EXCLUSIVE: Dr. Paul Kengor, who authored the pair of books that served as inspiration for the movie “Reagan,” sees similarities between the impending showdown between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris and the 1980 presidential election.
Kengor, a political science professor at Pennsylvania’s Grove City College, released his book “God and Ronald Reagan” in 2004, exploring the former president’s faith walk. It was a hit and soon caught the eye of filmmaker Mark Joseph, who told Kengor he’d been “waiting” for a book like it because no one had told that side of Reagan’s story yet. He asked Kengor if anyone had the film rights to the book, and the rest is history.
When the two got to talking, they decided to focus the movie on another of Kengor’s books instead, “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism,” which was released in 2006 and focused on Reagan’s effort to prevent communist expansion in the world. “Reagan,” starring Dennis Quaid and Jon Voight, hit theaters in August and has grossed about $30 million while earning poor reviews from most critics.
The word “inflation” has been uttered more often by the 2024 candidates than “communism.” Kengor admits times are “quite different,” but the author still sees key similarities between the 2024 and 1980 presidential elections, when Reagan defeated incumbent President Jimmy Carter in a landslide.
The slogans, for one thing.
While “Make America Great Again” is now solidly associated with Trump and his MAGA-hat wearing supporters, Kengor reminded readers that the phrase actually began with President Reagan.
“Quite interestingly, in 1980, when Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter, he used a message that is very much Donald Trump’s right now, which is, ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago?'” Kengor told Fox News Digital. “And, you know, that has been a Trump theme and also the Trump phrase, ‘Make America Great Again.’ That was Reagan’s. That was Reagan’s 1980 campaign message.”
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Kengor said he gave himself a refresher on the 1980 election by rereading “The Crusader.”
“I think part two in the book or part three is called Make America Great Again. And I saw that, and I thought, I bet some people are going to read that now and think this is some sort of Trumpish thing. But, you know, it was Reagan. It was Reagan first.”
Kengor sorted through his desk of old mementos to try and find some old “Make America Great Again” campaign buttons.
“But I have a button that I keep on my desk that says it has a picture of Reagan 1980 and it says ‘Make America Great Again.’ Trump didn’t steal that from Reagan. Trump invoked it in 2016 as a Reaganesque phrase, and then it caught on. And eventually it ended up on the red hat and it became Trump’s phrase. So that’s a commonality.”
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Reagan was known for his strong conservative principles. And while the Gipper was the leader of a now bygone era, Kengor said his tenets are still very much a part of the current Republican platform, maintaining that Trump checks the boxes.
“I wrote a book called ’11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative,’ which is jointly published with Young America’s Foundation and the Reagan Ranch Center,” he said. “And it lists kind of the 11 key Reagan areas: faith, freedom, family, sanctity, dignity of human life, limited government, lower taxes, peace through strength, anti-communism.”
“Trump can pretty much check the box on all 11 of those Reagan principles or ideas,” Kengor continued. “So even though the times are very different, conservatism believes that conservatism is based on time-tested ideas and principles. So kind of regardless of where you are in a particular time or campaign, those principles ought to be shared by conservatives if they’re genuinely conservatives. So the ideas of Reagan’s time should transfer forward to conservatives today in 2024 and beyond.”
