah, just know that he was the National Security Advisor. All you need is a Colt.45. Clark was horrified that Schultz had started all of this talking to the Reds. Yeah. And Clark looked in horror at what Reagan wanted to say in a letter to the Soviet leader.

Reagan, in a letter, was talking about reducing the number of nukes in the world. In fact, he even mentioned a future where there were no nukes at all. Good God. Clark put his cow-booted foot down and told the president that this would make the United States look weak to their enemy. The Russians will look at this,

laugh, and they will become bold and confident. Reagan agreed, so decided to take it out. So in the end, the letter was very wishy-washy and did nothing at all. It's a very bland letter.

It didn't suggest anything more than just dialogue, which, I mean, the letter already was dialogue. Hey, Russia, weather here is quite warm. Yeah. Not bad. Hope you're well. Andropov was ill, like I say.

So he read this letter, he stroked his mullet, and then he died within months. Yeah. Well, don't stroke your mullet. Exactly. So that's a shame. Still, things do seem to be getting slightly better between the two superpowers. But then something bad happened.

The Soviets shot down a Korean passenger plane that was close to their border. This plane happened to have a US congressman on it. Not just a congressman, but the president of the John Birch Society. Oh, how unfortunate. Yeah. I mean, that is not good. No. No.

In some ways. Intense pressure was put on Reagan from the far right of the party to immediately declare punitive actions. Russia, send your most racist... And we shall shoot him down in a plane. Well, Reagan resisted, realising this was a dangerous situation. Yeah, he didn't just pander to the right of his party immediately. I mean, on air, he did call it a massacre.

He didn't pull his punches verbally, but he did refrain from declaring any action just yet. However, he did slip slightly when he came away from the official White House line, because he speculated that the plane was shot down on purpose because the US congressman was on board. That was not the official White House line, but it's obviously what Reagan believed in his heart. In Russia, they have just lost it by this point with Reagan, because he's now using words like massacre. Stop saying Star Wars! just lost it by this point with Reagan, because he's now using words like massacre and, yeah, they start calling Reagan... Stop saying Star Wars!

Well, they start calling Reagan a madman, they start comparing him to Hitler, they really lose it with Reagan. They are convinced that Reagan wants to wipe them off the map. From his secret hospital, Andropov declared that the United States and Russia would never achieve any kind of peace with Reagan in charge. Things have gone south quickly. But this is history, Jamie, and events move quickly. In October of 83, a bomb went

off in Beirut in Lebanon, killing 241 US Marines. A lot of death, biggest since the Vietnam War. This was an attack on a peacekeeping force in the area during the Lebanese Civil War, which we do not have time to go into, Jamie. So we're not going to. Two days later, Reagan approved the US invasion of Granada. Granada? Yeah. This is an island in the Caribbean with a population of 100,000 people.

I was going to say, don't they specialise in, like, nice food? Yeah, if you've ever been, like, sailing around the Caribbean and, like, tripped over an island, it could be Granada. It's not big. It's not big. It's not inva... What? Well...

Is it an excuse to send all the troops over for a holiday? Is that kind of what it really is? Well, the previous ruler on Granada had been assassinated by a member of his own Cuban-backed black power government for not being radical enough. Now, Reagan claimed that the bombing in Lebanon and the assassination in Granada were both all about Russia. In a speech afterwards, Reagan painted both events as proof that the Russians were behind all the major world events. I mean, this just isn't

true, but it worked for Reagan at the time. The at-the-time underground Hezbollah, they hadn't come out as a recognised force by this point, but that's who had done the bombing. It was Hezbollah and Iran were behind the bombing. It ultimately was figured out, and it had nothing to do with the Soviets whatsoever. It had everything to do with all the stuff that we've talked about in previous episodes in the middle east uh all the stuff with iran and it's complex over there we've we dabbled in it the middle east does not need the russians involvement to explain the bombing it just wasn't anything to do with russia the coup in granada did to be fair have links to the cold war but it was so small fry that the US response to it was seen as alarming to pretty much everyone in the world.

The invasion lasted two days, as the largest military in the world took on a tiny island. That's almost embarrassing. Yeah. The United Nations passed a resolution that passed 108 to 9, that stated, and I quote, it deeply deplored the armed intervention in Granada, which constitutes a flagrant violation of international law

and of the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of that state. Yeah. Yeah. America walked into a foreign country and just took the leader off and put a new leader on. Yeah. Yeah. Thatcher, by the way, not happy in the slightest oh good because uh granada obviously is a commonwealth state oh yeah

of course yeah yeah yeah oh yeah this is one of their falling outs yeah this is one of their falling outs reagan had to be fair let her know He hadn't let many people know, but he let Thatcher know beforehand what they were going to do. Not very long before, like literally hours, but did let her know before. Thatcher very quickly sent a response back. I quote her, I cannot conceal that I am deeply disturbed by your latest communication. You asked for my advice. I have set it out and I hope that even at this late stage,

you'll take it into account before the events are irrevocable, she said. Nice. It's like being here with Thatcher. It really is. It's spooky. It's spot on. It's like Gillian Anderson. It is.

That's what it is. Anyway, Reagan didn't listen. He probably muttered to himself something about the Falkland Islands, I'm guessing. Yeah. And then went ahead anyway. Back home in the States, after a double whammy of the deaths of 241 Marines, but then a military victory, Reagan's popularity saw a surge. No longer are we losing militarily to the Soviets.

Yeah, we drew. We drew. That was right. We drew in Vietnam. And that was embarrassing. And now we're being attacked cowardly with bombs. But we are winning militarily when we invade Soviet countries. That's what people were saying.

It's how they were spinning this. Meanwhile, just pan over to Russia. Are they screaming again? Yeah, more screams. Yeah, America are now moving their troops around the globe for reasons that seem very suspect. Why have you just moved all your armed forces to a tiny island, the Caribbean? There were also some military manoeuvres around this time, which were, let's say, quite gung-ho. A lot of troops were moved around. Russia are feeling very, very nervous. Shortly after this, the CIA managed to get some intelligence, and they took this intelligence to Reagan,

and Reagan was shocked at what he heard. Apparently, the Russians were now seriously worried that the United States were about to start a first-strike nuclear war. Like, seriously worried. They felt like they were closer to a war breaking out than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. In Russia, they were at Cuban Missile Crisis level, psychologically. Oh, wow. Reagan was taken aback. What?

We're not in a Cuban Missile Crisis. I'm trying to be peaceful. Yeah. I mean, yes, I'm ramping up the military, but I'm not going to use it. I'm just trying to use it to, like, hurt their economy. Why don't they understand that? He said.

After all, the US are the good guys. There's no way the US were going to start the nuclear war. That's what the Russians want to do, thought reagan he really struggled with the concept that the russians would think the exact opposite he really did i think this almost highlights his i don't think naivety is the right word but you know when you've got people that are trained politicians may have a bigger world view than yeah maybe yeah I know what you mean. Naivety is not quite the right word, is it? No.

Because he's not stupid or naive. No, not at all. But he does have a fierce view of America. He's very patriotic. Yeah. And he obviously struggles to understand that other people might not see America in that way. We're not the world police. What? Well, Reagan starts to get very worried at this point.

Maybe he starts to think, I've been pushing too hard. Right, I really would like to talk to someone high up over there, he starts to say to his advisors. If I could just talk to someone and say, we won't attack you, it would cool tensions, surely. So can I please talk to someone? Get this set up. Roughly this time, Reagan was advised that having the Stetson-wearing clerk around with his Colt 45 was probably not helping any chances of talking with the Soviets.

So Reagan starts looking for a way to get rid of his national security advisor. Fortunately, something comes up almost immediately, you'll be pleased to know, because the Secretary of the Interior was caught being horribly racist, so was forced out of his job. Brilliant. How nice. So Clark was moved into that job. Well, I'll be the judge of that. Click, click.

So Clark goes off to be the Secretary of the Interior. Wanders into the Interior with his Colt.45. His replacement was less hardline and did not attempt to block Schultz, the moderate advisor. Now, by this time

Andropov is dead. Him and his mullet are buried. His replacement Chilenko was now in charge. Do you like this guy? Got any opinions on this guy? He's dead, Jamie. He's already dead. Oh, OK. I was about to say, I loved his moustache. He lasted about a year.

All right. Yeah, so the attempts of communication with him went nowhere. It didn't help that around this time, Reagan was caught on a mic, a hot mic. They were doing a test. He was just ad-libbing, doing a mic test, and it was recorded. What's one thing you don't think an American president should be joking about at this time? How terrible Russia is? That sort of thing? I'll just quote.

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you that today I have signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes. No! No! Even as a minutes. No! No! Even as a joke. No! There were certain times where you don't make jokes. When you're the president, you don't make jokes like that.

No, you really don't. Yeah. Anyway, around this time, the next election's coming around. Nancy didn't want Reagan to run again. She wanted him to step down. She had started to see signs that would take others a lot longer to see. At least it's theorised here.

Reagan's starting to tie. He's quite old by this point. He's in his 70s, and something's not quite right with Reagan, or at least Nancy's spotting it. He was getting confused. His memory was getting worse. He's not as sharp as he was. Still, Nancy's not going to convince her husband to not run again.

Who wants to be a one-term president? It's just embarrassing. It really is. Can you imagine the embarrassment? So, yeah, so he's going to run again. The economy's still doing very well, as we've talked about. The patriotic bump after invading the tiny island nation meant that Reagan was actually doing quite well at this

point. So he wins in another landslide. Something that really confused and frustrated his many critics in Washington, because believe me, he had lots of critics. Reagan was becoming known as the Teflon president. As I mentioned earlier, we haven't had time to go through the cases individually, but if we go by the numbers of investigations, indictments and convictions of individuals in the Reagan administration, you can argue it is the most corrupt in US history. Until 2016 or including 2016? We will have to wait until all of that pans out. What I'm saying here is it rivals Nixon's administration. Oh, wow.

OK. Yeah. Really? Yes. That's kind of impressive in a way. It's always hard to do counts of number of people who got caught being corrupt because of pardons. Did they do it?

Were they indicted? Were they convicted? There's all different parts of the law going on and it makes it all confusing. But one tally I read said 138 officials in Reagan's administration were indicted, investigated, or convicted. Just know there's a wee bit of corruption going on in the administration. Just a smidgen. Yeah, so his critics in Washington were getting very frustrated. They were looking at one of the most corrupt administrations in US history, and then they

were looking at the landslide election that he's just won, and were very annoyed. But despite almost non-stop drip-feed officials being found breaking the law, none of this seemed to touch Reagan. Most of the public seemed happy to believe that there were many bad apples in the Reagan administration, but Reagan didn't know about that. He's just trying to get his job done. Reagan's leadership style meant that he was, to be fair, usually unaware of the crimes being committed around him. Yeah, it's probably very true, yeah. Yeah, but he's not stupid. Far from it. He must have realised something was up, and in fact in some cases, as we will see in a bit, he actively knew about things happening and laws being broken. But mostly, he was just happy to let his underlings get on with things whilst he focused on bigger picture stuff.

As a result of this, his second term was mostly dominated by pet projects of his underlings that he had little to do with. This was mainly a continuation of what he had started. This was more tax reform, more stripping of social security. One area that he did not get involved in much at all, certainly not to begin with, was the growing health epidemic that was ripping through the country at the time. First discovered in the late 70s, AIDS had become a huge problem in the country. And by 1984, it was discovered that the source of AIDS was a retrovirus called HIV. This had started to kill a lot of people.

Reagan at first was very sceptical that HIV or AIDS was a big deal. He assumed it was similar to measles. It was something you would get and you'd get over. To be fair to Reagan, a lot of people thought like this at the time and not much was known about it to begin with because not many people were researching it. But Reagan stuck with that it's just like measles for a long time. Eventually, however, as the death toll rose, it became clear that this was potentially one of, if not the most serious health problem of the century. Up there with the Spanish flu of the 20s and stuff like that.

This was a serious epidemic going on. So something had to be done. However, there was a problem. Can you guess what the problem is, Jamie? Either black or gay people? Well, due to the way that it was transmitted, one of the groups most susceptible to HIV and AIDS were gay men. Ah.

Yeah. And this was a problem for the Reagan administration. Because amongst the far right of the GOP at the time, I'm just going to put it bluntly, a lot of them were homophobic. One of Reagan's aides outright said, failure to make moral judgments is why we have this epidemic. Oh. Yes. Those that weren't homophobic around Reagan were working within a political system that was. Now, Reagan personally would not have seen himself as homophobic. Live and let live was pretty much his philosophy on

things like this. No one should be arrested for being gay, he believed. That was government interference. But in typical Reagan style, he also refused to accept that gay people should be helped in any way by the government to live their lives. To the point that he would say things like this, and I quote, Those people, yeah, are demanding recognition and approval of their lifestyle, and no one has a right to demand that. Which is not a good thing to say. No.

No. Now, Reagan would swear blind, and probably would have believed it himself, that he would have said that quote about any group of people. So therefore, he wasn't being homophobic. He would have said, no one has a right to demand recognition and approval. But. But. But.

Just like he was offended at being called racist, but then enacted deeply racist drug laws, the fact is that Reagan and his administration actively chose not to take on the AIDS epidemic as much as they could and should have done. And the reason they did this was homophobia. Now, not wanting to anger the moral right that supported him, Reagan just stayed quiet on the subject all the way up until 85,

where he finally mentioned it in a press conference in passing. Then a year later, he declared that they would look for a vaccine. So he's finally on board in 86. The White House proposed $2 billion to look into a vaccine. That's a chunk of change as well. Oh yeah, and then Congress more than doubled it. It went to over $5 billion and then reagan did sign that um so he did sign into law in 86 uh and he started to get the scientific community looking into it a bit more uh but to many many people this is far little far too late most understood that a miracle vaccine was not

going to happen overnight. And they should have been looking into this a long time ago when they realised roughly what was going on. Even Thatcher's government in Britain was putting forth a health campaign to make sure that people understood the facts behind the epidemic. You've watched It's a Sin, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Things were happening in other countries, even other countries that had the same type of government. Reagan's administration was doing next to nothing in regards to public awareness. Had his administration raised awareness more, perhaps fewer of the 100,000 people who died of AIDS

during his term would have died. That number goes up to nearly half a million people once you get into the 90s, because obviously people were getting it in the 80s and then surviving until the 90s. Yeah, so a lot of people died, and this epidemic was not treated effectively. So he had a stigma attached to it, which is awful.

Yes, exactly. So that's not good. It's not good at all. But as we've seen, Reagan wasn't interested in all that stuff. He's still focusing on his one focus. And that was nothing to do with AIDS. It was Russia. He's going to deal with Russia. He's in his second term now, and as you're going to see,

his second term is almost as if he was a different president in regards to Russia. His first term was build up the military, dominate Russia militarily, scare Russia, act big and tough. However, he's now got fewer hawks around him. And after seeing firsthand just how nervous the Russians were, Reagan had, in his own mind at least, decided to back off a little bit. It's almost as if he got right to the brink and then realised, oh dear, my words and actions have consequences. I'm going to tiptoe back a little bit here. He didn't want to scare the Russians so much

that they struck out in fear, which he finally seemed to realise might happen. So he really did want to open this channel of communication. And he had his chance in March of 85. That's right, Jamie, March of 85. I was born in February 85. I am now officially alive Jamie. March of 85. I was born in February 85. I am now officially alive in this podcast. Completely.

I am born. You're still dead. Welcome to the world. Thank you. You're still dead, though. You'll be hurt soon. Yeah. I'm not even a twinkle.

Yeah. Not even a twinkle. Yeah. Anyway, in March of 85, Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the new Soviet leader. Gorbachev was 54, well-educated, he'd spent a significant time in the West, he could speak English. Apparently, get this, he even had a sense

of humour. Oh, nice. Did he go to every meeting like a glasses, fake glasses of the teeth and stuff? Yeah, that's what he did. It's crazy, isn't it? Can you imagine Russians being like human beings? Crazy. Yeah. Anyway, Schultz told Reagan that this leader might be different and willing to talk. Reagan was excited by this. Good. Finally, I can talk to one of them.

But he sought advice first. Kissinger is still hanging around and Nixon obviously is still around. So he turns to those two. What do you think about this new guy, Gorbachev? What can tell me about him? They both go, no, this is more of the same. You won't get anywhere talking to him. You might as well not bother. Talk to him if you want, but it's more of the same. I guess from their experience, that's a fair response.

Yeah, however... It's not fair, but it's a response. Well, not everyone thought this. Thatcher comes out once more and supports Reagan. After meeting the Soviet leader, she publicly said that she liked Mr. Gorbachev and said that they could do business together. She then visited

Reagan in Camp David and gave a more detailed assessment on the new Russian leader and said something along the lines of, yeah, he seems willing to listen. However, and she said, I quote, the more charming the adversary, the more dangerous.

I like the way you're kind of slowly slinking into Monty Python levels. It's good. It's how she sounded, Jamie. It's how she sounded. To be fair, it is how she sounded. I've not done a cackle yet. I am restraining myself. And the sound of screaming miners and schoolchildren.

Begging for milk. Margaret Thatcher, the milk snatcher. So if you don't know UK politics, none of that will mean anything. Anyway, Reagan agreed with what Thatcher was saying, agreed with her assessment, trusted what the Iron Lady had to say. Through various channels, a meeting between the two leaders of the superpowers was set up for November of 85. Tuck was optimistic.

Both sides, before the summit, were talking about a 50% reduction of all nuclear weaponry. They were going to go inward to this, like, let's do this seriously. As you can see, this is miles away from what reagan was talking about just a few years before where he refused to talk about reduction of weapons he was talking about pumping them up so yeah this is complete turnaround do you think do you think um after the death star stuff gorbachev is like yeah we have a death star now well no this comes into it because they don't have a death Star, and that's the problem.

Yeah, just before the event, Gorbachev, let it be known. You know what? America, if you get rid of your Star Wars project, you get rid of your Death Star, we will be willing to make a deal that leads to a 100% reduction of all nuclear weaponry. Ooh. Yeah. That is a very tasty deal.

Oh, Schultz over the moon. Yes! The plan had worked. The pie-in-the-sky SDI Star Wars scheme had worked perfectly. They all knew it wasn't going to actually work. They weren't going to be able to make this thing, but it had scared the Russians enough to bring them to the bargaining table and offer everything.

But there was one problem. Because if you remember, Reagan by this point 100% believed his own propaganda on the Star Wars project. He would not hear of ending the SDI project. He fully believed the United States could make it work, so he wasn't going to stop researching it. If it worked, it would end all nuclear threat forever. He wouldn't listen to anyone who said the program was unlikely to work. He wrote to Gorbachev, refusing the terms, citing that the defence

he was creating was a future shield against any future madmen. And you can see where he's coming from, because if it works, that's it. Nukes are gone like that. Well, he's living in hope, and that's a great thing to think. But when you've been offered something, an alternative, that could be equally as good.

Yeah. Well, the two still meet in Geneva, and they went for walks, they had meetings. Reagan wanted a urinal moment, which they got in a walk around the garden rather than in the urinals. But Reagan would often talk about when he was the president of the Screen Actors Guild, he would quite often get some business done while standing next to someone in the urinal and having a chat rather than in an office. In other words, he wanted to be one-on-one, just having an informal chat.

They seemed to get on well enough, but to Reagan's frustration, Gorbachev wasn't moving. You've got to get rid of the Star Wars project. Otherwise, we won't go any further. Did he call Hollywood? You need to cancel all the films. Yeah. Now, this was forever going to be the sticking point. Reagan soon realises this.

So Reagan offered what he'd hinted at before. Okay, how about this? If we create the missile defence satellites, we'll give them to you as well. Said it before, but I'm now saying it to your face. You can trust me. Gorbachev probably said something in Russian that probably meant, pull the other one that's got bells on, because there's no way he's going to believe it. Reagan's negotiating team themselves didn't believe what they were hearing because this was off script. They simply did not believe this. The offer was too good to be true, and therefore it simply wasn't believed.

It wasn't a good bargaining chip because no one believed Reagan would do it. The irony is Reagan probably was more than genuine. Is the troubles like the, Russians, the Russian government at the time would know that, well, you were not going to be president in the next two or three years, so... You can't guarantee anything. So they don't get very far in negotiations,

but Reagan goes off script again and invites Gorbachev to the United States, which was accepted. So the two, although, I mean, they weren't friends, but they did get on. They were able to talk to each other. No major deals took place,

but channel communication is now firmly open and Gorbachev is invited to the United States. So actually, not bad. Considering where they were just a few years ago, relations between the two superpowers are now much, much better. They're not screaming as much. Yeah, exactly. After they left, letters kept going between the two superpowers are now much, much better. They're not screaming as much. Yeah, exactly. After they left, letters kept going between the two. They were increasingly cooperative

in tone. Both men started discussing the possibility of ridding their country's nukes by the year 2000, if not before. Now, this was not unopposed. But that's in the future. Yeah, it sounds futuristic. The year 2000. Right, this wasn't unopposed. The hardliners in Reagan's administration, who were all but calling the shots at the start of Reagan's first this wasn't unopposed. The hardliners in Reagan's administration,

who were all but calling the shots at the start of Reagan's first term, were now appalled. Like, this is almost as bad as Carter. What the hell has happened to Reagan? Equally, in Russia, Gorbachev had his own hardliners he had to contend with. But both of them were managing to hold the line at this point. In Washington, Schultz got to work trying to pull the administration together. He wrote a memo that said, and I'll quote, I know that many of you and the others around here object to the elimination of nuclear weapons, but the President of the United States

doesn't agree with you. In other words, shut up. You're wrong. And Reagan agrees with me. And then Chernobyl blew up. Oh yes, yeah. Yeah, if you want to. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. If you want to know more, watch Chernobyl.

It's very good. All documentaries and books, but no, watch the TV show. It was really, really good. Not completely accurate, but worth it for dramatic license. Uh, anyway,

uh, Chernobyl blew up. Uh, bang, it went. And, uh, anti-nuclear feeling intensified across the globe, as you can imagine. Uh, on top of this, whilst Reagan and the United States were still enjoying their economic boom, Russia was going through some very tough times.

Saudi Arabia had started increasing oil production, meaning that Russia would make a lot less on selling natural gas. Suddenly, Russia were feeling very poor. I didn't realise that was a thing. That's interesting. Yeah. Plus various other things. Economies are very complex, but this was definitely a major contributing factor. Gorbachev realised that Russia's got a problem here. If they keep going how they are, the Soviet Union would collapse because they could not afford to keep the arms race up. So therefore, they needed

a breakthrough in the negotiations that were going on in the United States. We need to stop spending so much money on nukes. So let's set up another meeting. The two leaders meet again in October of 86. You're nearly alive, Jamie. You're nearly alive. Almost. Almost. I may have been conceived. You were probably conceived during... October? Yeah, probably during this meeting. I conceived i'm a i'm a little fetus are you a little oh how nice how nice okay uh so not not during this meeting man i was april nip i'm i'm a two month old fetus two months i'm two months old oh yeah how nice right okay i'm rocking out on the ambionic fluid nice cool uh Cool. Anyway, they meet in Iceland in 86.

This time, things go very well. Gorbachev had softened in the negotiations slightly, in the US point of view. The US didn't realise that Gorbachev had, in his own mind, realised he needed a breakthrough here. So Gorbachev comes along and says, fine, I will agree to a significant reduction of nukes if the United States slow down your space program.

You don't need to stop it. Just keep it in a lab for 10 years before you do anything practical. And if you agree to that, we will reduce all nuclear weaponry 50%. Reagan and his team come back. We can do better than that. Why not a complete elimination of ballistic missiles on top of that? Ooh. Yeah. Gorbachev comes back. We can do better than that. Why not the elimination of all nuclear weaponry,

including subs and bombers? Everything. Oh, and also that 10 years in the lab on the space program, I'm willing to negotiate a bit on that. I can be a little bit flexible. And there, on the brink of the most sweeping arms control agreement in history, Reagan backed down. He wanted his Star Wars program. He stood up and said, I quote, this meeting is over. Gorbachev said, can't we do something about this? Reagan replied,

it's too late and walks out. He almost could have had world peace. Well, with this setback to world peace in place, Reagan was then forced to focus on things closer to home. So close, Jamie, so close. So close. Anyway, yeah, the corruption. Corruption starts to catch up with him. You know all that corruption that's been bubbling along in the background? That was only a matter of time, wasn't it? It starts with William Casey, the director of the CIA. I'm kind of going back to the start of Reagan's first term here, just so we can get a sense of what was going on. Yeah, something I didn't cover in Ford's episode. So going back all the way to Ford.

Wow. We're post-Watergate here, but only just. And there was a couple of committees that looked into the CIA because the country realised, oh dear, the government and the CIA are up to some dodgy things. Maybe we should know about them. So a couple of committees looked into the CIA. They lift up the lid on the building of the CIA, peered inside, and went, oh, good God.

No! Yeah, the public were horrified at what was found. It turned out that the CIA was assassinating foreign leaders. They were arming terrorists. They were even experimenting on humans. United States civilians. Bloody hell. They were doing mind control experiments using drugs.

Oh, I've heard about that. Yeah. Yeah. Not good. Turns out the CIA, nasty, nasty organisation. So post-75, the CIA was supposed to get squeaky clean. No more bad stuff. And arguably, they kind of started to turn it around a bit.

During the rest of Ford's presidency and then Carter's presidency, things seemed to improve. Then Reagan becomes president. And Reagan put his campaign manager in charge of the CIA. This is Casey. Casey, once in the post, decided that although obviously the CIA was no longer allowed to assassinate people, that had been made clear, no one had said anything about honest-to-goodness killings, so we can go and do a few killings, can't we? That's not assassination. No, that's just a killing. Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, so things start getting a little bit dodgy again. When Congress passed that bill saying the defence budget could not be used to arm the Contras in Nicaragua, Casey figured that that probably didn't mean the CIA. So he just carried on doing stuff. With Reagan's permission, the CIA started to train the Contras. Not giving them money, you understand.

That would be illegal. We're just going to spend all of our time and resources training the Contra. That doesn't count as giving money over. We will advise them on how to murder and terrorise populations. Things like that. That's what we'll do. Any money that they did need

would just have to come from rich GOP donors. Well, yeah. Does that sound a little bit dodgy to you? It sounds a little bit dodgy. Yeah. Because I think that could be the beginning of a snowball effect where if a company wanted to influence the government, they could just donate loads of money.

Oh, wow. That certainly could have happened. That's not what happened in this case, but yeah, that could have happened. Yeah, it's all very dodgy. But I mean, the CIA's done worse in the past, hasn't it? And you could even argue that this was legal. They weren't spending any money from the defence budget.

It's fine. However, to raise more money, donations were then secretly taken from other governments, from other countries, and deposited in secret accounts. So yeah, the CIA just went to other governments in South America and went, do you want to contribute a fund to the

Contras, and we'll make sure they get it. And other governments went, yes, what bank account? And then the agents would go, oh no, it's Faye Faye, hush hush. And yeah, a lot of this money went to funding the Contras, something America should not have been doing. But because obviously these were secret donations, a lot of cash, and we are talking millions here, was finding itself in the pockets of various people in the Reagan administration. And then things get worse because Oh, brilliant. Because around this time, seven Americans, and many others,

were taken hostage on a plane and flown to Lebanon. This is all taking place in the civil war in Lebanon that I decided not to cover because we don't have time to cover it. But just know it's going on. Yeah. You're looking like you recognise something here. I might not. Carry on, and I'll go, if I do.

Well, this isn't an isolated incident. During Reagan's administration, several planes are hijacked, flown to Beirut, and people are taken hostage and demands for various things, usually the release of prisoners, take place. So ultimately 25 US citizens were taken in this way during Reagan's administration. So if you are thinking of planes being hijacked and landing on runways and people being thrown off onto the tarmac dead, then that is this period of time. That's what you're thinking

of. Yeah. Yeah. Reagan, very angered and frustrated by all of this, as you can imagine. He feels like he can't really do anything. He soon learnt what Carter had learnt. It's not very easy to deal with these situations. Yeah, he was feeling very impotent, very frustrated. Publicly, he was very clear the United States were not going to deal with terrorists, obviously.

The hostages must be released. However, behind the scenes, things were a little bit different. His national Security Advisor had a plan. We know, said his advisor, that Iran have links to the terrorist group who have hijacked the plane. We can use this to our advantage. Because Iran still have a lot of our weapons from back when the Shah ran the place. But those weapons are going to be old and they're going to need parts. So we could sell around those parts, and in return, they could whisper a few words and get some hostages released.

This is so greasy, it's disgusting. Yeah. Now, Reagan was in hospital at this point. He was having surgery on his colon to have some polyps removed. Fun. But he was... Yeah, that's the sound it makes. Yeah, he was fully lucid, though. He knew what was going on when the idea came to him.

He was warned, this, by the way, is highly illegal. We would be selling arms for hostages to a... I was going to say, is it the operation or the thing? No, no, the selling of arms to hostages would be illegal. The operation was probably legal. Yeah, this is a highly illegal situation, but it is one way to get the hostages back. Reagan responded that, yes, find a way to do it.

That's what I want to happen. In August of 85, a hostage was released after the United States gave Iran some anti-tank missiles. And this had opened a door. Okay, this works. So his national security advisor and his number two, now this was a man named North, remember his name. North, by the way, is also someone who's stealing some of that secret money that I mentioned a moment ago. He's lining his own pockets at this time. Anyway, the main

National Security Advisor and North travel to Iran at this time using Irish passports provided by the CIA. And then they arrive bearing gifts. A pallet of missiles, six magnums in presentation cases. Now, bearing in mind, Jamie, they're going to Iran to meet up with some high-up officials to open communications to Sal Arms. And they have arrived with a pallet of missiles, six fancy guns.

What else do you think they bring? They bring two other things to this Islamic country. Oh, they bring like sausages and alcohol or something ridiculous. No, a Bible. Oh, a Bible. Oh, brilliant, yeah. Yeah. Just what they need.

Yeah, a Bible. And one other thing. This one is my favourite on the list. Whiskey? No, not a million miles away though. A chocolate cake, Jamie.ie oh of course yeah i i just love that list of four things a palette of missiles six fancy guns a bible and a chocolate cake i mean i'm more surprised they got that in their carry-on well it didn't go well um they didn't meet the highup officials they thought they were going to be able to meet.

They only met some underlings who didn't seem that interested. And the security at the airport confiscated the cake and ate it. Yeah. Yeah. So isn't that nice? So that didn't do too well. I also hope they were putting on really false, bad Irish accents the whole time, because their passports were Irish.

But we can only speculate. Top of the morning to you. Yeah, exactly. We're Irish. So in January of 86, Reagan signed off to another batch of weapons being sold. Over 1985 and 1986, 2,008 missiles were exchanged for four hostages. But in that time, six more hostages were taken. Well, because they know they've got a bank account. They can draw out whatever they want,

of course. Yeah, so it's not going well. But Reagan keeps signing off on it. It still continues because, let's face it, the individuals setting all these meetings up and making the deals happen all off the books, very hush hush, are making a fortune every single time. So it just carries on. Anyway, it gets worse. Because North then comes up with a brilliant idea. Why don't we start using the money that Iran is paying illegally for arms? Because Iran were paying for the arms but also whispering in the ears of people to release the hostages. So money was also being exchanged. And North goes, well, this money's all off the books. No one knows it exists. So why don't we get this money that we're illegally obtaining

to illegally fund the Contra in Nicaragua? Because we can't pay the Contra. We're not allowed to. But no one knows about this. So we'll just funnel it over there. Yeah? And then, all of a sudden, the lid is blown off. A plane was shot down in Nicaragua, and a book of suspicious phone numbers was found, which implied that the United States were funding things that they shouldn't be. And then just a couple of weeks later, newspapers in Lebanon started reporting that the United States were paying Iran in weapons for hostages and selling arms for cash. Reagan immediately went on TV and denied it strenuously.

There is no way any of this is true. All lies. But it was so obviously true that it took mere days for the truth to be uncovered by some very easy reporting. They did not hide their tracks. Six days later, Reagan was forced to go back on TV and go, so when I said that wasn't true, that was totally true. But this is dangerous for the hostages, and it's irresponsible of anyone

talking about it. This endangers the lives of the hostages, was essentially his tack. Things then get even worse when an investigation is set up, and it was discovered that only 12 million out of the 30 million that Iran had paid for the exams had ended up in the united states so where exactly is the missing 18 million dollars it was soon discovered that it had been diverted to nicaragua yeah in the white house north and his office went into overdrive shredding all and everything they could get their hands on they ended up breaking the shredder in their office because they were trying to shred too much too quickly. So they moved all of the illegal files to the White House Situation Room

and continued destroying evidence of their illegal activities there. Bonfire. Bonfire. But then little bits escape, don't they? And then they land in an FBI's lap. That's true. Yeah.

We've all seen it. So, all of this illegal stuff going on, but the question is, what did Reagan know? And when did he know it? It's the age-old question. Well, about the diversion, apparently nothing. I'll quote here, North didn't tell me about this. This might

call for a resignation, he said internally. It would appear that Reagan didn't know that money from Iran was going to the Contra. But Reagan did know about these two separate activities. He just didn't know that they tied together. The idea that Reagan was unaware of all of this is a nonsense. He definitely knew. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. And he knew about illegal things. He was told things were illegal and he still okayed it. Anyway, Reagan then fires North, but then phoned him personally and called him a hero, so it's not as if he was offended by North's actions. North and 12 others were eventually indicted.

H.W. Bush would go on to pardon five of them. North wasn't one of them, though. He does get convicted. Serves a suspended sentence, though. It's nice to be rich and have powerful friends when you've committed a crime. Reagan takes a hit publicly. His approval went down 20 points to 43%.

That's still relatively high. Still relatively high. It was very high before. But yeah, a 20-point hit is bad, however. Far too many people remembered Watergate, and this seemed a lot like Watergate. Still, he starts to improve in the public eyes. When he went on a tour. He visited Berlin.

He told Gorbachev to tear down this wall. Wham! People loved it. Wham was there. But as you can imagine, George Michael, not a fan of Reagan. He wouldn't have been.

I'm assuming here. I don't actually know George Michael's opinions on Reagan personally. But I think I'm probably right in thinking that. I think you're right. Yeah.

Anyway, the summit in Iceland, by the way, that had failed, did still do some good, because work in the background resulted in more movement, and the two sides had agreed on a modest reduction in missiles, so things start to move. A couple more meetings take place that are similar.

Reagan still gets pushback from the far right, the GOP, for making a deal, pushback from the far right, the GOP, for making a deal, but also from the moderates, thinking that Reagan has ruined a good chance in Iceland. Generally, Reagan's getting pushback from a lot of places. And then, in December of 87, you're alive, Jamie.

You're alive. There you go. You're alive, just in time. Gorbachev visits America. He comes on his visit. Reagan makes many blunders. He makes lots of bad Soviet jokes. And then he kept repeating the same learnt Russian proverb over and over again. He'd learnt a proverb in Russian and he was very proud of himself and he kept repeating it over and over again. It meant trust but verify. And he just kept saying it over again, again it meant trust but verify and he just kept saying it over again which kept annoying Gorbachev apparently but despite these small blunders the

visit was a success Gorbachev was uh treated very well the public cheered him where he went it was seen as a positive thing this is a new age in relations uh so Reagan was then invited to Moscow in May of 88 Off he goes He goes to the Soviet Union I was one year and one month at that point Yeah, he goes to Red Square and everything Gorbachev delivers a speech Reagan fell asleep during it

Something Reagan did a lot, by the way He fell asleep not once but twice On two separate occasions During the Pope's speech. Yeah, one time when he visited the Poach to begin with, he just fell asleep the second time near the end of his second term. He was falling asleep and the photographer that was working with Reagan purposely dropped his camera to wake the president up.

Which is very amusing. But yeah, Reagan fell asleep, which is a shame. But this was all glossed over. Gorbachev was able to use the trip to build political power within his country. And that led quickly to the realisation that all this talk of arms reduction was perhaps not necessary. Because within a month of Reagan's visit, Gorbachev convened a general conference of the Communist Party. This was the first time this has happened since the days of Stalin. An office of elected president was set up, and within weeks, Russia announced that it would not use threat of force as a foreign policy. This isn't Tsar power, so we are not going to go into the ins and outs of this leader, who did more than any other leader

to end the Cold War. Just know, the Cold War is now very close to the end. Gorbachev is managing to put it all to bed in Russia, which is very nice. Yeah. Yeah, we're not going to cover it. This is American presidents, not Russian leaders. So all you need to know is that the Soviet Union's coming to the end. We'll talk about it more in Bush's episode.

Because around this time, Reagan comes to the end of his second term in January of 89. And around this time, Reagan comes to the end of his second term in January of 89. And yeah, he steps down. He's not a wow man by this point. He managed to hide it from most. Things get worse a few months later when he fell off his horse and hit his head.

While being treated for that, yeah, while being treated for that, it was discovered he had Alzheimer's. By 94, he retires from public life and he dies in 2004. No one really sees himires from public life and he dies in 2004. No one really sees him for about a decade. He died in 2004? Yeah, he just retired from public life.

He got Alzheimer's, so no one saw him. I feel like he died in the 80s or the early 90s. Well, he disappeared in the early 90s. But yeah, no, he died in 2004. So George Bush was president? Yeah, 9, he died. 2004, he dies. So George Bush was president. Yeah, 9-11 happened. Reagan was still alive. My goodness.

Yeah, so there you go. That, Jamie, is the Reagan. The big double R. Yeah. He'll be an interesting rate. He will. I'm just going to put this in here because I didn't know where to put it in.

And it's nothing to do with judging him. One of his closest advisors was called Donald Reagan. Reagan was spelled was spout differently it was r-e-g-a-n and whenever you're reading about ronald reagan you keep coming across donald reagan and in my head it's ronald reagan in a wig with a false mustache donald reagan never did anything big enough for me to include him in this story so i just left him out but i just really amused me the whole way through and i felt the need to tell you this that could have changed the entire episode it could have done i was all the way through it's like should i mention donald reagan yet should i it's like no he's not doing anything important enough it doesn't matter he came in there serving grapes i don't care he's donald reagan well tell you what go back to the the beginning if you're listening and every now and again just uh pause it and just imagine ronald reagan and a false

mustache coming in being donald reagan nice yeah yeah by the way donald reagan eventually quit and then wrote a scandal book during reagan's second term um pointing out all of the many things that reagan did that was really bad so They did not end on good terms, including the fact that Reagan kept changing the dates for important events based on what an astrologist said. We'll get into that when we rate him. Right, let's rate him. Statesmanship!

Okay, this one's genuinely going to be tough. Statesmanship, good. I'm impressed with his political skill. I am. No doubt about that. He's always seemed to make any unpopular decision that he made be blamed on his opponents. If he did anything that the public didn't like,

they never blamed him. He was literally raising taxes at one point, and everyone went, all those pesky Democrats. Yeah. Yeah. You've got to admire that in a politician. He saw the big picture.

Yeah. And he didn't waver. He didn't get bogged down in little details. That is an effective way to lead. Yeah. Has its drawbacks, but we'll get into that later. He got stuff done and very much reminded of Polk. He stated what he wanted to do at the start of his presidency,

and largely he got everything done. He wanted to lower tax, reduce government, and increase military power. He did it. He wanted to improve relations with Russia and make the Cold War less scary. He did it. Which leads us to the big one. He took a gamble with

his policy on Russia. Let's face it, it was a gamble. It could have been terrible. But it wasn't. It worked. His ramping up of the military and throwing his support behind a pipe dream project resulted in the Soviets feeling like they couldn't keep up. This in turn helped Gorbachev get into power and helped him start to reform the Soviet Union. Now, no, Reagan did not end the Cold War, and anyone saying that he did is just talking nonsense. But with his

confidence and a healthy dose of the look that he always seemed to have, he certainly helped the Russians get to a point where they could end the Cold War. Yeah. He was a feature of it. Yeah. Not the singular thing of it. No. And you can argue that a United States president could do no more than that in the end of the Cold War. How do you end a Cold War? Well, one of the sides has to back down. So just getting to a position where Russians felt like they should back down, that's as much as you can do as an American president.

So you can argue Reagan did as much as any president could do. So, I mean, that's impressive. He shaped the modern GOP. Now, this one very much depends on your political opinions, whether you think this is good or bad, but it's undeniable that the modern GOP starts now. The Republicans from now on are going to look very different to the ones that we've seen so far.

Other good things. If you were rich in America, well done. You are now very rich. You're going to be very happy. So there you go. If you were rich, you would have been very happy under Reagan. Okay, this last one, it's not a huge deal right now, but I didn't know where to put it in,

and it's going to be a big deal in the future. So I just want to pop the seed here. In 1986, he signed an act that banned the sale of automatic weapons i'll quote him i do believe that an ak-47 a machine gun is not a sporting weapon or needed for the defense of a home yeah how so yeah yes yes yes that's a fair point to make that is a fair point to make it's interesting that that Ronald Reagan, father of the modern GOP, at the height of his presidency, signed that into law and said that.

We have still not yet seen the Second Amendment obsession taking over the GOP. It's not quite here yet, but believe me, it's bubbling on in the background. I just haven't had the need to get into it yet. Right, okay, that's good. That is more good than we have said about a lot of presidents in the past.

Yeah. Yes. Bad. I'm reminded of Polk once more. Just because you achieve all your aims does not mean you've been a good president. That's a good point. Yeah. Remember, Polk's, one of Polk's aims was go and invade Mexico for no reason.

Yeah, great. You did it. Well done. Yeah. Well, you did it. Well done. Yeah, well, you can't argue that he has been the biggest impact since Roosevelt. Reagan just has. And the United States he left behind was a very different one to the one under Carter. But let's actually look at what that meant. Under Reagan, more people were poorer in the country. That's unfortunate. If you were rich, you became very rich. If you were poor, you ended up poorer.

More people had their safety net removed. So if you were really poor, if you're a poverty line, then you were screwed. You need help, like, beyond your control. Yeah. Work harder? Yeah. Yeah. Medical assistance was stripped away. If you're ill, you're

screwed. Housing situations for poor people and also people in black communities was made significantly worse due to various laws that went through at the time. Don't have time to go into the ins and outs, but just the whole inner city planning. Some quite frankly racist laws that meant that black people had no right to buy certain property. All of this has been going on since forever in America. It's certainly not helped John Reagan's administration. So all of that's going on.

Hundreds of thousands of people died, not because of Reagan, because of AIDS, but the administration did nothing to help them, or at least the bare minimum. And this was simply homophobia. It just was. That's what it was. It was seen as a bad disease for bad sinful people, so the administration didn't touch it. Had they have done it, people would be alive today

who died in the 80s and 90s. Also racism as well, because that was the... Yes, of of course um yeah definitely uh talking racism his racist drug laws have hugely impacted race tensions in the country we're still feeling it today the year he left office here are some fun statistics the year he left office, one in four black men aged 18 to 29 were caught up in the judicial system. One in four. I feel like I should leave that entire pause in where you're just looking utterly shocked.

Yeah, that's horrific. Because the situation that's been created that's created the the feeling that i mean that's the situation that parts of the us and even parts of uk are in now it's like if you're black you're gonna get stopped in your car more than you are gonna be a white person that's atrocious that's awful atrocious you want another one if you were born black and male, roughly the year that Reagan left office, there was a 32% chance that you would end up in jail. That's right. One in three chance. If you were born black and male.

But that's... Yep. No. Yeah, and the effects of this have just carried on to this day. It's really exacerbated the race problems in the country, hugely. The war on drugs was bloody awful. It really was. Okay, other things.

He broke the law, willfully. He became president. People said, if you do this, you're breaking the law, and he said, do it anyway. That is an impeachable offence. He didn't get caught. He turned a blind eye when those under him broke the law. He paid very little attention to government ethics. He talked about how the government was awful and interfered with people all the time,

and you should have a small government, but he was fine when he was in government for the government to be awful. He allowed a culture of fraud and abuse to occur in the White House. As I talked about earlier, Nixon has gone down in history as one of the most corrupt presidents. But if you look at the numbers in the administrations, the number of people indicted and convicted, the numbers between Reagan and Nixon are very close, and they dwarf all other post-war presidents. Completely. All the other presidents have a handful or none, and Nixon and Reagan both have a stupid amount of people who were just willfully breaking the law all the time. So we went hard on Nixon for just allowing his administration to be completely corrupt while Reagan did it as well. Oh, and yes, as I mentioned earlier, he routinely changed the dates of important events,

including meeting with Gorbachev, because Nancy saw a woman regularly who read horoscopes. And this woman would tell Nancy that the president should change these dates because it was a bad date to have a meeting on. So Reagan would then change the dates. bad date to have a meeting on so reagan would then change the dates now i personally would argue if you're the president you should not be willing to disrupt very important meetings that could lead to world peace based on the say-so of someone's horoscope it just seems a little bit um what's the word i'm looking for reckless a little bit uh yeah i i mean unprofessional if i was going to be the um devil's advocate i'd say people's beliefs and thoughts yeah example you may not you may not although i don't think that's true you may not have a meeting on christmas day but i know that

was probably not true so yeah what I'm saying is irrelevant. You could be generous. I don't know. If I'm being really generous, yeah. I would say if you were changing your own personal diary around them, knock yourself out. That seems absolutely fine. Yeah.

But telling the leader of a foreign national country, oh, sorry, that meeting we've already planned now needs to be changed based on it seems a little bit irresponsible in my mind. in retrograde sorry yeah not today i mean it's certainly the least of all the ones i've mentioned but it's just one of those weird things that i came across and went oh wow i never knew that so there you go it's it's uh certainly um a lot to think about in statesmanship for reagan there are a lot of. You've got to give him credit for the Cold War stuff. Oh. I'll be honest, I'm reluctant to,

because all the time, everything he was doing to begin with in his first term, I was going, no, no, that is awful. Why are you doing it? That's terrible. And then he backed away from it. But because he did both, it seemed to work. Because he went in hard and

then softened a lot, it had the effects. Now, it could have gone really wrong. Russia was seriously worried at one point, and it could have gone really wrong. But it didn't. So, that's good. And generally I'm impressed with him as a politician, the way that he was able to get stuff done. But I personally think America turned out to be a much worse country thanks to his policies and what he did. Yeah, I think, I don't know, if you waved a magic wand and Reagan had never been president, would US culture, I mean all of of it but would it be slightly different

would you have more of an ilk towards universal health care would there be less of a thing towards the more like extremist views of um i would argue that the worldly i would have i would argue that new deal politics uh would still be in that New Deal politics would still be in place, or at least would have been in place for longer. Right. Because if Reagan hadn't have gone in, the far right of the GOP wouldn't have taken over the party. They'd already tried once before,

which I didn't really cover that much for time reasons in Reagan's previous episode. This was their second attempt. If they'd failed a second time, I get the feeling the moderates of the GOP then would have taken over. We would have ended up with a very different GOP. And therefore, we would have ended up

with a very different America. But equally, no Reagan, you could argue that Gorbachev wouldn't have been able to get the support that he did, and he wouldn't have been able to reform the Soviet Union. So maybe we'd still be in the cold war right now yeah oh that is a tricky it's a really big if um it's like i say reagan is not responsible for ending the cold war but he was certainly a significant player in it yeah

it's a really hard one try not to be too biased a lot of the negatives are things i personally disagree with politically but then the things I personally disagree with politically. But then the things that I disagree with is the fact that lots of people died and lots of people were poor and lots of people were very sad. I don't see why you would ever say that's okay. It's a really tricky one. I'm going to say five. I was thinking the same thing.

And it's a very different five to a oh, it was alright, I suppose, but not great. It's an absolute balance between potential world war or one country maybe not maybe not fulfilling its entire

potential in terms of looking after its population. I mean, you can argue he got lucky with lots of stuff, but then there's only so much luck one person can have. I mean, you've got to give him some credit for his political acumen. But I've got to take loads of points off for how corrupt his administration was and just how awful some of the laws were that came in.

Yeah. And if it wasn't for the fact that he succeeded to do some very important things, I'd be marking him very, very low because, well, we talk about this part in American and American't. I'm going to stick with my five. What are you going to go for? I'm going to go with five as well.

I think that's fair. You know, it sort of balances in worldwide. Yeah, I don't feel... I'm not dead to... I don't feel comfortable about it, but I think it's what I'm going to have to go for. I think it in worldwide. Yeah, I don't feel... I'm not dead to... I don't feel comfortable about it, but I think it's what I'm going to have to go for. I think it's fair. Okay, next round.

Disgrace gets it. Well, the political corruption under him isn't good, but I think I took that into account in the last round. Yes. A lot. That said, there are a couple of things that I think we do need to take into consideration that although we talked about in the last round. Yes. A lot. That said, there are a couple of things that I think we do need to take into consideration that although we talked about in the last round, I think kind of leads into this.

Let's face it, his homophobia and racism was, much like we've seen with some presidents before, structural in its kind. He was not overtly bigoted. He is very much one of those of-his-time kind of people. And he would have been surprised if you'd argued that he was homophobic or racist. By the way, this is another reason why the they-thought-different-back-then argument about the early presidents is ridiculous, because we're still seeing the same stuff, and we're in the 80s. So, but saying that it's structural and he didn't see himself,

the fact is he definitely was enacting laws that was based on his homophobia and racism. He just was. I don't care that he said he wasn't bigoted. He was enacting obviously racist laws, and he was ignoring obvious problems because people were gay. Just is clear, in my mind. If people want to argue otherwise, fair enough. Because in my mind, I've already taken marks off him for that politically.

I'm still going to give him marks in this point for that, but not a huge amount, if you know what I mean. Yeah, bounce out a bit. Most of the manifestations of his bigotry came out in his politics, and we've already judged his politics and his statesmanship. That's a fair point. Yeah. Okay.

Apart from that, I mean, there's really not much to knock him down in this category in terms of anecdotes. The only one that jumped to my mind was his daughter, who wanted to campaign for him, and he told her, no, we're going to pretend you don't exist because you're from my previous marriage, and we don't want previous marriages to be known. And that's just cold. But is that because of him personally

or because he knew the situation he was in and he knew that there'd be a... Well, he told his daughter, my campaign manager has said that you shouldn't exist and I'm paying him for a reason. It's just a very cold thing to do to your daughter. I mean, yeah, I mean, it is very cold. Yeah, it really is.

But I was looking through my notes. I was looking for an obvious this is bad anecdote. Looking through the couple of books I've got, there really isn't much in terms of anecdotes of Reagan being a disgraceful person. That said, he really didn't come across as likeable. I read a couple of biographies. One of the biographies, the person clearly did not like Reagan.

The other person clearly did like Reagan. It was very interesting reading the two biographies. But in neither book did I get the impression this was a likeable person. He seemed selfish, self-obsessed at times. His political ideals all seemed to stem from what was affecting him rather than thinking what was affecting the wider population. He was obsessed with money and being rich, and everything he did was to stop the government taking money away from him. He became president so the government would stop taking money off him. He didn't do it for any wider

ambition than that. At least that's the impression I got. He just seemed to spend most of his time just trying to stop the government from helping people. And then there is just all the low level bigotry stuff. When he was in California, he was hanging around with some frankly dodgy people who had some dodgy views. I just know I would not get on with this guy. But I don't think I can give Disgracegate points for that. That wouldn't be fair. No, it wouldn't be fair. I'm being completely

blind here and we're about to get comments saying, oh my god, how did you forget that time he drowned a puppy? The only thing that stands out to me the most is the lack of effort in the HIV-AIDS crisis. Yeah, definitely. That's the biggest thing to me. That's where he's going to pick up me the most is the lack of effort in hiv aids crisis yeah yeah definitely and that is where that's the biggest thing to me that's where he's going to pick up some points he's already lost points in the last round because of it um and i'm going to give him points because personally he

should have done better yes even margaret thatcher who is yes if mar If Margaret Thatcher is saying it's time to do some public awareness, then, yeah. Yeah, so he's going to get... It's weird that that's our benchmark for morality. It is really horrible what happened there, and it really does cloud my opinion of the guy. So it might seem like I'm going for quite a low score here, but in my head, I've already knocked off Marks in the last round.

Yeah. And it is one thing. So I'm going to go for three. I'll but in my head, I've already knocked off Marius in the last round. Yeah. And it is one thing. So I'm going to go for three. I'll happily match that. And I agree with that. Yeah. Okay. Next round.

Would anyone watch a film with Ronald Reagan in it? I can't even name a Ronald Reagan film, but to be fair, he, see my going for this round is he scores maximum points because he is silver screen well and his story is also i would argue well let's let's have a look he was born poor he loved sports he uh got his job being a lifeguard and just hanging out with all the girls in the park and then he got a lucky break and he got a job on the radio then he got a

lucky break and got a job in hollywood yeah and he got a lucky break and he got a job on the radio. Then he got a lucky break and got a job in Hollywood. Then he got a lucky break and the leading columnist who was born in his town got his name out in Hollywood. So he becomes a B-list movie star and starts eking up into the A-list. He gets married and he has children. The war starts and he gets a lucky break and he was assigned to acting and training films instead of going off to the war. He breaks up with his wife. He becomes obsessed with the commies. break and he was assigned to acting and training films instead of going off to the war he breaks up with his wife uh he becomes obsessed with the commies he becomes very right wing at this point remember he was fairly liberal to begin with and at this point it's like no get off my money

horrible government the commies are coming it's weird it's like being rich yeah yeah he starts hanging out with like-minded people in ho. He meets Nancy and they get married. Roughly at the same time, he becomes president of the Screen Actors Guild. You've got him going off to Washington. He becomes an informant with the FBI, remember, at this point. His acting career goes off the rails, however, but he gets a lucky break and he gets a decent job in television and he's getting lots of

free gadgets in his home and he's touring the country just giving speeches about how great General Electric is and how bad the government is. Then he starts getting into politics. He campaigns for Nixon. He becomes the Californian governor. He does an all right job as the governor, but he makes a lot of enemies as he cracks down quite ruthlessly on people like the student protesters. Anyway, he stops being governor, he runs for president, he fails, he runs for president again, he succeeds, hooray! And then he achieves everything he wanted to do very quickly, and then in his presidency, all the stuff we talked about happened, but let's face it, a lot of it isn't cinematic at all a lot of it is him revolutionizing the government bringing down taxes it's very hard

to make that cinematic uh but all the stuff with the soviet union and the iran-contra stuff i think you could get something out of yeah not a huge amount though to be No. He didn't have the most exciting of presidencies. Nothing huge happened. No, but you could do an amazing series with him and Gorbachev. Yeah. The conversations.

It would be a slow political drama but it would be interesting if it was done well. You could do stuff with the Iran-Contra stuff, but Reagan wouldn't be hugely involved. He'd just occasionally give a nod to parts of it because he wasn't really involved. So, I mean, that's it.

I mean, he then stops being president, falls off a horse shortly afterwards, and then retires from public life. He's definitely going to score higher in this round because being born poor, becoming a movie star and then becoming the president of the United States is obviously a good story. I think his early life, just that would be an interesting story to watch. I'd love to watch the like of that. Yeah, definitely.

There's no way he can't score high on that. But he is definitely let down by his presidency, which surprises me. Because I was expecting something a bit more exciting in his presidency. But when you stop and think about it, there were no major events that happened. I mean, Chernobyl happened,

but that's nothing to do with him. What else happened? Nothing huge. There was obviously all the hostage-taking going on um so you could do stuff with that uh there are world events happening major world events the soviet union's starting to fall apart at the end of his presidency um but there isn't a hook i don't i i think i disagree i i think there is a hook because that that's fascinating like it's literally like the world we live in now is because of it and everything that happened even though it's not like a roller coaster it's like

an indiana jones film it's it's quite interesting oh yeah i'm not saying it's not interesting but would it make a good tv series yeah i think so the intrig, the corruption, that's interesting in itself. The fact that I'm going to say this and Sonia Rush is going, oh, no, that's interesting. In my head, I'm giving him seven for pre-presidential. And it just depends, do I give him any more than that? Well, this is about his life rather than just being president. Yeah, yeah.

But I'm thinking around the seven and eight mark. I definitely think this is a high up interesting life. I agree. I was expecting to be thinking about nine and ten. And to be honest, I'm thinking lower. And I'm surprised. I'm going for eight. I'm going to go for seven.

If you're going for eight, I'm going to go for seven. If you're going for eight, I'm going to go for seven. Yeah. Okay, here we go. There's his portrait there. That is probably the most modern looking portrait we've had because it's very, I don't want to say impressionist, but less neat. What's interesting is it's one that I didn't recognise because by this point you you're seeing photos yeah and in my head i had the official photograph whereas this is the official

portrait and he is there in a like the suit is just a modern suit we have got to modern times and times the suits now he's got his red and blue tie he's got a pinstripe suit he sat casually like on on a wall next to a window frame and outside what's that jamie it's a roman looking column yeah it is and then you can see like fields and stuff in the background we have gone right back to the start of having the roman imagery uh in the background there's no red curtains but you get the feeling if you pan left or right, you'd see some. I still slightly mean saying this,

but I just don't think the painting is a very good capture of him. Because when you look at the photo of Reagan, he has that slightly twinkly movie star look to him. Even when he's the president and he's much older, he still has that slight film quality to him. I'm not sure the painting's really captured that. He just looks like he's the president and he's much older. He still has that slight film quality to him. I'm not sure the paintings really captured that. He just looks like he's grinning.

Do you know, I quite like it. Yeah? I think he looks quite cheeky. He looks quite approachable. Yeah? I'm quite liking it. It's obviously the most modern we've looked at, of course it is. Most modern, but also with the weird throwback of the background,

with the Roman column in the background. That's interesting. I think that's an interesting picture. And you can also see what I love is they did the background first. No, no, no. They did him first and added it in. You can tell the outline around him isn't that great. It just doesn't seem like a great painting

in terms of but it's a modern representation i think it's very much of the time i like it yeah okay i mean i i don't dislike it i think it deserves more than half marks um but i think a photo captures him better than the painting does but i suppose that's probably always been true we've just not seen photos of the earlier ones. I'm going to give it a six. Six. I'm going to give it an eight. I love it. Ooh, fair enough. Okay. So that is a 14 divided by four. 3.5.

That is a 3.5 for this round. Bonus! Oh, and he's going to clean up here, Jamie. Oh, hang on. Silver screen. Someone shot him. Oh, and he's going to clean up here, Jamie. Oh, hang on. Silver screen. Someone shot him. Of course. Yeah.

How on earth did I miss that out in my recap? Someone shot him. Right. He's definitely getting another point in silver screen from me. What did I give him for silver screen? You gave him a seven. Right. He gets an eight.

He got shot. Yeah. There we go. Right. Bonus. Terms. Two. He did two full terms. Assass go. Right. Bonus. Terms. Two. He did two full terms.

Assassination, one. Someone tried to kill him. He gets a point. Well done, Reagan. Election, easily two. He won in two huge landslides. So, I mean, that I think might be the highest scoring bonus points we've ever had. He's aced that round.

That's a full seven points in bonus so uh jamie what's the score 28.5 28.5 you say yeah interesting i always wondered what reagan would score now you know now i know um i'm guessing a lot of people will be unhappy with the score we have given reagan yeah we can understand why yeah i mean i i think a lot of people will be unhappy with the score we have given Reagan. Yeah, but you can understand why. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people will think he deserves lower, and I think a lot of people will think he deserves higher. I also think we're going to have a lot of this going forward,

as we have some very divisive figures. And in the end, in our podcast, he scores pretty much down the middle. Maybe this question will help put things to bed. That's just going to make it even more complex, isn't it? Right, next round. American or American? I have no idea. My gut's feeding, and I would fight for, I would think, yes, he's an American.

Why? Because he shaped modern America. Yeah, that's hard to argue against, isn't it? Like, the way politics is now is because of him. He also influenced British culture in the way our modern Conservative Party is. He's convinced, he's influenced a lot of the world as well. And everyone's heard of Ronald Reagan. Would you talk about him?

Would you study him? Are you interested? All of these things you've got to say yes to. I don't like him. I despise a lot of his policies. Didn't like Andrew Jackson either. But this is exactly how I'm thinking about. He is an American in the same way that Andrew Jackson is.

American is not a, do I like the guy? Do I agree with the guy? It's, is he interesting? Did he change America? Is he worth studying? Did he do something to justify being one of the first presidents that you look into? It's very hard to argue against that. In fact, I don't think I can.

So I think it's going to be a reluctant yes from me but also you think about like even modern republicans after him that respects reagan yeah for his political achievements and you can you can at least understand why you may not agree with politics yeah with his politics or and that sort of right-leaning thing but you can absolutely understand it and kind of go right i get where he's coming from i get why people like him yeah yeah i mean it's the fact it's the fact we gave it to andrew jackson you can't give it to andrew jackson and not reagan yeah um i think we set the precedent there didn't we? Jackson was a nasty man. And that's fair. Yeah, that is fair.

It just makes me very, very sad, Jamie, that we didn't give it to Carter and we are giving it to Reagan. Because Carter was a nice man. He was really lovely, but he wasn't. He just didn't do enough. And it wasn't his fault. Yeah, and he's most known for now for being alive. And that's, is that enough? Oh, yeah. I mean, for him it is, for now for being alive. Yeah. Is that enough?

Only for him it is. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, well done, Reagan. Yeah. You have American. You've gone into the final rounds. So we will make you fight the others in the final rounds. So there we go.

We have got through Reagan, Jamie. Who's next? It's Bush. Bush Senior. Do you know much about Bush 1? One time, George W's dad. I watched a bit of his funeral. Yeah.

No bit, but not much. Cool. Okay. Well, that's for next time. We might have a little bit of a break. It's been wonderful how regular we've been getting these out. But I'm going to start looking into putting the rounds together for the Roman series. Nice.

And that might take a little bit of time. So we might have a little bit of a delay before Bush's first episode, but it's certainly not going to be a long one. We're not taking a hiatus or anything. It might just be pushed back a week or so is what I'm thinking. But we will be releasing the Jonathan Archer, Captain Archer's episode. Oh, when are we recording that, Jamie? Roughly.

I mean, very busy at work at the moment, but I imagine within the next two weeks oh nice okay that's exciting right okay so more Star Wars stuff on the way fantastic whoa whoa whoa what

I'm not going to tell you but you'll listen back and go oh damn carry on it's fine oh I said Star Wars didn't I

you bloody well did yes did so that's because we've been talking about Star Wars all episode Star Trek Jamie

Star Trek that's the one okay right talking about Star Wars all episode. Yeah, yeah. Star Trek, Jamie. Star Trek. That's the one. Okay. Right. Okay. Well, thank you very much for listening. Please, please be vaguely nice to us when you send messages to tell us that we're wrong. Yeah.

Or tell us that actually it's very hard to write modern politics. It is. Especially politicians that you disagree with personally and you're trying to be vaguely balanced. Who knows? This is only going to get harder, Jamie. Yeah. Let's strap in.

Right. Okay. Brace yourself. Well, thank you very much for listening. And thank you for downloading us on Popbean, iTunes, and wherever else you download us from. Yes. And all that needs to be said is...

Goodbye. Goodbye. Welcome to Iran. Anything to declare? No, no, not at all. No? Well, passport, passport, please. Here we go. Let's see.

Seamus O'Flanaghy from Cork, Ireland. Ah, top of the morning to you there, laddie. I hope the leprechauns eat your rainbow with a pot of gold in your arse. I've never been to Ireland. Is that an Irish accent? Why, it is, so I see, so I see. I've got my pint of Guinness

hidden in my backpack. Thank you, thank you. What is the reason for your trip to Iran, sir? Oh, negotiations. Negotiations? Yes. I'll say business then, shall I? Yes, sir? Oh, negotiations. Negotiations? Yes. I'll say business then, shall I? Yes, that sounds splendid.

Right, okay. And this is your luggage, yes? Yes, my luggage is here. You may rifle through what you want. Rifle being the word. I'm slightly concerned by this large palette of what looks like surface-to-air missiles. No, no, that is merely soap. Novelty soap in the shape of missiles. I'm a soap business man, of course. Look at all my massive palettes of soap.

I'm hoping to meet someone high up. Wink, wink. I'm sorry, sir, Are you saying the word wink? No, that would be ridiculous. Just let me through, my lad. What about these six boxes here? What's inside those? Oh, well, if you look in front of you, these are presentation cases containing

the finest hand quality magnums. Magnums? Magnums, yes. Magnums of champagne. Oh, Iran. Magnums of ice cream. Lots and lots of ice cream.

Fair enough. I'm sure you're right. Okay, we'll wave that one through. And this book, this is a Bible, yes? Yes, it's a gift. It says, from Ronald Reagan. It's a gift as a representation of our culture to yours. Yes, yes, yes.

Right, and then finally, what appears to be a chocolate cake. Yes. Is it a chocolate cake? Yes. Right, well, you can have the missiles, the guns and the bible But we're keeping the chocolate cake How about that? Yes okay fair deal