A Reagan Forum Podcast

Although today is Veterans Day, we will spend today’s Reagan Forum Podcast celebrating the Reagan Library’s 30th Anniversary. Last week we brought you the official opening day ceremonies from November 4, 1991. Today we go back just a few days to November 7, 2021, for the Library’s 30th Anniversary Commemorative Program, featuring former Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice, former Reagan Speechwriter Peter Robinson, and David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States.

On November 4, 1991, President Reagan stood alongside four other living U.S. Presidents – the first time in history five presidents had ever gathered together before – and officially opened the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum. Since that time, millions of visitors have visited our hilltop to experience the life and legacy of our nation’s 40th president. And, in those 30 years, we have grown – in 2005 we opened the Air Force One Pavilion which houses President Reagan’s Air Force One, President Johnson’s Marine One, and a portion of Ronald Reagan’s motorcade; in 2011 we renovated all of our galleries; in 2018 we added a hologram of President Reagan, and we’ve added outdoor displays, including an F14 fighter jet, an F117 stealth fighter jet, and an M1 Abrams tank. And, of course, the Reagan Library is now the final resting place for both President and Mrs. Reagan. In this week’s Reagan Forum podcast we go back 30 years today to the opening of the Library, to hear the opening day’s ceremonies.

In this week’s Reagan Forum podcast we go back one month to September 9, 2021 for our virtual program entitled, Digital Defense and Deterrence: America’s Cybersecurity Posture. The program featured America’s first National Cyber Director, Chris Inglis, and Dave Levy of Amazon Web Services as they focused on the future of U.S. cyber defenses across the national security interagency. The program also covered recent congressional policy interventions (including creating the National Cyber Director position), the Biden Administration’s approach to cyber, the importance of a unified cyber strategy, and how private sector partners can bolster U.S. cyber readiness.

In this week’s Reagan Forum podcast we go back one month to September 14, 2021 for our virtual event held in partnership with the Heritage Foundation, entitled “Does President Reagan Matter to Generation Z?” The program was moderated by Joseph Loconte, the Director for the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at Heritage, as well as Tunku Varadarajan, a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The panel included Matthew Continetti, Senior Fellow from the American Enterprise Institute, Henry Nau, a professor emeritus of political science at George Washington University, and Reagan Biographer Craig Shirley.

In this week’s Reagan Forum podcast we go back one week to October 5, 2021 for our in-person event with former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who was the Foundation’s fifth speaker in its new Time for Choosing Speaker Series, a new forum for leading voices in the conservative movement.

In this week’s Reagan Forum podcast we go back to September 11, 2021, when the Reagan Foundation hosted a commemorative event for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. During the program, we heard from Marc Manfro, one of the most decorated New York Police Department transit officers who was there the day the towers fell, and Colonel David Sutherland, an untiring advocate for our US service members.

In this week’s Reagan Forum podcast we go back one week to September 23, 2021 for our virtual program with former chief of staff to President George HW Bush Jean Becker for a conversation on her book, The Man I Knew: The Amazing Story of George HW Bush’s Post Presidency.

In this week’s Reagan Forum podcast we go back one week to September 16, 2021 for our virtual program with award-winning philanthropist David Rubenstein for a conversation on his newest book, The American Experiment: Dialogues on a Dream.

In this week’s Reagan Forum podcast we go back one week to September 9, 2021 for our in-person event with former Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie, who was the Foundation’s fourth speaker in its new Time for Choosing Speaker Series, a new forum for leading voices in the conservative movement to address critical questions facing the future of the Republican Party. Chris Christie was inaugurated as the 55th Governor of the State of New Jersey on January 19, 2010 and was re-elected with 60% of the vote in November of 2013.  During that time, he also served as Chairman of the Republican Governors Association in 2014. He is currently a senior legal and political commentator for ABC News.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of 9-11. Nothing sums up why we should remember this day more than the words President Reagan spoke in Pointe du Hoc, France while commemorating D-Day: “Here…let us make a vow to the dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say…I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.’ Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor, and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.” As a way to honor the memory of those that lost their lives, we are going to spend this podcast listening to some of the “America Supports You 9-11 Freedom Walks” that the Reagan Library held. 

In 2018, the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute hosted its first annual RISE conference. Standing for the Reagan Institute Summit on Education, RISE 2018 was a day-long bipartisan conference assessing the American education landscape in commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the seminal report: A Nation at Risk. RISE 2018 took place on April 12, 2018 in Washington, D.C.

In this week’s Reagan Forum podcast, we go back to our August 14, 2021 in-person program with top rated Talk radio host and bestselling author Mark Levin for a conversation on his latest book, American Marxism. Mark Levin is a very busy man. In addition to hosting one of the top rated daily radio shows, he hosts Fox News’ “Life, Liberty and Levin” every Sunday, LevinTV on CRTV daily, and each of his books quickly hit the bestsellers list. While at the Reagan Library, Mark was joined in conversation by Reagan Foundation and Institute executive director John Heubusch to discuss how the core elements of Marxist ideology are now pervasive in American society and culture—from our schools, the press, and corporations, to Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and the Biden presidency—and how it is often cloaked in deceptive labels like “progressivism,” “democratic socialism,” “social activism,” and more. During the conversation, Mark exposes many of the institutions, intellectuals, scholars, and activists who are leading this revolution, and provides us with some answers and ideas on how to confront them.

In this week’s Reagan Forum podcast we go to an in-person program with conservative talk radio host and bestselling author Michael Medved. Although we had held in-person events at the Reagan Library since reopening our doors after the COVID closure, this was our first book signing event. Michael Medved is quite the scholar. He started Yale at the age of 16 and wrote his first book – a bestseller – at 26.  He started out in life as a democrat, officially joining the conservative movement in his mid to late 20s.  His book, “Right Turns,” tells the story of his transformation from what he calls “punk liberal activist to lovable conservative curmudgeon.” In 2017 Michael came to the Reagan Library for a program and book signing on his book, “The American Miracle.”  In 2019 he released the second book in the series entitled, “God’s Hand on America: Divine Providence in the Modern Era.” The two books focus on “accidents, bizarre coincidences and flat-out miracles that shape America’s Destiny.” He joined us at the Library on July 14, 2021 to discuss “God’s Hand on America.”

In this week’s Reagan Forum podcast we go back to July 8, 2021 for our virtual conversation with bestselling author and former MSMBC Hardball host Chris Matthews. Chris Matthews has been following American politics since the first Eisenhower campaign. Following two post-college years in the Peace Corps, Chris served on several staffs on Capitol Hill. He traveled down Pennsylvania Avenue to serve as a White House speechwriter to President Carter before returning to the Hill as a senior aide to House Speaker Tip O’Neill. That means that Chris saw up close the defining friendships of American history… the friendship of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill. In the late 1980s, Chris switched to full-time journalism, serving as Washington Bureau Chief for the San Francisco Examiner and then beginning his career on television in 1994. In all the years Chris has been involved in the country’s public life he’s kept an abiding faith in electoral politics, his quadrennial hope that the American people will make the best judgment on who should lead. He has kept that faith through war and peace, good times and bad, through great leaders and not-so-great. He has never lost his vigorous love of democracy and how it can serve to make this country, through all its challenges, a more perfect union. Chris Matthews was joined in conversation with Reagan Foundation and Institute executive director John Heubusch to discuss his brand-new book, This Country: My Life in Politics and History, a sweeping memoir of American politics and history.

In this week’s Reagan Forum podcast we go to our July 26, 2021 in-person event with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was the Foundation’s third speaker in its Time for Choosing Speaker Series, a new forum for leading voices in the conservative movement to address critical questions facing the future of the Republican Party. Michael Pompeo is an American politician, diplomat, businessman, and attorney who served under President Donald Trump as Director of the CIA from 2017 to 2018 and as the 70th United States Secretary of State from 2018 to 2021. He is also a former United States Army officer, and a former member of the United States House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017, when he represented Kansas’s 4th congressional district.