This F*cking Guy: Ronald Reagan

**Erin Ryan** (0:02)
Welcome to another episode of This Fucking Guy, the show where we spotlight one fucking guy making America worse and explain why they suck. I'm Erin Ryan, host of Crooked Media's Hysteria podcast.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (0:12)
And I'm Alyssa Mastromonaco, the other host of Crooked Media's Hysteria podcast.

**Erin Ryan** (0:16)
This episode, we're going to talk about somebody who probably sounds awfully familiar. This divorced guy was elected president on the back of the slogan, let's make America great again.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (0:26)
His foreign policy was driven by a peace through strength slogan that didn't exactly work. He did some ill-advised f***ing around in Iran.

**Erin Ryan** (0:33)
Under this president, taxes and social programs were slashed, defense spending ballooned, and the office of the first lady was occupied by a woman about which rumors swirled about her opaque sexual history. He'd had a middling career hosting a forgettable network TV show. He broke the record for the oldest non-incumbent to win the presidency in US history.
He was famously a dummy.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (0:53)
This all sounds very familiar. Now, friends, we may be tired, but we haven't totally lost our minds. We know this sounds a lot like Donald Trump, who we have already covered on this series, but it's actually Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States and one of history's great monsters.

**Erin Ryan** (1:08)
We've got a lap to cover.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (1:10)
Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on February 6, 1911, before the Titanic.

**Erin Ryan** (1:15)
And Aquarius.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (1:16)
In a small town called Tampico, Illinois.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:19)
A shithole.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (1:20)
You said it, not me.

**Erin Ryan** (1:21)
Ronald's dad was an alcoholic named Jack, and his mom was a religious zealot named Nellie. Ever since he was a young boy, Reagan demonstrated a capacity for making shit up. For example, later in his life, Reagan would recall playing a football game as a member of Dixon, Illinois' high school team against hated rival Mendota. Reagan would tell a story over and over about how at a key moment in the game, a referee asked Reagan if he'd committed a disputed penalty. And Reagan, in his George Washingtonian ability to tell a fib, admitted it. I told the truth, the penalty was ruled, and Dixon lost the game, Reagan used to say.
But writer Lou Cannon looked into this charming yarn in 1984 and found that, quote, there are no other known accounts of this incident. The only game that Dixon lost to Mendota when Reagan played was by a 24 to score.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (2:08)
In other words, there's no way that scenario ever happened anywhere but Reagan's imagination.
Reagan attended Eureka College affiliated with his mom's religious denomination, but he wasn't a very good student. Although he was quite the joiner, he was a cheerleader and involved in the drama club, among other activities that future Reagan voters would probably classify as less fruity, like being the president of his local chapter of Tao Kappa Epsilon fraternity and playing some football.

**Erin Ryan** (2:34)
Because these get degrees, Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932 with a BA in Econ and Sociology and set out to find his fortune. What he found was that his soothing mid-century voice was perhaps his greatest asset, and he got a job calling Big Ten football games and eventually Chicago Cubs games on local Iowa radio stations. Now remember, this was the 1930s. Announcers back then only got bare descriptions of far away games via the wire service, which meant that sportscasters had to take unadorned descriptions of events and conjure play-by-play narratives using the power of their imagination. So Reagan's job was to make it sound like he was doing something, watching the game and describing what he was seeing to listeners, when he was actually doing something else, reading a wire and telling dramatic stories about what might be happening from a radio station booth in Iowa.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (3:21)
In 1937, Reagan traveled with the Cubs to their spring training in California where he took a screen test. That's like an old-timey audition. He must have done a good job, or at least his hair did, because it landed him a seven-year film contract with Warner Brothers.

**Erin Ryan** (3:35)
Imagine that job security in the entertainment business today. Here's a clip from the trailer for his film debut, 1937's Love is on the Air.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:45)
My job is spreading news. That guy and his mayor brother-in-law are in with Nice Ferguson's gang. Mr. Nichols is riding for a fall.

**Lester Kinsolving** (3:52)
And you're the mattress he's going to fall on.

**SPEAKER_4** (3:53)
Hello again, folks. Here's something hot right off the griddle.