How the GOP Got From Reagan to Trump

Donald Trump’s far-right worldview has a lot of critics, many of them Republicans, who argue that Ronald Reagan would “roll over” or “turn over” in his grave if he could see what is happening to his old party. The Trump-dominated, populist-nationalist GOP is certainly very different from the conservative party that Reagan led in the 1980s, and Trump is a very different figure, in both outlook and personality, from Reagan. But it’s also true that, however much Trump has changed the Republican Party since 2016 (and the changes have been enormous), the roots of Trumpism can be traced back to Reagan—and, before him, to Barry Goldwater and even earlier figures on the American right. Uncomfortable as it is for many Reagan fans to admit, the 40th president inadvertently prepared the ground for the 45th in multiple ways. These similarities are a reminder that Trump did not emerge from nowhere, and that ridding the Republican Party of his influence won’t be easy.  

The differences between Trump and Reagan are, to be sure, substantial. Trump criticized Reagan’s policies in the ’80s. He took out newspaper advertisements in 1987 to argue that “Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States” and that “the world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.”

Reagan was pro-immigration and pro–free trade, rejecting the nativism and protectionism that have been Trump’s hallmarks. He launched his 1980 campaign with a speech that included a proposal for a “North American Accord” to allow “peoples and commerce” to “flow more freely” across the borders between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. This idea eventually blossomed into the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Trump called the “worst deal ever.” As president, Reagan signed the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli Act, which legalized millions of undocumented immigrants—exactly the kind of “amnesty” provision that Trump and his followers denounce today.

Although Reagan, like Trump, did not see combat, he, unlike Trump, venerated U.S. troops and staunchly supported U.S. alliances such as NATO.

Reagan would never have denounced veterans as “suckers” and “losers,” denigrated Medal of Honor recipients, or told the Russians that they can do “whatever the hell they want” to U.S. allies who don’t pay more for their defense.

[Jeffrey Goldberg: Trump says Americans who died in war are ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’]

So, too, is it inconceivable that Reagan would have raised any concerns about supporting Ukraine. As president, Reagan backed anti-Communist insurgents from Afghanistan to Nicaragua.

The stylistic differences between Reagan and Trump may be even more notable than the policy differences. Trump is a foul-mouthed vulgarian who maligns his critics in harsh terms. Reagan, by contrast, was a consummate gentleman who seldom had a harsh word for anyone. A product of the early-20th-century, small-town Midwest, Reagan even in the privacy of his own diary never spelled out hell and damn (instead writing “h---l” and “d---n”). Reagan revered America as a “shining city on a hill” and ran for reelection in 1984 claiming it was “Morning in America.” Reagan would never say, as Trump just did, that “the American dream is dead” and that “our country is doing really badly.” Reagan inspired hope, whereas Trump spreads fear.

Despite their many differences, however, the only two presidents who have hosted a nationally televised show before taking office (General Electric Theater for Reagan, The Apprentice for Trump) also share some significant similarities. Reagan was a populist who reviled the government he led, even if he did not call it the “deep state,” and belittled expertise. He often quipped, “I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.” Reagan’s attacks on the federal government were wittier and tamer than Trump’s, but they intensified the anti-government mood that Trump has exploited in recent years. Reagan’s policies, tilted toward the wealthy, exacerbated income inequality, thus also contributing to the populist backlash that Trump now harnesses.

More similarities: Reagan was proud of his dealmaking skills (learned as a union negotiator, not a real-estate mogul), and he promised in his 1980 campaign to “make America great again.” He displayed an often-shocking ignorance of public policy, even if he knew far more, and read far more, than Trump. He often made false statements, even if he uttered fewer than Trump has, and he had a cavalier attitude toward fact-checking. Asked in 1965 by a graduate student about his oft-repeated and false claim that “no nation in history has ever survived a tax burden of one-third of our national income,” Reagan breezily replied, “I’m sorry … I just plain don’t have that source any longer,” and continued repeating it in his speeches. Reagan arguably inured Republicans to Trump’s far more pervasive falsehoods.

So, too, did Reagan’s campaign rhetoric sometimes contain the extremism espoused today by Trump. Early in his political career, Reagan regularly accused Democrats of plotting to turn America into a socialist and even communist country with their welfare programs, just as Trump later did. In his famous 1964 “Time for Choosing” speech, Reagan accused Democrats of “taking the party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Cleveland down the road under the banners of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin.” Reagan later moderated his rhetoric; Trump never has.  

Perhaps the most disturbing Trump-Reagan parallels concern public health and race relations. Reagan mishandled the AIDS epidemic, just as Trump mishandled COVID-19, resulting in needless loss of life. Reagan did not make a speech on AIDS until 1987, six years after the first cases were reported, and did next to nothing to mobilize a federal response even as nearly 50,000 Americans died of the disease while he was in office.

[David Frum: Is America still the ‘shining city on a hill’?]

Although Reagan always insisted, much like Trump, that “I just am incapable of prejudice,” he regularly appealed to white-backlash voters—albeit less crudely than Trump. Reagan opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which he called “purely an emotional bill based on political expediency,” and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which he described as “humiliating to the South.” He later used coded appeals to white voters, condemning “welfare queens,” demanding “law and order,” and, in 1980, endorsing “states’ rights” in Mississippi near the site where three civil-rights workers had been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. As president, Reagan tried to water down civil-rights laws and opposed tough sanctions on South Africa.

We should not exaggerate the similarities between Reagan and Trump. If Reagan were alive today, he undoubtedly would be criticized by Trump supporters as a RINO (“Republican in name only”). But Reagan, like other Republican politicians of earlier eras, helped set the GOP—and the country—on the path that led it to embrace Trump. The question for the Republican Party now is: What comes next? Will the party continue moving ever further to the right, toward a Viktor Orbán–style authoritarian movement that would presumably have Reagan (an avid believer in democracy) doing more spinning in his grave? Or will it revert to being a more center-right party in the Reagan mold? In the 1980s, “Reaganism” represented a right turn for the GOP. Today it would represent a left turn—a restoration of a more moderate, if still conservative, outlook. That may still happen. But only if Trump loses decisively in November—and even then, it won’t be easy.