A Reagan Forum Podcast

This Reagan Forum podcast that you are listening to is only one of the eight different podcasts that the Reagan Foundation and Institute produces. In fact, this is only one of two that are audio only – the rest each come with video. One of our favorite podcasts is called the Reagan Retrospective. These podcasts are stories shared by people who knew President and Mrs. Reagan best – people who worked with them, were friends with them, and knew them throughout their life. Each podcast brings you new behind-the-scenes stories from the Reagan years. They’re funny, poignant, and rich in history. Over the past 3 months we have recorded over a dozen of these podcasts and they’re now being released a few per month. So today we are going to share four of our most recent Reagan Retrospective podcasts. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

On August 14, 2024, the Reagan Foundation hosted an in-person event with former Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross for a discussion on his latest book, Risks and Returns: Creating Success in Business and Life. The book is a candid reflection of a life lived at the pinnacle of Wall Street, New York, and Palm Beach society, as well as within the Trump administration in his role as Commerce Secretary. During the program, Secretary Ross sat down in conversation with Reagan Foundation and Institute President and CEO David Trulio to discuss his career in business and politics.

Tomorrow, August 30, 2024, the movie REAGAN will be released in theaters nationwide. REAGAN is a cinematic journey of overcoming the odds. The movie is told through the voice of Viktor Petrovich, a former KGB agent whose life becomes inextricably linked with Ronald Reagan's when Ronald Reagan first caught the Soviets’ attention as an actor in Hollywood and stars Dennis Quaid, Jon Voight, Penelope Ann Miller, Mena Suvari, Lesley-Anne Down, David Henrie and Kevin Dilon. A month earlier, on July 25, 2024, a handful of the Reagan movie cast joined us at the Reagan Library for an in-person moderated discussion about the film and their roles. During the program, cast members Dennis Quaid, who plays Ronald Reagan, Elya Baskin who plays a soviet defector, Amanda Righetti who plays Nelle Reagan, and Will Wallace who plays Ed Meese, sat down in conversation with Reagan Foundation and Institute President and CEO David Trulio to share these stories and more.

On March 23, 1983, in a televised address to the nation, President Reagan announced his intention to embark upon groundbreaking research into a national defense system that could make nuclear weapons obsolete. At the heart of the Strategic Defense Initiative was the development of a space-based missile defense program that could protect America from a large-scale nuclear attack. Flash forward to today, and now our country has the Missile Defense Agency to develop and deploy a system to defend the United States and its allies - exactly what President Reagan envisioned 40 years ago. On August 1, 2024, the Reagan Foundation was honored to host an in-person event with Lt. Gen. Heath Collins, the Director of the Missile Defense Agency, whose job it is to advise the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering on Missile Defense programmatic policy, requirements, priorities, systems, resources, and programs. During the program, Lt. Gen. Collins sat down in conversation with Reagan Foundation and Institute President and CEO David Trulio to discuss the Missile Defense Agency - its responsibilities, its challenges and opportunities, and the importance of what the Agency does every day for our nation's security.

On July 24, 2024, the Reagan Foundation hosted a virtual event with President George HW Bush’s former chief-of-staff Jean Becker to discuss her latest book, Character Matters: And Other Life Lessons from George H.W. Bush. During the program, Jean sat down in conversation with Reagan Foundation and Institute Chief Marketing Officer Melissa Giller to discuss President Bush’s character, humility, love of country, and love for his family.

President Reagan hated war. He wanted to prevent war. And in the event he ever had to use force, it would be to advance freedom – and not to conquer. President Reagan sought peace, and he understood that peace requires strength. It is strength that tyrants respect. It is strength that enemies understand. It is strength that keeps the peace. As a guiding philosophy, “Peace Through Strength” is as relevant today as it was 40 years ago. In this Reagan Forum podcast we look back at our 80th anniversary of D-Day commemoration event held on June 6, 2024. The specific panel in this podcast focuses on where we need our leaders to rediscover and recommit to President Reagan’s philosophy. The Wall Street Journal’s Kate Bachelder Odell moderated a conversation with Former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Burt, who was with Ronald Reagan in Normandy, Frank Lavin, who served as Ronald Reagan’s White House Director of Political Affairs—and later served as ambassador to Singapore under President George W. Bush, and Matt Kroenig, who is Vice President and Senior Director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a Georgetown professor.

Last month we shared with you our two panels and our one Keynote Fireside Chat as part of our June 5, 2024 event to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the passing of President Ronald Reagan.  This month we turn to our panels and Keynote Fireside Chat that were held at the Reagan Library on June 6, 2024, on the day the country and the world commemorated the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy. This occasion was marked brilliantly by President Reagan 40 years ago on that day in 1984 when he delivered two memorable and moving speeches, one of which highlighted the selfless and heroic actions of the “boys of Pointe du Hoc.”  During our programs, we heard from people who were with President Reagan in France that day, as well as discussion around President Reagan’s steadfast support of our allies and the “Peace Through Strength” policy he championed. Our day ended with a lively and fascinating conversation with Dr. Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State and now Director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. It is this conversation with Dr. Rice we will cover in today’s Reagan Forum podcast. During this hour-long discussion, Dr. Rice sat down in conversation with Reagan Foundation and Institute Board Chairman Fred Ryan. The two discussed the importance of looking back at D-Day, our nation’s military today, the political environment of today, including the wars in Ukraine and Israel and the threat Taiwan faces from China, the importance of bi-partisanship and working with Allied Nations, and so much more. 

As we shared with you last week, we gathered at the Reagan Library on June 5, 2024, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the passing of President Reagan. The day was a meaningful opportunity to reflect on our 40th President’s legacy and its enduring impact to this day and beyond. In a CBS piece that aired the night of President Reagan’s death, Leslie Stahl concluded, quote, “Ending the Cold War will certainly be how he is remembered most in history.” If that was President Reagan’s crowning foreign policy achievement, then Peace Through Strength was his most important guiding philosophy. As such, in today’s Reagan Forum Podcast we focus on the second panel from our June 5th event – Leadership Abroad: Peace Through Strength. The panel was moderated by Fox News’s Guy Benson.  He sat down in discussion with Former UN Ambassador and President Reagan’s Arms Control Director Ken Adelman, who is also the author of Reagan at Reykjavik, Paula Dobriansky, who served as director of European and Soviet Affairs on the Reagan National Security Council, Professor William Inboden, now of the University of Florida, the author of The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink, and KT McFarland, former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor in the Reagan White House. During the hour-long panel, they discussed President Reagan’s legacy, if we are still heeding his example, and how his Peace Through Strength Initiatives still impact us today.

On May 29, 2024, the Reagan Foundation hosted a virtual event with Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Carlos Lozada for a discussion of his latest book, The Washington Book, which explores how people in power reveal themselves through their books and writings and, in so doing, illuminates the personal, political, and cultural conflicts driving Washington and the nation. It explores the construction of personal identity, the delusions of leadership, and that mix of subservience and ambition that can define a life in politics. During the program, Carlos sat down in conversation with Reagan Foundation and Institute Chief Marketing Officer Melissa Giller.

In this week’s “A Reagan Forum” we present Ed O’Keefe, the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation, for his latest book, The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a President. During this virtual event, Ed sat down in conversation with Reagan Foundation and Institute Chief Education and Program Officer Richard Schroeder to discuss his book.

In this week’s “A Reagan Forum” we present our Reaganism Podcast on GOP Foreign Policy. During the podcast, Reagan Institute Director Roger Zakheim sat down with Dr. Matthew Kroenig who serves as the Vice President and Senior Director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, and with Dan Negrea who serves as the Senior Director of the Freedom and Prosperity Center at the Atlantic Council. They discuss Dr. Kroenig and Mr. Nagrea’s new book, “We Win, They Lose: Republican Foreign Policy and the New Cold War.” This book provides a blueprint for Republican policymakers to engage with and win the great power competition with Communist China.

For today’s Reagan Forum podcast, we are going behind the scenes to share some of the inside stories of what we do here at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute. The Reagan Library opened on November 4, 1991, but the groundbreaking was held three years earlier, in November 1988. November 21, 2023, marked the 35th anniversary of the groundbreaking of the Reagan Library and Museum. To commemorate the day, the Foundation put together a video of how the Library was built and why Simi Valley was chosen.

During his farewell address to the nation on January 11, 1989, President Reagan said, “An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?” Today, the Reagan Institute’s Center for Civics, Education, and Opportunity stands at the nexus of civics and education policy answering President Reagan’s call for an “informed patriotism” to ensure for a prosperous future for America. Educators and organizations committed to civic learning and engagement often feel hesitant, fearing they'll be labeled political. Meanwhile, parents may wonder about the distinction between active participation and advocacy, and whether their child's teacher is equipped to navigate these waters. To discuss these topics, the Reagan Institute held an online forum on March 13, 2024, specifically to discuss how to foster informed and engaged citizens in today's polarized climate. The panel took a deep dive into the nuances of "active citizenship" versus "activist citizenship," exploring how these concepts intersect and sometimes clash in educational settings.