RUTHFULLY YOURS

Liz Cheney – who recently endorsed Kamala Harris, a person Cheney described as a “radical liberal” just four years ago – now says there is “absolutely no chance” that Ronald Reagan would support Donald Trump.

She has it exactly backward. It’s people like Liz Cheney and the cabal of other never-Trumpers who never would have supported Reagan when he ran in 1980.

“Donald Trump doesn’t stand for any of the things that Ronald Reagan did,” Cheney said. “It’s another place where I would urge my Republican colleagues … to really look at Donald Trump’s policies, to really look at the danger that he presents,” Cheney said in an interview on ABC News’ “This Week.”

Cheney’s claim that Reagan didn’t support Trumpian policies is demonstrably false.

In his first term, Trump enacted pro-growth tax cuts, started eliminating regulations, and built up the nation’s military after years of neglect by Democrats. He appointed conservatives to the Supreme Court. He championed the working class.

In Reagan’s first term, he did likewise.

Reagan called the Heritage Foundation’s 1980 “Mandate for Leadership” – a massive guide to conservative policymaking – the bible for guiding his administration and handed it out to every Cabinet official. Trump enacted two-thirds of the recommendations contained in Heritage’s 2016 “Mandate.”

Trump enacted protectionist tariffs. So did Reagan. In fact, Reagan imposed a 100% tariff on certain Japanese electronics in 1987 and forced that country to accept restraints on auto exports. He put limits on steel imports, raised tariffs on Canadian lumber, and so on. What’s more, Trump signed free trade deals with friendly countries and had several in the works at the end of his term – which Biden abandoned.

And Reagan was hated by all the same people who hate Trump – the media, Democrats, and establishment Republicans. He was described as a “dangerous, right-wing radical,” a friend to tyrants, a heartless budget cutter. They said he was woefully unprepared to be president and played fast and loose with the facts.

When he was running against Jimmy Carter, Reagan was hardly all sunshine and roses, as he’s often depicted. During that campaign, Reagan denounced “mediocre leadership that drifts from one crisis to the next, eroding our will and purpose.”

Even now, the left despises Reagan, calling him a “hyper-nationalist” whose “worldview grew out of the paranoid jingoism of postwar America. It led him to support fascists in Central America and see moderate liberals like JFK as dangerous radicals.”

Witness, too, the reaction to the Reagan movie. Elitist movie critics – the sort of people never-Trumpers want to rub elbows with – uniformly panned “Reagan” (just 20% of critics liked the movie, according to Rotten Tomatoes) because how dare anyone make a movie that treats Reagan with respect. But moviegoers loved it (98% gave it a thumbs up).

There’s also the fact that vast numbers of never-Trumpers – who all claimed to oppose Trump because he was abandoning Reaganism – have since outed themselves as not just establishment Republicans, but straight-out liberals. They supported Biden, turned a blind eye to his disastrous presidency, and are now backing “radical liberal” Harris. These people are not conservatives.

There’s no question that Reagan was more charming than Trump, had a better wit, and a more pleasant demeanor. Unlike Trump (and every never-Trumper as well), Reagan didn’t attack fellow Republicans, and he was much better at winning the crowd. (Trump’s approval rating has almost never topped 50%.)

Nevertheless, we have no doubt that, had they been around in 1980, the never-Trumpers of today would have denounced Reagan in 1980 for the same reasons they are denouncing Trump and would have urged Republicans to re-elect Jimmy Carter.