It has become commonplace to call Trump a reality TV star. That is said as an aspersion, the way Ronald Reagan was called an actor. But Reagan's acting experience, his ability to talk to the camera and not yell to the hall, is what helped make him such a good politician. It is the same with Trump.
I see a comparison between the two [Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump]. Peace through strength. What Chris Matthews don't grasp is that day Donald Trump gave a speech in which he said he's going to build the U.S. military up to Ronald Reagan levels.
Donald Trump does represent a smashup of Washington D.C. He represents a total leveling of everything that people are angry about. And he has Ivanka [Trump]. And I must say, she was there last night, and she is the generational bridge that he needs, because Marco Rubio, the "children of Reagan" line is a good line.
If you study how Ronald Reagan won first the 1980 election and then in 1984, what Reagan did is what Trump is going to do, and that is pull in a tremendous amount of blue-collar workers who have felt abandoned by the Democrats.
Donald Trump is producing the kind of shoot-the-moon economic recovery that we last saw under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. He's copied a lot of the Reagan playbook: Deregulate, cut taxes, promote American energy.
Why are there so many young conservatives now serving our country? I'll tell you why? Because we grew up in an era of Reagan. And Ronald Reagan looked and acted nothing like Donald Trump and look at the Democrats.
I just find this interesting that Ronald Reagan was regarded much the way Donald Trump is except Reagan was governor of California. He had run for the nomination the Republican Party in '76. But he was laughed at. They thought he was dumb then. They thought he was slow minded and dim-witted back then. They thought he couldn't speak. They thought Reagan - amazingly, a guy that later became known as the Great Communicator - couldn't speak.
Ronald Reagan comes out of nowhere, at least as far as these people are concerned in the establishment. I'm telling you, back in 1980, the media and the Washington-New York establishment was as disdainful of Ronald Reagan as they are of Donald Trump.
One more item for the delusional Miss Grundys still obtusely citing Reagan as their model of “niceness”: As governor of California, Reagan gave student protesters at Berkeley the finger. Remember that next time you ask yourself: “What would Reagan do?” People who are afraid of ideas whitewash Reagan like they whitewash Jesus. Sorry to break it to you, but the Reagan era did not consist of eight years of Reagan joking about his naps.
When Grover Norquist launched his project to name anything and everything after Ronald Reagan, I humbly proposed that the deficit be re-christened 'the Reagan.'
We always have to remember that we, the Italians, have always cooperated with the U.S., and with Reagan and Carter and Nixon and Clinton, Bush and Obama. And Trump, Trump is the American-elected president. So, cooperation is there.
Strategic thinkers were naturally rattled to find this outsider fooling around with their work. They had been thinking strategically when Reagan was just another movie actor playing opposite a chimpanzee, for heaven's sake. They think Reagan is too naive, too innocent, to grasp the intellectual complexities of cold war strategy.
Trump has to do what Reagan did. Trump's gotta go on the air and tell us what his tax plan is and put it in our faces and put them on the spot. That's what I think he should do.
People are always warning me that I'm going to burn out. But the truth is, the only thing that tires me out is hearing people tell me that. Opposite shows, opposite coasts, opposite demographics, opposite everything - I love it, man!
Trump base is solid, and there's nothing the media can do to break it. There's not a single thing they can do. They are never gonna give that up, either. They are doing everything they can to split up Trump supporters from Trump. Only Trump can do that. The media didn't make Trump and, as I repeatedly say, they can't bust him.
Reagan has been deified by the Republican Party, which is odd. The Reagan that modern Republicans revere is not the real Reagan.