When Reagan Walked Out on Gorbachev at Reykjavik
Feb 28, 2019
RUSH: So the Norks have put out a statement. The Norks are not known for this. “North Korea’s foreign minister held a very rare press conference after the summit collapsed –†that’s the Drive-Bys calling it a collapse. You know, we walked away. Do you know the last time something like this happened, by the way? That’s exactly right, Mr. Snerdley. Ronaldus Magnus walking away from Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik. And you know why he walked away from Mikhail Gorbachev?
Because Gorbachev was demanding that we get rid of Star Wars, the SDI, and all of our nuclear weapons. And Ronaldus said, “You’re not serious. I’m outta here.†And then the media went nuts claiming that Reagan was a dunce and an idiot, had been played by the brilliant Gorbachev, and the world was now at greater risk than ever because Gorbachev was mad. We got the sound bites coming up here in just a second.
North Korea, very rare press conference, insisting they made a realistic proposal about sanctions being partially removed. I have no doubt they did. We weren’t gonna remove their sanctions if they weren’t gonna make any move, partially or otherwise! But the one thing the North Koreans are not gonna say is that the ChiCom premier, Xi Jinping, had our hands tied, we really couldn’t agree to anything because he didn’t see a position of weakness for us to be used in.
But the fact that the Norks are reacting to this and having — they never call press conferences, normally because the people that do it don’t survive. They get shot. So this one had to be — Of course, that little pot-bellied dictator, he’s on the way back, he took a train, loaded up his $1.6 million Mercedes Maybach on a train, a three-day trip back to ping-pong, North Korea, for him to get back home. Well, it’s a Green New Deal train. You never heard about the undersea train tunnel there that they built for the — no. I saw it, it was a three-day train trip from Vietnam back to Ping-Pong, North Korea.
Since we’ve got it, here’s Reagan. This is October 13th, 1986. Let me set the table for this for those of you who were not alive then or were and have forgotten or weren’t old enough to know. The American media for six years, ever since Reagan was inaugurated, was running around saying the greatest threat to all of mankind was not climate change, it was nuclear weapons. And that meant that Reagan was the greatest threat because Reagan was an irresponsible cowboy, he was making jokes about the Soviets being the evil empire.
He went in to record a Saturday morning radio address and during the mic check he said, “The bombing starts in five, four, three –†and everybody heard that and said, “Oh, my God. He’s out of his mind.†This is a period of time where this was the only topic on Phil Donahue’s show. Four out of five shows were about nuclear weapons. Hollywood actresses, I remember Laura Dern was on one day, literally broke down in hysterical tears over the fact that nobody understood what it was like for young people to live every day with the real threat of global annihilation because of nuclear holocaust brought about by Ronald Reagan.
It was no different then than it is now about Trump, folks. And the way the media reported on Reagan is identical to the way they report on Trump: dunce, idiot, uncouth, out of his league, not qualified, doesn’t know what he’s doing, amiable dunce. Might be a nice guy here and there, but really, really, really is a crackpot and a kook. And Gorbachev was considered the savior of the world.
In fact, when Gorbachev first came to the United States for the first summit they practically had orgasms out there at Andrews when he landed. It’s where I invented the term Gorbasm to describe what the State Department and the entire Washington elite corps was doing when Gorbachev landed and got off the plane with his lovely charwoman wife, Raisa Gorbacheva. Which also, by the way, Raisa Gorbacheva was on many more fashion magazine covers than Nancy Reagan. And she was said to be a fashion plate. Right. She bought her stuff at the big, giant GUM department store in Moscow, which never had any stuff in it. It’s amazing how similar Reagan was treated to the way Trump is treated. So October 13, 1986, the Reykjavik summit. Here is a portion of remarks made by Ronaldus Magnus.
REAGAN: The general secretary wanted wording that in effect would have kept us from developing the SDI for the entire 10 years. In effect, he was killing SDI. And unless I agreed, all that work toward eliminating nuclear weapons would go down the drain, canceled. I told him I had pledged to the American people that I would not trade away SDI. There was no way I could tell our people their government would not protect them against nuclear destruction.
RUSH: Now, the SDI, the American left was totally opposed to it. Hollywood left was opposed to it. Many in the Reagan State Department were opposed to it ’cause they looked at it as the nuclearization of outer space. They looked at it as unnecessarily provocative. They looked at it as creating a brand-new nuclear arms race. The only thing they didn’t factor was — and this is why Gorbachev demanded that we get rid of it — SDI is what finally destroyed the Soviet Union.
SDI was something they could not build. They didn’t have the expertise, number one, but they certainly didn’t have the money. There was no way. The Soviet Union was always a Third World nation economically with a First World military. That’s where most of their money went. They were smarting from their forays into Afghanistan. Reagan knew they couldn’t keep up. We knew we could build it, but more importantly the Soviets knew we could build it and that’s why Gorbachev was demanding that we get rid of it, and Reagan refused to do so.
Margaret Thatcher even admitted this to me. She confirmed this to me. That that’s what finally did it, it exposed the Soviet Union as being unable to keep up in any kind of race with the United States. And of course it’s five years later, four or five years later the Berlin Wall comes down. Here’s the next sound bite from Reagan in which he expresses that he’s still hopeful despite the fact that negotiations have broken off.
REAGAN: I can tell you that I’m ultimately hopeful about the prospects for progress at the summit and for world peace and freedom. You see, the current summit process is very different from that of previous decades. It’s different because the world is different. If there’s one impression I carry away with me from these October talks, it is that, unlike the past, we’re dealing now from a position of strength. Our ideas are out there on the table. They won’t go away. We’re ready to pick up where we left off. So there’s reason, good reason for hope.
RUSH: This is halfway through Reagan’s second term, and it was not long after this that the Iran-Contra thing blew up and the media and the Democrats began to summarily attempt to destroy the Reagan presidency primarily because of the success that Reagan had had against the Soviets. Do not minimize that. Now, one other thing I remember about this. When the summit blow — you should have seen it. Gorbachev stormed out of wherever they meeting in Reykjavik, he stormed out. They came out together, but you could tell they were both ticked off. They were mad, including old Gorby.
And I’ll never forget, Mr. Snerdley, George Shultz, who was the secretary of state for Reagan, George Shultz would be the equivalent of a Washington insider today who doesn’t think Trump has the slightest idea what he’s doing. But he was not mutinous about it with Reagan like people are with Trump. But he was scared to death that Reagan didn’t know what he was doing, scared to death that Reagan had no idea about diplomacy.
I’ll never forget, George Shultz had to go in and bite the bullet in a press conference after all this broke up. He’s on television, he’s saying, “I have never been prouder of my president than at this moment.†You know why? Because these clowns really thought Reagan was gonna give away the store in order to get a deal! Just like the media told us that Trump was gonna give away the store in order to get a deal to try to mask and cover up whatever the Cohen hearings were all about!
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