Party of Reagan

Summary

History As It Happens — "Party of Reagan"
Host: Martin Di Caro
Guest: Max Boot
Date: November 28, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode of History As It Happens critically examines the modern Republican party's inheritance of "Reaganism"—the politics, persona, and legacy of President Ronald Reagan. Host Martin Di Caro and historian Max Boot—author of Reagan: His Life and Legend—explore how Reagan’s various legacies have shaped, and sometimes contradicted, the conservative movement, especially as it has careened from Reagan’s brand of optimism and pragmatism to the populist, grievance-driven politics associated with Donald Trump.

Together, they discuss the mythologizing of Reagan, the gatekeeping of extremism on the right, how policy and rhetoric shifted under Reagan, the through line from Reagan to Trump (and divergences), and the impact of conservative judicial strategies, economic inequality, and populism in American politics. The conversation places Reaganism as both origin and foil for today’s right-wing politics, delving into history’s paradoxes and the present’s crises.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Collapse of Gatekeeping and the Rise of Trumpism

(12:13–15:22)

• Max Boot situates recent far-right controversies—like Tucker Carlson’s interview with white supremacist Nick Fuentes—as outgrowths of long-contested elements within the American right.
• Boot traces a direct line from the presence of extremist groups (John Birch Society, QAnon, militia movement) to the mainstreaming of these ideas due to Trump’s ascent, noting the role of social media and diminished content moderation in amplifying hate and conspiracy.
• Quote:
  • "It's been a constant struggle to kind of keep down the white nationalists, the xenophobes, the conspiracy mongers... but I think the attempt to keep them out of the mainstream of the Republican party collapsed in 2016." (Max Boot, 12:50)

Reagan’s Contradictions: Inclusion, Bigotry, Pragmatism

(16:17–18:36)

• Boot details Reagan’s complex legacy: openly pro-immigrant, anti-antisemitism, but also willing to use coded racist appeals and oppose civil rights advancements when politically expedient.
• While Reagan was lauded for personal stances—quitting a country club that excluded Jews, saving Holocaust footage to counter denial—he also opposed landmark civil rights legislation and took ambivalent stances on issues like apartheid.
• Gatekeeping on the right under figures like William F. Buckley Jr. (expelling anti-Semites, John Birchers) existed but was selective and often coexisted with other exclusionary elements.
• Quote:
  • "[Reagan] was very much pro immigrant... very much opposed to anti Semitism... On the other hand, throughout his career, he catered to white bigotry." (Max Boot, 16:17)

Conspiracism and the Conservative Mainstream

(18:36–21:18)

• Di Caro and Boot note that conspiratorial thinking hasn't just emerged, but has been mainstreamed, referencing Glenn Beck’s Fox News show and its large audience long before Trump.
• Boot observes that cancel culture is ineffective in today’s world, as ousted broadcasters like Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck can reach vast audiences online regardless.
• Trump, they argue, employs strategic "wink and nod" conspiracy-mongering, referencing “globalists” and targeting George Soros—following patterns long associated with anti-Semitic canards.

What Is Reaganism? Myths vs. Reality

(22:11–24:54)

• Boot emphasizes Reagan’s difference between campaign rhetoric and governing pragmatism—succeeding by avoiding extreme ideology, even as his party drifted further right.
• The idea that Republican dominance resulted less from abstract beliefs in small government or robust foreign policy and more from opposition to civil rights and successful southern realignment.
• Quote:
  • "When you think about Reaganism, it's kind of old fashioned American conservatism that reviled the federal government but promoted a strong defense... There were a lot of elements that were not so wonderful about the old style conservatism because frankly, it made common cause with a lot of white people who didn't like civil rights laws." (Max Boot, 22:11)

The Legacy of Courts, Inequality, and the Social State

(25:13–29:25)

• Di Caro and Boot discuss Reagan’s enduring impact on the judiciary, politicizing appointments and contributing to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
• Tax cuts and burgeoning deficits under Reagan had lasting consequences—making future expansions of the welfare state much harder and contributing to rising income inequality.
• Boot points out that while deindustrialization and globalization have many causes, the Reagan era’s economic policies were a major inflection point for the widening separation of incomes.
• Quote:
  • "If you look at trend lines of income inequality in America, they really begin to diverge in the early 1980s... And it has the same impact, which is to empower populism of both the left and the right." (Max Boot, 28:37)

Comparing Reagan and Trump on Government

(29:48–34:23)

• Di Caro and Boot contrast Reagan’s critique of government—mostly rhetorical, sometimes administrative—against Trump’s outright attacks and efforts to dismantle agencies.
• Boot observes that Reagan created or expanded institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy, rather than obliterating them; Trump, in contrast, has sought to destroy agencies ranging from USAID to PBS.
• Both guests agree that Reagan’s rhetoric launched an enduring era of suspicion toward government, but Trump’s actions and rhetoric represent a historic escalation.
• Quote:
  • "Reagan was constantly reviling the federal government as if it was being run by somebody else, as if he weren't actually the guy in charge." (Max Boot, 33:47)

Social Conservatives, Populism, and the Party’s Evolution

(34:23–36:56)

• Di Caro introduces the rise of the religious right and culture warriors via Reagan's electoral coalition, though Reagan personally kept some distance.
• They discuss Pat Buchanan's role: as a forerunner to Trump, Buchanan's once-marginal populist/nationalist ideas have since become ascendant, effectively supplanting the “Reagan-Bush” flavor of mainstream conservatism.
• Quote:
  • "In many ways, Trump has taken the Buchanan message much in the way that Reagan took the Barry Goldwater message... what you've seen in many ways is the mainstreaming of Buchananism." (Max Boot, 35:46)

Populism: Rhetoric vs. Governance

(38:13–40:28)

• Boot recalls that Reagan, like other Republican presidents, used populist rhetoric but governed pragmatically, often disappointing the far right.
• Trump, by contrast, blurs any distinction between extremist rhetoric and governing style, fostering a loyal, grievance-driven following at the expense of broader appeal.
• Quote:
  • "Trump is in some ways the first Republican president where there is no gap between rhetoric and action... His whole political success has been based on mobilizing the base and saying screw you literally to everybody else." (Max Boot, 39:25)

Ideology, Law, and Corruption: Comparing Reagan, Nixon, and Trump

(41:26–43:21)

• Boot admits Iran-Contra was a serious violation, but argues the motivation was (misguided) public interest; unlike Nixon or Trump, Reagan was not personally corrupt or vindictive.
• Trump’s pursuit of personal enrichment and vendetta politics, Boot says, sets him apart from Reagan’s fundamentally different temperament and ethical standards.
• Quote:
  • "[Iran-Contra] was done in a public spirited way, or at least with a desire to help the country, whereas it would have never occurred to Reagan to order the Justice Department to go and indict his political adversaries." (Max Boot, 41:26)

Foreign Policy: Ideals vs. Instincts

(44:16–46:24)

• Reagan, despite changing tactics, maintained consistent ideals (democracy, alliance-building), while Trump is erratic, feuding with allies and cozying to dictators.
• Boot describes Trump’s foreign policy as “a weird mix of pacifism and militarism,” lacking any real doctrine or coherence, unlike Reagan’s steady anti-communism and eventual pragmatism with Gorbachev.
• Quote:
  • "It's a weird mix of pacifism and militarism that you see in the Trump administration. It almost defies the description. It's certainly not a coherent foreign policy philosophy. It's really just Trump doing whatever he feels like doing that particular day." (Max Boot, 45:43)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• "When you admit bigotry and hatred in one form into your coalition, it's very hard to keep it out in other forms."
  — Max Boot (13:54)
• "So you had some gatekeeping, but you also had some noxious elements that were still very much part of the coalition. And now in the age of social media, the gatekeeping has basically collapsed."
  — Max Boot (17:49)
• "There's actually no way to really cancel anybody anymore because they always have a platform on social media."
  — Max Boot (19:46)
• "I used to think that the strength of the Republican party electorally was due to their small government philosophy... but in hindsight, I would have to say a lot of their success was simply in being more hostile to civil rights legislation electorally."
  — Max Boot (23:10)
• "He stoked the fires of populism with his rhetoric, but actually acted in a very mainstream fashion that probably had more in common with Dwight D. Eisenhower than it does with Donald Trump." — Max Boot (39:20)
• "With Reagan, the populist message didn't really go that far because he appointed Beltway insiders... and was really concerned about making deals with Tip O'Neill and governing in a responsible and successful fashion." — Max Boot (38:26)
• "He is the first president in my lifetime who makes no attempt to reach out to anybody, who doesn't already agree with him, who makes no attempt to win over Democrats or political opponents, in fact, just reviles them." — Max Boot (40:09)
• "It would have never occurred to Reagan to order the Justice Department to go and indict his political adversaries. I mean, this is a very different ethos from what you saw in the Reagan administration."
  — Max Boot (41:42)

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Important Timestamps

• 12:13–15:22 — On gatekeeping, Trump, and white nationalism
• 16:17–18:36 — Reagan’s complicated stances on inclusion and bigotry
• 22:11–24:54 — Defining “Reaganism,” civil rights, and Southern strategy
• 25:13–28:37 — Courts, tax cuts, and the inequality legacy
• 29:48–34:23 — Attacking the government: Reagan vs. Trump
• 35:46–36:56 — Pat Buchanan as precursor to Trump
• 38:13–40:28 — Populism in rhetoric vs. governance
• 41:26–43:21 — Comparing Reagan, Nixon, and Trump on law and corruption
• 44:16–46:24 — Foreign policy: Reagan’s ideals vs. Trump’s incoherence

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Conclusions

• Reaganism, as remembered, is often a myth: The reality was a pragmatic, sometimes contradictory blend of conservative principles and political compromise, overshadowed by both genuine and selective nostalgia in the age of Trump.
• The divide between Reagan and Trump is stark: Reagan’s optimism, pragmatism, and willingness to work across the aisle are fundamentally at odds with Trump’s divisiveness, personalism, and all-consuming base politics.
• Yet, some through lines are undeniable: The anti-government turn, strategic opposition to civil rights as a political driver, and the politicization of the judiciary began under or were at least capitalized on by Reagan, even if the outcomes have grown more extreme under Trump.
• The current conservative crisis is many decades in the making: Media change, eroded institutional gatekeeping, evolving coalitions, and economic shifts have all contributed, with Reagan as both an origin and a break point.

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This episode is essential listening for anyone seeking to understand how Ronald Reagan’s longer shadow still looms over—and sometimes haunts—conservative politics, especially amid the turmoil, contradictions, and radicalization of the Trump era.

Transcript

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[Max Boot]

Oh, hey.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Welcome to gift wrapping. Whoa. So is Saldana.

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[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

Wow. IPhone 17s.

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[Max Boot]

I'm the worst. I only got my mom a robe.

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[Max Boot]

So I have to trade in my old phone, right?

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[Max Boot]

Incredible.

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In fact, wrap up my old phone too for my Aunt Rosa.

[Max Boot]

Forget that.

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Aunt Liz will be jealous.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

Sounds like my family drama.

[Amazon Music Narrator]

Oh, I got it. I'll give it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with. Hey, where are you going?

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[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

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[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

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[Max Boot]

And now T Mobile is available in.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

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[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

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[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

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[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

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[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

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[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Visit t mobile.comhistory as it happens November 28, 20205 Party of Reagan Are you.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

Better off than you were four years ago the nation elected a new president tonight. Ronald Reagan's lead over President Carter is threatening. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed. It's morning again in America today more men and women will than ever before in our country's history. Under Reagan, the size of the federal civilian workforce grew, the federal budget deficit set peacetime records and the national debt reached an all time high. Mr. Gorbachev Mir non es schma trit. The world is watching and we've got something to show them. They think it's Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia. I will say this. I don't see any reason why it would be.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Is Donald Trump's rise to power a result or a rejection of Reaganism? The easy answer may be a little of both. As the conservative movement is convulsed by the crazies in and outside its ranks, some may feel nostalgic for saner times, when a Republican president seemed committed to the principles of smaller government, free trade and America's global leadership. What was Reaganism, really? That's next as we report history as it happens. MARTIN I'm Martin DeCaro.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

Throughout the world, there's a growing realization that the way to prosperity for all nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair and free competition. We are losing industries like autos and steel. We have lost TVs, VCRs, radio. The Japanese are putting under assault supercomputers, flat panel technology. They are challenging our aircraft industry. Where is the administration plan to make America first again in manufacturing by the year 2000? Frankly, Ronald Reagan, you remember, I didn't love his. I thought he was great. I loved his style, his attitude. He was a great cheerleader for our, you know, for the country, but not great on the trade. For many, many years they've been outsmarted. You know, we used to be a nation of tariff.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

In January 1989, President Reagan, then nearly 78 years old, said farewell to the American people. There were two great triumphs he said he was proudest of One is the.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

Economic recovery in which the people of America created and filled 19 million new jobs. The other is the recovery of our morale. America is respected again in the world and look to for leadership.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

In his biography of the Gipper, published last year, Reagan, His Life and Legend, historian Max Boot writes about the farewell address. It omitted a few undoubted accomplishments, such as his resilience after being shot, his appointment of the first woman to the Supreme Court, and his support, albeit grudging and under pressure, for democratic transitions in El Salvador, the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea and Chile. But Boot goes on to say, more glaring were all the failures that went unmentioned. There was no mention of the bombings of the US Embassy, the embassy annex and the marine barracks in Beirut, or the paralyzing indecision that followed.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

Let us here in their presence serve notice to the cowardly skulking barbarians in the world that they will not have their way.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

No mention, says bout of the humiliating capture of American hostages in Lebanon, or of his attempts to ransom them with weapons sales to Iran. No mention either of the diversion of funds to the Contras that gave rise to the Iran Contra affair. Here's Reagan in 1987.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

I did not know about the diversion of funds. Indeed, I didn't know there were excess funds. Yet the buck does not stop with Admiral Poindexter, as he stated in his testimony. It stops with me.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

All right, back to the farewell address. No mention of the scandals involving savings and loan regulators, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and other government agencies. No mention of the attacks, attempted rollback of civil rights laws. No mention of the failed Bork nomination.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

The judge's responsibility is to discern how the framers values defined in the context of the world they knew apply in the world we know. In Robert Bork's America, there is no room at the inn for blacks and no place in the Constitution for women. And in our America, there should be no seat on the Supreme Court for.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Robert Bork and Boot says. No mention of growing income inequality in the hollowing out of the middle class exacerbated by the administration's cuts to taxes and social welfare programs. No mention of the president's apathy toward the AIDS pandemic and no mention of his opposition to tough sanctions on South Africa. No mention even of the dangerous confrontation with the Soviet Union, which in the early 1980s had been exacerbated by his military buildup and his histrionic rhetoric.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

They are the focus of evil in the modern world.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Max Boot will join us in a moment. Now, the point here is not to say the obvious that politicians are keen to tout their accomplishments while downplaying their mistakes. The point is that conservatives who continue to mythologize Reagan in this age of Trump may be overlooking the continuities. Here is another historian, Sean Wilentz, in his book the Age of Reagan, on matters that Reagan's admirers might prefer to forget. Writing about the Iran Contra scandal, Willant says the political and constitutional fallout, or lack thereof, was disturbing enough. But the Reagan administration left a larger legacy as well about the subordination of law to politics. In its politicization of the judicial selection process and its highly selective enforcement of civil rights laws, the Reagan White House established a pattern of disregard for the law as anything other than an ideological or partisan tool. Wilent says laws that advanced the interests of the administration were passed and heeded. Those that did not were ignored, undermined, or, if necessary, violated. The administration's sorry record of corruption, partisan favoritism and influence peddling stemmed in part from the shabby venality that is inherent in human affairs. But it also stemmed from an arrogance born of the Same ideological zealotry that propelled Iran. Contrast the belief that in a world eternally at risk, the true believers must take matters into their own hands and execute the rule of law. By those lights, says wilents would always be subordinated to and as far as possible aligned with the rule of politics.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

Your own Chief of staff, Mr. Regan, has said that the US condoned Israeli shipments of arms to Iran. And aren't you in effect sending the very message you always said you didn't want to send? Aren't you saying to terrorists either you or your state sponsor, which in this case was Iran, can gain from the holding of hostages? No, because I don't see where the kidnappers or the hostage holders gained anything. They didn't get anything. Mr. President, when you had the arms embargo on, you were asking other nations, our allies particularly, to observe it publicly, but at the same time privately you concede you were authorizing a breaking that embargo by the United States. How can you justify this duplicity? I don't think it was duplicity. And as I say, the. The so called violation did not in any way alter the balance, military balance between the two countries. Sir, if I may. The polls show that a lot of American people just simply don't believe you. That the one thing that you've had going for you more than anything else in your presidency, your credibility has been severely damaged.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

So this is the second of two episodes exploring political lineages as the conservative movement has been in a bit of turmo following the Tucker Carlson Nick Fuentes interview and the ensuing drama at the Heritage Foundation. Why are open bigots and cranks and conspiracy theorists, including the President of the United States himself, so influential? Now might we find the origins in Reaganism? Well, to be fair, there's more to this story than the history of a political party or a movement or a set of ideas. The road to Donald Trump in the White House was made possible by many things. Changes in the US and global economies going back decades, the end of the Cold War, the massive failures of American institutions during the global war on terrorism and the 08 crash. These are bipartisan failures, subjects we've discussed many times on the podcast and should be kept in mind right now. We might also remember that there are in fact major differences between Reaganism and Trumpism and between the two men as individuals.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

I'm on Meet the Press, a show now headed by sleepy eyes Chuck Todd. He's a sleeping son of a bitch, I'll tell you.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

All of which we'll discuss with historian Max Boot, the author of his life and legend. Our conversation next. But first, in this season of Thanksgiving. Thank you for listening. You know you can enjoy this podcast without sales pitches or ads and get access to bonus content and the entire catalog of more than 500 episodes by subscribing. Just tap subscribe now in the show notes or go to history as it happens.supercast.com it's just five bucks a month and if you refer a friend, you'll receive a $20 credit. Make three referrals and you'll get a $40 credit that pays for almost a full year of your support. History as it happens.supercast.com whether you're into.

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[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

I t u s.com Max Boot, welcome back to the show.

[Max Boot]

Good to be back, I guess.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

It's our annual discussion of Ronald Reagan and his legacy. You were on about one year ago discussing your excellent biography of Ronald Reagan, I believe the title was. I got the book right here, Reagan His Life and Legend. Before we return to the Gipper, what is your take on this uproar on the right, which is really why I'm doing this show. Tucker Carlson interviews this white supremacist named Nick Fuentes. There's all this turmoil at the Heritage Foundation. What's your take on all of this?

[Max Boot]

You know, big picture, 30,000 foot view is that there have always been a lot of very disreputable elements to the American right. I mean, there's also some disreputable elements to the American left. But let's talk about the right right now. It's been a constant struggle to kind of keep down the the white nationalists, the xenophobes, the conspiracy mongers, going all the way back to the days of the 50s and 60s when it was the John Birch Society and then more recently it's been QAnon and the militia movement and Nick Fuentes and these white supremacists. But I think that the attempt to keep them out of the mainstream of the Republican party collapsed in 2016 when Donald Trump became the Republican presidential nominee. And remember, this was a guy who began his presidential campaign in 2015 coming down this escalator at Trump Tower and denouncing Mexicans as rapists and murderers.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

[Max Boot]

I think the problem is that when you admit one element of hatred into your coalition, and certainly Trump has said some awful things about, well, I mean, he said awful things about many, many different people, but especially about immigrants, about people of color, about people from so called shithole countries, a lot of other invective. You know, when you admit bigotry and hatred in one form into your coalition, it's very hard to keep it out in other forms. And I think one of the weird things about the Trump movement, the MAGA movement as it's developed over the last few years, is that ostensibly it's very much anti immigrant, nativist, isolationist, but somehow it's very pro Israel. Therefore, in theory, it's not anti Semitic. But in fact, there has always been a strain of antisemitism on the American right, going back to the days of Charles Lindbergh and, you know, the German American Boond in the 1930s and all these other things.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

If any of these groups, the British, the Jewish or the administration, stops agitating for war, I believe there will be little danger of our involvement.

[Max Boot]

When you're opening yourself up to prejudice, bigotry, conspiracy theories, antisemitism is always going to be part of the mix. And I think that's what you're seeing with Tucker Carlson giving a platform to some of these crazy white supremacist, anti Semitic, racist views.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

And there's an anti government element to this as well that existed under Reagan. To your point about the failure of gatekeeping, it is harder today because of the Internet and podcasters, YouTubers. I mean, this Fuentes guy kind of came out of nowhere. He was just a college student and he somehow managed to have a much larger following than I have. The difference today is that the President himself, as you said, opened the door for this. Open bigotry now seems to be acceptable, not an immediate career. Ender Trump really rose to political prominence before he ran for president with the birther stuff, which was a racist conspiracy theory. So, you know, going back to the Birchers, who had some kind of influence on Reagan. I mean, he was aware of their stuff. He read a lot of those kind of right wing tracks. Whereas today this stuff is on the Internet and it's impossible to stop, right?

[Max Boot]

No, absolutely. Social media is accessible, especially when the people who own the largest platforms like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and others, have basically turned against content moderation under right wing pressure. And so they've opened up the floodgates to all this filth online. But let me return to Reagan for a second because he's kind of an interesting case study and where the right comes from. Because there are so many paradoxes and contradictions about Reagan. Because on the one hand, you know, he was very much pro immigrant. He signed legislation that legalized millions of undocumented immigrants. He was very pro Israel. He was very much opposed to anti Semitism. In the 1940s, he quit a country club in LA when he learned that it did not admit Jews. And he was deeply affected by the Holocaust, seeing the first films from American combat cameramen of the death camps being liberated. And he saved one of those films and kept it at home so he could show it to his kids and anybody who might doubt that the Holocaust actually occurred. So in many ways, Reagan was a very laudable figure. But on the other hand, throughout his career, he catered to white bigotry. I mean, he opposed civil rights legislation, the 1964 Civil Rights act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He basically blamed Martin Luther King Jr. For his own assassination, refused to go to Dr. King's funeral, spoke in coded ways about states rights. He undermined or tried to undermine civil rights programs. When he was president, he called out human rights violations in the Soviet Union and other communist countries, but vetoed sanctions legislation on South Africa and did not champion the rights of South African people to be free of apartheid. So there is always a home for some bigotry, even on the mainstream American conservative movement, whereas other kinds of bigotry were kind of pushed to the sidelines. And you know, William F. Buckley Jr. Famously excommunicated folks like Joe Sobrin and Pat Buchanan that he thought were anti Semitic. He tried to push the John Birchers out of the mainstream of the conservative movement. So you had some gatekeeping, but you also had some noxious elements that were still very much part of the coalition. And now in the age of social media, the gatekeeping has basically collapsed. And so it's very hard to reassert any kind of guardrails against the most Extreme type of hatred.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Yeah. And in my first answer, I wanted to mention, in addition to the anti government strain, also a conspiratorial mindset. We saw some of this, definitely during Reagan's time, about the threat of socialism, not just in other countries, but in our country. And in my most recent newsletter, one of my recent newsletters, I mentioned, you know, why now? Why is this happening now? Because we look Back to, say, 2009, Glenn Beck's television show on Fox was insane. It was all conspiracy theories about socialists, progressives, communists, Marxists, like some global world conspiracy coming down in the form of Barack Obama. But that was a mainstream show. If you go by audience figures, it had close to 3 million people at its height. So we've been moving in this direction for a while. And I think that's one point you make in the conclusion of your book. Whether intentionally or not, the age of Reagan set in motion forces that have led to this far right lurch.

[Max Boot]

Right. And it's kind of interesting what happened with both Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson. In both cases, at some point the Murdoch family decided that they were too extreme and unhinged even for Fox News. So they were booted off Fox News. And in the old days, you know, maybe 40 years ago, if you're denied a platform at one of the big broadcasters, that's the end of you. You're gone. That's not true anymore. Tucker has a massive audience with his podcast. Glenn Beck is still out there. So I mean, it's funny, for all the right wing talk about cancel culture, there's actually no way to really cancel anybody anymore because they always have a platform on social media. And so it's, there's no way to, to really shunt that kind of conspiratorial thinking to the side. And unfortunately, once it's out there, what we see is a lot of people fall for it. A lot of people fall for these conspiracy theories because for a lot of people who are, you know, grieved about things that they see happening, the conspiracy theories explain a lot. And of course, you know, Trump himself does a wink and a nudge with a lot of these conspiracy theories. So even though, you know, his son in law is Jewish, his daughter converted to Judaism, he's like 110% pro Israel. Nevertheless, he talks about globalists, which is, you know, a code phrase, seems to be for Jews who control finance, which is an old, you know, anti Semitic canard. He blames George Soros for everything that he dislikes, much in the same way as Viktor orpen does, or other dictators do. So Trump tries to kind of have it both ways. He tries to embrace Israel and big Jewish donors, but at the same time, he also traffics in coded anti Semitic rhetoric. And as we remember, he even had dinner with Nick Fuentes claiming that he.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Didn'T know he was to my point earlier. Why now? Well, I mean, the obvious answer is because this interview happened. But yeah, Fuentes had dinner at Mar a Lago, I think 2023 or 2022. And he was known at that time for being, I don't know the exact label that fits him. White supremacist, neo Nazi, Holocaust denier, maybe all of the above.

[Max Boot]

And oddly enough, he's a guy who not only loves Hitler, he loves Stalin too. Wow. I mean, can you imagine anybody who. Repugnant.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

I don't really think he knows what he's talking about, but it doesn't minimize how, as you say, repugnant those views are. So I think some of the confusion, as we're discussing here, some of the confusion about where the conservative movement has come from or how it got to this terrible state, some of the confusion stems from the way Reaganism is mythologized. How does Max Boot define Reaganism?

[Max Boot]

Oh, gosh, really hard to do. Because there's such a huge difference between the philosophy that Reagan espoused, particularly on the campaign trail, and what he actually did in office. Because I think this, I mean, this is kind of the central point of my book is that the reason Reagan was so successful was he was able to eschew ideology and to govern in a pretty pragmatic, centrist way. But when you think about Reaganism, it's kind of old fashioned American conservatism that reviled the federal government but promoted a strong defense in America with an outward looking, internationalist foreign policy embracing allies, free trade, small government at home. I mean, that was the theory. But of course, there were a lot of elements that were not so wonderful about the old style conservatism because frankly, it made common cause with a lot of white people who didn't like civil rights laws. And that was frankly, a lot of the impetus for the rise of the conservative movement in America, which was premised, let's remember, on converting the south from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. That's why the Republican Party became the dominant force in American politics in the 1980s. And you know what changed between the 60s and the 80s? It was, I mean, Lyndon Johnson knew what would happen when he signed the civil rights legislation. He knew that he Was going to doom the democratic party in the south for a generation. It's been well over a generation now. The Democratic and Republican parties switched positions on civil rights. The Republican party used to be the civil rights party. The party of Lincoln and Democrats used to be the party of segregation. And in the 60s, it all flipped around. The Republicans become the party opposed to civil rights. And I used to think that the strength of the Republican party electorally was due to their small government philosophy or their embrace of an act of foreign policy. A lot of these other things I believed in, but in hindsight, I would have to say a lot of their success was simply in being more hostile to civil rights legislation electorally.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Right. The completion of the Nixon project, the southern strategy that was hatched in the late 60s, early 70s, Reagan effectively completed that right.

[Max Boot]

Actually, Reagan preceded Nixon with that project because Reagan's 1960 victory over Pat Brown in California blazed the path for forger Nixon two years later to win the presidency. Because Reagan in 66 was running against the Rumford fair housing act, he was talking about the need for law and order after the Watts riot. So he was hitting a lot of these coded appeals that Nixon would later take advantage of. And that would become known as the southern strategy of flipping the south from the Democratic to the Republican parties.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

It's morning again in America today. More men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, More than at any time in the past four years.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

So the Reagan era, the 1980s, is often remembered as a boom time. But the boom was not as great as it is often hyped up to be today. He did cut the highest marginal tax rates, but the tax cuts, combined with the lavish spending on the military exploited budget deficits. The government did not get smaller under Reagan. Even though he's often remembered as the small government conservative, as Sean Wilentz puts it in his book, I'd like to know what you think of this. He writes, reagan's chief legacy to American government was his pursuit of policies that might enable future administrations to make changes in he himself could not complete. One example that Wilan cites is the judiciary politicizing the process of judicial appointments. Over the last several decades, hundreds upon hundreds of very conservative judges have been appointed. Also, by virtue of the tax cuts and the large budget deficits, Wilentz argues that it's made it almost impossible to have any large expansion of the social welfare state in our country ever since.

[Max Boot]

Yeah, no, I think that's very fair. I mean, in many ways, Reagan was very different from Trump because Reagan was optimistic, positive. He didn't engage in name calling, he didn't try to undermine democracy. He reached out to Democrats instead of reviling them as vermin or as evil or what have you. And he was also very pro immigrant, pro American allies. In many ways. I think Reagan was a much more admirable figure than Trump. But I mean, you do see some of these continuities from Reagan and Trump and certainly judges is a big one. We wouldn't have had a Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade if Ronald Reagan had not set that process in motion with his own Supreme Court appointees, even though two of them in Sandra Day o' Connor and Anthony Kennedy actually turned out to be pretty moderate. You know, that wasn't the case with subsequent appointees. And of course, remember that the Republican animus towards the Supreme Court, this is really a sign of how things have changed. It really dates back to the 50s and 60s. Initially was Democratic segregationists who were hostile. Then it was Republicans and it was really because of Brown v. Board of Education and other decisions destroying Jim Crow and segregation. Of course, that was a court that was led by Earl Warren, who was a liberal Republican former governor of California in the days when Republicans were the champions in civil rights. And by the 1980s that was no longer the case. And Republicans were trying to appoint judges who would roll back civil rights, abortion rights and other decisions of the so called activist war in court. And then of course, the legacy of the Reagan tax cuts helped to stimulate the economy in the 1980s, but as you said, led to record setting budget deficits and also led to record setting income inequality. Again, this was not all the Reagan tax cuts. There was a lot of stuff going on, including globalization, including the computer revolution. There were a lot of things that were leading to the collapse of American manufacturing.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Deindustrialization predated industrialization.

[Max Boot]

Right. I mean, we're talking about that now. But you know, Billy Joel was singing about allentown in the 1980s.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

When we're living here in Allentown, Out in Bethlehem, there's a little.

[Max Boot]

This is a very long trend and a lot of stuff is happening at the same time. But there's no question that the Reagan tax cuts, which were heavily favoring the upper 1%, contributed to that trend. And if you look at trend lines of income inequality in America, they really begin to diverge in the early 1980s and become very wide now, similar to the socioeconomic conditions you see in Latin American countries. And it has the same impact, which is to empower populism of both the left and the right. So, you know, Mamdani on the left, Trump on the right, they're both reacting in some ways to the stagnation of middle income citizens and the massive income inequality that we've seen. And some of that certainly traces back to Ronald Reagan. He certainly did not think of income inequality as a problem that he had to address. And he wasn't trying to widen it deliberately, but that was the consequence.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

They did slash. When I say they, the administration, the social welfare state, or the safety net today, I mean, just look at what happened with usaid. This goes far beyond anything Reagan did. I mean, it's been estimated that many, many thousands of people in poor countries have died because of the way Elon Musk just torpedoed that whole agency that was created by Congress.

[Max Boot]

Of course, and people like Ronald Reagan were complaining about U.S. foreign aid dating back to the 1950s, and often, just like with Trump, using apocryphal or false examples of the supposed extravagance and waste of US Foreign aid. But I mean, the difference is Reagan always complained about it, but he never did anything about it. He didn't try to eliminate USAID when he was president, in fact, or PBS with some varieties of international outreach. He actually expanded those. I mean, he created with Congress the National Endowment for Democracy, increased broadcasting to despotic countries. And so now Trump is trying to not only has destroyed usaid, but is also trying to destroy VOA and the National Endowment for Democracy and a lot of these programs that Reagan supported.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

One of his most important legacies, to take the word you used in your biography, he reviled the federal government and he was a poor administrator, but still he didn't dismantle say, entire government departments like we're seeing now.

[Max Boot]

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's fascinating. I mean, there's a great compare and contrast here because, you know, in Trump you had Doge taking, you know, a sledgehammer or a chainsaw to the federal bureaucracy. And under Reagan, you had the Grace Commission, which was led by this businessman named J. Peter Grace, who assembled a group of experts and made recommendations for how government could be more efficient and cost effective. But then Reagan didn't go out and implement those initiatives by executive order. He asked for congressional action. And a few things happened. Other things didn't happen, but it was very much similar to Al Gore's Reinventing Government initiative in the 1990s. This was just, you know, kind of traditional green eye shade, Republican fiscal conservatism. And then Trump took it and put it on steroids and mounted this all out assault, which wound up devastating a large number of government departments, demoralizing government employees, but didn't actually reduce the cost of the government. And so it was completely ineffective in terms of its supposed goals. But what it did do was things like you said, which is it's going to consign millions of people around the world to an early grave because they're not going to have the life saving food or medicine provided by usaid.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

And I think you're right, it's unfair to blame it all on Reagan. But that was a sea change or a cesura in the US experience because for the prior half century after the New Deal and the victory in World War II, Americans could see the government as their ally, as a necessary ally to help them overcome the challenges of life in a capitalist society. New Deal liberalism, great society liberalism becomes a spent force by the late 1970s. We don't have to get into all the reasons why right now. And then we get a sea change with Reagan and Thatcher as well, where now the government is actually the problem. It is an obstacle to positive change for working people. But the logical conclusion, once you set that kind of idea in motion, it's almost like a game given now in American society, is you can get to a place like we're at right now.

[Max Boot]

I mean, there's no question you can trace back the rise of anti government sentiment. That was certainly the message of Barry Goldwater in 1964, and he didn't do very well because in the mid-1960s, people trusted the federal government. But by 1980, people didn't trust the federal government after Watergate, Vietnam stagflation, the Iran hostage crisis, all this other stuff. And so Reagan found a very receptive audience for his message. As he said in his inaugural address.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

In 1981, the economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we've had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom in this present crisis. Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.

[Max Boot]

That was a message that really resonated. But one of the weird things about the Reagan administration is that even when he was President of the United States, Ronald Reagan was constantly reviling the federal government as if it was being run by somebody else, as if he weren't actually the guy in charge of the government. And so that kind of non stop anti government rhetoric from the very top kind of intensified these trends of distrust of the federal government. And now with Trump's all out assault and attempts to destroy the bureaucratic state, which is not something Ronald Reagan tried to do, but you can trace it back to some of that Reaganite rhetoric for sure.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

This fellow Russell Vogt, who's in charge right now, is trying to dismantle at least some of the administrative state. You know, Wilme says something that you have said, that the changes under Reagan made the Republican Party far more conservative than it had ever been. Willand says despite his rhetoric, Reagan neither identified closely with the religious right nor expended much immediate political capital on its behalf. Yet by formally endorsing the evangelical conservative cause and cultivating its political support, Reagan brought into the Republican Party, especially at the state and local levels, large cadres of indefatigable culture warriors who would battle hard for the party's soul and the nations. Wilents goes on to say, and this is a good segue to get to the next person I want to discuss with you here. Although Reagan himself as a union president and governor was practiced in political compromise, not all conservative Republicans in or outside Washington shared his temperament. Some truly saw themselves as revolutionaries. In 1987, Willem says Pat Buchanan, while still serving as the White House communications director, declared the greatest vacuum in American politics is to the right of Ronald Reagan. So right now, Max, there's a debate happening as to how influential Pat Buchanan was or is on the road to Trump. What is your view on that?

[Max Boot]

Well, in a lot of ways, I think Buchanan prefigured Trump. In many ways, Trump has taken the Buchanan message much in the way that Reagan took the Barry Goldwater message. And Reagan turned out to be a better salesman for the message than Barry Goldwater. Likewise, Trump, who's a master salesman, has become a better salesman for the Buchanan message than Buchanan himself was. Yeah, I think there's no question that what you've seen in many ways is the mainstreaming of Buchananism, from the early 1990s, when Buchanan was a very marginal figure in the Republican Party, to today, when his ideology is really the, the dominant ideology of the Republican Party in the White House. So you've seen a complete shift, basically where we've gone from the early 1990s where there was mainstream conservatism of the Reagan, Bush, Dole, McCain, Romney variety, and then you had Buchananism, the culture war stuff, the xenophobia, all that other stuff that Buchanan represented, which was really marginal and mainstream leaders tried to push it to the side. But now it's the mainstream people who are marginal and the extremists who are in control.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

We must not trade in our sovereignty for a cushioned seat at the head table of anybody's new world order.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Do you feel marginalized as a former or do you still consider yourself a Republican or a Reaganite?

[Max Boot]

No, no. The day after the 2016 election, I re registered as an independent. So I spent most of my adult life as a Republican, but have not been one for roughly a decade now.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Not to get personal here. I tend not to ask my historian guests about their personal politics too often. But I mean, it is interesting how your thinking has changed mine too. I was a teenager when Reagan ended his presidency in 1989, January of 89. But I grew up loving him as my first president, the Cold Warrior, we defeated the Soviet Union and all that. There was an element of populism in Reaganism. I mean, it was personified by Buchanan, who kind of had to keep quiet about it a little bit, at least in the 80s until his 1992 primary challenge. But the Cold War was over then. And you could say something like, it's time to bring the bases home and focus on American working class. Free trade is actually gonna hurt a lot of working people. That message. But some of that populism was there on Reagan's lips too.

[Max Boot]

Oh, absolutely. I mean, he. That was a central part of his message, was that the elites in faraway Washington don't really know what they're doing and we need some good old common sense in Washington. But with Reagan, the populist message didn't really go that far because he appointed Beltway insiders like Jim Baker and David Stockman and Dick Darman and others to actually run his administration. And he was really concerned about with making deals with Tip o' Neill and. And governing in a responsible and successful fashion. So he spent his first term compromising with Tip o', Neill, his second term compromising with Mikhail Gorbachev. He stoked the fires of populism with his rhetoric, but actually acted in a very mainstream fashion that probably had more in common with Dwight D. Eisenhower than it does with Donald Trump. Trump. And this is one of my observations about the last 50 years of Republican politics, or even more, is that Republican politician after Republican politician has catered to right wing populism on the campaign trail. Richard Nixon himself did that very successfully. But then inevitably when they get into office, they pivot to the center. And the far right is very disappointed. I mean, people forget this now, but a lot of people on the right thought that Reagan himself was a traitor in a sellout in the 1980s and he had gone soft. They tended to blame Jim Baker or others for this, but the reality is that was Reagan himself. Trump is in some ways the first Republican president where there is no gap between rhetoric and action. That he acts just as extreme in office as he talks on the campaign trail. And that helps to explain why he has such a cult like following among the Republican base. But it also helps to explain why his popularity right now is at around 39% with the electorate as a whole. He is the first president in my lifetime who makes no attempt to reach out to anybody, who doesn't already agree with him, who makes no attempt to win over Democrats or political opponents, in fact, just reviles them. So his whole political success has been based on mobilizing the base and saying screw you literally to everybody else. And that's really very different from the way Reagan or Obama or previous presidents operated.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

And even members of the base like Marjorie Taylor Greene.

[Max Boot]

And amazingly enough, I mean, he actually, in 2024, Trump had some success in luring over Latino voters. And now he's alienating them by sending ICE in the Border Patrol to basically start rounding up anybody who's brown skinned and, you know, haul them away. Obviously, this is causing a massive plummet in Latino support for Trump. And either he doesn't know or he doesn't care.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

He probably doesn't care, although it's possible he doesn't know. He certainly doesn't care because this is his last term and if Republicans get wiped out in the midterms, he, he'll blame them as any narcissist would. Final subject here. And it has to do with a major difference between Reagan and Trump. Reagan had an ideology. I think you're right. He didn't govern as an ideologue. He was flexible, pragmatic when necessary, although not always law abiding. The Iran Contra scandal is worse than anything we've seen recently with Trump. And that's not to minimize.

[Max Boot]

I wouldn't go that far. I mean, I think the Iran Contra scandal was a big scandal, but there was no attempt at personal gain. It was Reagan was trying to do, and his aides were trying to do what they thought was in the interest of the country, which was releasing hostages, making deals with Iranian mullahs, and supporting the Nicaraguan countries. Now, you can argue that that was unwise and in some cases illegal, and I would agree with you. But I think that it was done in a public spirited way, or at least with a desire to help the country, whereas it would have never occurred to Reagan to order the Justice Department to go and indict his political adversaries. I mean, this is a very different ethos from what you saw in the Reagan administration.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

We did not, repeat, did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we. A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

It was an assault on the Constitution, the separation of powers, when Congress had outlawed aid to the Contras.

[Max Boot]

No, I think that's right. I mean, you can argue that in some ways, the Nixon administration, the Reagan administration, you can argue to some extent it nerd Republicans to law breaking. But I think, you know, the spirit of the Trump administration is much closer to Nixon than to Reagan, because, again, Reagan was not an egomaniac. He was not anti Democratic. He was also not vindictive, which is the core truth, you have to understand about Reagan. He was a very generous soul who thought the best of people. He wasn't out to get anybody. Nixon was out to get his enemies, and Trump is out to get his enemies. And so that's the ethos you see today. And of course, Trump is even less public spirited than Nixon, and he's operating in an environment with a very conservative Supreme Court and a very intimidated Congress. So there are many fewer barriers to his illegality than there was in the case of, oh, Richard Nixon.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Now, personally corrupt, Trump takes the cake. Reagan, as you say, was not personally corrupt. He wasn't taking the diversion of funds from the missile sales and pocketing them. Trump is using the White House to enrich himself. I mean, his corruption is fathomless. But when it comes to Reagan as an ideologue or having having an ideology and Trump not having an ideology and his transactional approach to foreign policy, I mean, this is a subject that is important to you, his dealings with Russia and Putin. Now, I think our country does need to have a debate after a quarter century of interventionism, or 15 years of interventionism after 9, 11, about what our core and peripheral interests are, being able to differentiate between the two and being able to recognize the limits of military power. So all that aside, Trump's dealing with other leaders, being simply unable to understand that a person Like Vladimir Putin does not have the best interests of the United States.

[Max Boot]

Yeah, no, it's extraordinary because Reagan was, if nothing else, he was a small day Democrat. And so he favored democracy at home, he favored democracy abroad, and he generally got along well with other Democratic leaders, whereas Trump often feuds with Democratic leaders. I mean, he's in a spat with Canada, which is inconceivable before he came along. But he gets along great with dictators, whether it's Putin or Kim Jong Un or Xi Jinping or others. So that's a very different ethos and mindset from what you saw under Ronald Reagan.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

What do you make of this split on the right now about the future of American foreign policy between the so called, I don't know, restrainers and the more muscular interventionist types?

[Max Boot]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a split not just on the right in general, but in the Trump administration. I mean, I think you have Marco Rubio who represents kind of the interventionist wing of the party. You have J.D. vance, who represents the isolationist wing of the party. And you see their competition playing out over Ukraine with JD Vance promoting a very pro Russia peace plan and Marco Rubio dialing it back. But I think it's, you know, it's very hard to generalize about the Trump administration because Trump himself is so incoherent and he really governs by impulse. So on the one hand, you can certainly say that he came to office promising to end wars, not get involved in nation building. So to be much more isolationist and restrained in US Foreign policy, maybe you can argue that his destruction of US ID is an example of that philosophy in action. But on the other hand, he's also very militaristic. He believes in gunboat diplomacy. He is acting illegally, I believe by blowing up the suspected drug smuggling boats without any authorization from Congress, he's threatening to attack or even in invade Venezuela. Those are not the actions of an isolationist or a restrainer. It's a weird mix of pacifism and militarism that you see in the Trump administration. It almost defies the description. It's certainly not a coherent foreign policy philosophy. It's really just Trump doing whatever he feels like doing that particular day. And his views change all the time.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Reagan was consistent on his position toward the Soviet Union, but he may have changed, changed tactics. He became more flexible or conciliatory with Gorbachev in his second term. Trump just changes his mind, I don't know how many times now about Russia and Ukraine since returning to power like.

[Max Boot]

Happens on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And I mean, earlier in the fall, he adopted a get tough with Russia approach and sanctioned a couple of Russian oil companies and talked tough about Putin not being interested in a ceasefire. And then all of a sudden, boom, out of nowhere, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner come up with this extremely pro Russia peace plan. And Trump gives Ukraine a deadline of Thanksgiving to agree to it or lose all US Aid. Then Rubio gets involved, dials it back and the deadline is gone. And the peace plan is probably not going to go anywhere. So it's just bizarre. This is not how you run a successful foreign policy.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

Where's George Shultz when you need him for sure?

[Max Boot]

Well, George Shultz couldn't survive in this administration.

[Ronald Reagan (Archive Audio)]

There is a man here who has earned a lasting place in our hearts and in our history. President Reagan, on behalf of our nation, I thank you for the wonderful things that you have done for America.

[Podcast Host (Martin DeCaro)]

On the next next episode of History As It Happens. Beyond Thanksgiving, a new reference point to think about our origins, King Philip's War. Sign up for my weekly newsletter. Just go to Substack and search for history as it happens.

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