Max Boot
speaker
527 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 28 Jul
Max Boot’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And Reagan clearly signed off on the first part of that, the arms for hostages, because he thought that would improve relations with Iran.
And then he always claimed that he didn't know about the diversion of money to the Contras, which was really the impeachable offense in this case.
in this whole deal and nobody could ever prove otherwise because Poindexter was widely seen as basically following the sword for the commander in chief and saying that he never told Reagan.
But, uh, when all this, what did you believe?
Did you believe like, I mean, I don't, I don't know.
I mean, this, this is one of the secrets that Reagan took to his grave and nobody will ever, I don't think even he himself knew because, uh,
You know, it's possible that Poindexter may have mentioned it in passing and Reagan thought that sounded okay, but didn't remember it.
Nobody really knew.
There was no evidence that he knew about the diversion.
But at the end of the day, when this whole scandal broke out in the fall of 86 and then into 1987,
uh reagan's defense was i didn't know what was going on now if richard nixon had said i didn't know what was going on nobody would believe it because everybody knew that nixon was a micromanager who knew every little thing that was going on in the government but with reagan this guy who was falling asleep at cabinet meetings it was very plausible for him to say i didn't know what was going on and so basically the democrats had to conclude they couldn't impeach the guy because a he was too popular and b he had this alibi which which they couldn't crack
Yeah, I don't think that's fair because one of his great lines was, he was asked, how could, you know, a lot of people wonder how an actor could be president.
His reply was, I don't understand how anybody but an actor could be president.
Because, of course, anybody who is the chief executive of the United States, there's a
high element of communication and artifice that goes into that job.
And people used to say about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was Reagan's great hero as a young man growing up in the 30s, people used to say that FDR was this great actor.
And I think you kind of have to be a great actor when you command the bully pope.
And that was something that
Ronald Reagan was very good at, and it's true that that was his strength as a president, and he was a much weaker manager, but it's actually really important to have a president who is very good at communicating, because in many ways, that's the chief part of the job.
That was one of the great secrets of the Reagan administration.
Showing 421–440 of 527 · page 22 of 27
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