65 Another Trump-Reagan Parallel: Reagan’s Staff Also Discussed the 25th Amendment

Find Bob Woodward’s quote ‘It’s like I was never President at all.’

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-white-house-struggles-to-silence-talk-of-trumps-mental-fitness/2018/01/08/2a7d4092-f493-11e7-a9e3-ab18ce41436a_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_trumpfitness-723%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.f2027bb71f5f

There are a number of Reagan-Trump parallels-a congenital inability to tell the difference between a strongly held belief and the truth, both apt inventors of ‘alternative facts’ both possible colluders with a hostile foreign government and the 25h Amendment.

There has been a lot of discussion of so-called ‘President Trump’ and the 25th Amendment. Omarosa claimed staff members in Trump’s own Russia House talked about it regularly and then there was the NYT piece asserting Rod Rosenstein discussed in the immediate aftermath after firing Comey as well as the idea of wiretapping the illegitimate ‘President.’ Andy McCabe in his recent book tour states that he did hear Rosenstein talk about wearing a wire.

Meanwhile the Manchurian ‘President’ is likely pretty happy about Rod Rosenstein these days-at least if you can believe Barr’s claim that the ‘decision’ on obstruction-I give it inverted commas as it’s not Barr’s to make-was made jointly with Rosenstein.

Imagine if anyone had been listening to the many lawyers who said in June 2017 that Rosenstein overseeing Mueller would eventually become a big issue. And now Barr says Rosenstein helped him decide to *clear Trump completely* of obstruction. Rosenstein was like a delayed grenade. pic.twitter.com/RAT0uamaFg

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) April 4, 2019

FN: Regarding Rosenstein we would learn he’d assured Trump-after the furor over the claim he talked about wearing a wire-that he could “land the plane.”

Just like Trump, Reagan generated a lot of 25th Amendment talk that only increased over time.

The question of Reagan’s mental condition during the later WH years remains a very sensitive subject. There was a heated-and, honestly, really very funny fight-between Bill O’Reilly and conservatives like George Will over St. Reagan’s legacy a few years a ago after O’Reilly’s book, Killing Reagan, which claimed that Reagan struggled to retain his mental faculties after the attempt on his life by John Hinckley in 1981.

O’Reilly committed a grievous sin among Reagan idolators like Will as he suggests that the sainted Reagan was actually struggling with mental instability during most of his Presidency. O’Reilly for his part claims that far from skewering St. Ronnie his book finds even higher praise for him as he managed to accomplish all his great accomplishments while fighting the mental trauma caused by the assassination attempt.

In any event, George Will was not amused:

“O’Reilly “reports” that the trauma of the assassination attempt was somehow causally related to the “fact” that Reagan was frequently so mentally incompetent that senior aides contemplated using the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove him from office. But neither O’Reilly nor Dugard spoke with any of those aides — not with Ed Meese, Jim Baker, George Shultz or any of the scores of others who could, and would, have demolished O’Reilly’s theory. O’Reilly now airily dismisses them because they “have skin in the game.” His is an interesting approach to writing history: Never talk to anyone with firsthand knowledge of your subject.

So Will hates the book and thinks its a hatchet job on Saint Reagan no matter what O’Reilly says.

O’Reilly impales himself on a contradiction: He says his book is “laudatory” about Reagan — and that it is being attacked by Reagan “guardians” and “loyalists.” How odd. Liberals, who have long recognized that to discredit conservatism they must devalue Reagan’s presidency, surely are delighted with O’Reilly’s assistance. The diaspora of Reagan administration alumni, and the conservative movement, now recognize O’Reilly as an opportunistic interloper.”

Well let’s be clear, Mr. George Will. As a liberal I did find this entire episode highly entertaining, especially when you and Mr. (O)Really mixed it up on his show.

But whether or not liberals like O’Reilly’s book is not proof of it’s truth or lack thereof. And what’s notable is that on the show-besides the truly hilarious fireworks-like when O’Reilly ends the show by saying ‘You are a-HACK’-is that Will had to admit that it is empirical fact that Reagan’s own staff looked into Reagan’s mental fitness in 1987.

That Howard Baker would only take the job of the new Chief of Staff after a kind of stealth investigation into Reagan’s mental health. Even John Kelly didn’t take that hard a line-perhaps he now wishes he had.

And like Trump’s WH today, Reagan’s staff did seriously consider using the 25th amendment in 1987. 

“Most high-level White House aides believed that President Reagan was so depressed, inept and inattentive early last year in the wake of disclosures in November 1986 about the Iran-contra scandal that the possibility of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office was raised in a memo to Howard H. Baker Jr., who was just taking office as Reagan’s chief of staff.”

“Former Baker aide James Cannon, confirming facts reported in a newly published book, said in an interview yesterday that he wrote a March 1, 1987, memorandum based on the aides’ concern and raising the possibility of applying the amendment.”

“Baker took the recommendation seriously and, with Cannon and two of his own aides, spent part of a day observing Reagan’s behavior before concluding that the president was sufficiently competent to perform his duties, according to the book.”

So there’s no question there was concern about Reagan’s mental state. Wether or not O’Reilly’s conjecture-that being shot in 1981 was in any way an important factor in these worrying signs Reagan’s own staff saw is another question altogether.

The staff in 1987 clearly believed they saw a change in him after Iran-Contra broke. This is actually very similar to what is known about Nixon in his final 15 months-after Watergate became all consuming and he had to fire his two top flacks, Haldeman and Ehrlichman.

One point regarding what trigged Reagan’s apparent deterioration: there were at least a few instances prior to Iran-Contra it seemed to raise its head. After the first debate in 1984 many commentators were speculating about his mental health-was he losing it? Again, very much like with Trump Circa 2018.

And honestly the question really does beg. Now for me-as a liberal Democrat-to ask this, no doubt I may be suspected of bias. But in all honestly the question begs to be asked: when precisely did Reagan’s Alzheimer’s hit? Did he really show no symptoms of his illness before he left in January 1989?

It may seem indelicate but isn’t it at least highly questionable that his Alzheimer’s waited until after he left the WH and then hit him almost within days of leaving?

But then there were his amazing words of testimony in 1990: It’s almost as if I was never President at all. 

And that’s an interesting point. During Iran-Contra Reagan survived where Nixon fell during Watergate. Reagan’s strategy was in a nutshell ‘I don’t recall.’ Don’t recall is certainly better than a categorical yes or no if you’re client has some things s/he can’t admit.

Technically if you say you don’t recall and you do recall that’s still a lie-and still perjury if done in front of Congress, or a special prosecutor, or any court of law. But to convict you of lying they have to prove you do recall. And how exactly do you prove that?

And there’s the rub. One theory could be that Reagan was losing it and his Alzheimer’s hit prior to his leaving office.

Another could note that his extreme forgetfulness certainly was very helpful in beating the rap on Iran-Contra. As painful as that scene where he says it’s almost like he was never President at all, it actually served his purpose as it got him off the hook on Iran-Contra.

As for the Trump team, clearly the model is Iran-Contra and not Watergate. To be sure, Reagan acted more or less the opposite of Trump in his own investigation. He spoke in effusive terms of ‘welcoming the investigation to get at the truth of what happened.’

Nixon did speak of ‘welcoming this examination’ but he also went after the FBI, the State Department, the DOJ to weed out those disloyal to him-just like Trump today.

Reagan never took any shots at the special prosecutor or talked about Iran-Contra as fake news. And he outlasted it one way or the other.

The Nixon model on the other hand was about obstructing the investigation by hook or by crook-just like Trump is doing today.

UPDATE: Of course, Reagan’s VP, Bush Sr, was helped greatly by Coverup AG Bill Barr-the very same coverup artist who has done so much already to try to protect this illegitimate ‘President’ from the truth coming out.