AMAC Exclusive – By Andrew Abbott
On Wednesday, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library will host the second Republican Presidential Primary Debate. But overshadowing the event is the increasingly public feud between the library’s Board of Trustees – dominated by notorious establishment figures like Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan and former House Speaker Paul Ryan – and the runaway GOP frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, who notably still holds the support of the conservative voters once considered to be President Reagan’s base. Mr. Trump has notably elected to skip the Reagan Library debate and instead speak to union workers in Michigan at the same time.
What was once a private schism spilled into the public square last week as a number of trustees anonymously revealed that they have been working against Trump for years. A Politico Magazine piece published on Friday titled “’Spoiled Brat in a Sandbox’: Inside the Feud Between Donald Trump and the Reagan Library” included anonymous quotes from several board members critical of the former president.
Among the most notable broadsides were accusations that Trump only wanted to “burn everything to the ground,” and admissions that Trump “drives [the board] nuts.” One trustee even compared Trump to the fictional evil dark wizard “Voldemort” from the Harry Potter book series.
Beyond the juvenile barbs, board members revealed that a series of public events hosted at the Reagan Library following the 2020 election, entitled “A Time for Choosing” after Reagan’s famous 1964 speech, were indeed an overt attempt to turn the party against Trump.
The article notes that the trustees “invited Trump antagonists like former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, former Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas to speak.” No invitation was extended to Trump – who many Republican voters view as the heir to Reagan’s conservative mantle.
However, the board did extend invitations to Trump’s soon-to-be 2024 challengers, including former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, and former Vice President Mike Pence.
At the time, the board defended the decision by stating that they asked no former president to speak at the library. One advisor to a board member openly scoffed at that explanation, telling Politico, “Yeah, right. Let’s go with that one.”
The open aggression toward Trump is perhaps not unexpected given the board’s makeup. Along with Noonan and Ryan, the list of trustees also includes noted Trump critic Condoleezza Rice, who served as President George W. Bush’s Secretary of State.
Fred Ryan, the Chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, which oversees the library and its board of trustees, co-founded Politico and spent nine years as the Publisher and CEO of The Washington Post. Those years included the entirety of Trump’s first term, in which the paper was notorious for false and biased coverage against the president, including promoting the debunked Steele Dossier while dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop as “Russian Disinformation.”
Historically, presidential Libraries have been charged with protecting the legacy of their respective leaders – not speaking for past presidents or wading into current political debates.
Yet earlier this month, almost every presidential library broke that precedent. 13 presidential libraries, from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama, all joined together to sign an open letter “urging Americans to respect democratic institutions and uphold secure and accessible elections.”
The letter stated, “Free societies elsewhere contribute to our own security and prosperity here at home.” But that interest, they wrote, “is undermined when others see our own house in disarray…. Civility and respect in political discourse, whether in an election year or otherwise, are essential.”
The letter was widely reported as an implicit broadside against former President Trump for calling attention to suspect vote-counting practices in the 2020 election. The only library not to sign the letter, the Eisenhower Library, declined to do so after alleging there was “no discussion” on the precedence or motivation for said letter.
The letter was notably “spearheaded” by the George W. Bush Institute Executive Director, David Kramer. Before serving in this post, Kramer was most famous for leaking a copy of the infamous and debunked Christopher Steele Dossier as a “Hail Mary” to prevent Trump’s election.
In 2016, Kramer was personally given a copy of the document from Steele with the explicit instructions to share it with only the late Senator John McCain. Instead, Kramer leaked it to Buzzfeed News, who published it in its entirety. Though easily debunked, the allegations became the crux of the media’s relentless assertion that Trump conspired with Russian President Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election.
The following year, in an NPR interview, it was revealed that Kramer leaked the memo to “thwart the swearing-in of Trump. And he believed that if this information got out, it might lead to – somehow to Trump’s inaugural being put off.”
Just like Donald Trump in 2016, Reagan became the voice of the “forgotten men and women of America” when he burst onto the national political scene. His eight years in office marked one of the greatest periods of American economic and cultural flourishing. His conservative approach to governing became the standard for an entire generation of Republicans.
Perhaps most importantly, Reagan’s social and economic vision also appealed to working class voters who voted for him in the millions. It was the votes of these so-called “Reagan Democrats” that put Reagan over the top in 1980 in must win states for the GOP like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Ironically, it was the votes of the children and grandchildren of these Reagan Democrats that propelled Trump to victory in 2016 and whose support President Trump is again making a pitch for this week in Michigan at the time of the second GOP debate.
The Reagan library board members are charged with protecting this legacy. Yet in perverting their platform to pursue a personal vendetta against Trump, they are betraying everything Reagan fought for, joining with the establishment class against the GOP’s conservative base, including its all-important working-class voters. Likewise, in deciding to aggressively attack Trump in the run up to their debate that he is skipping, the Reagan library board is also unwittingly highlighting that former President Trump is the only GOP candidate today who has actually won, with the support of the heirs of the Reagan Democrats, the must win states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, and who perhaps alone is capable of winning them again, as he is likely to demonstrate on Wednesday in Detroit.
Andrew Abbott is the pen name of a writer and public affairs consultant with more than a decade of experience in DC at the intersection of politics and culture.
