Like today, the media hated limited-government, non-politically-correct, anti-political-establishment types like Reagan then and Trump now. These so-called “debates” are nothing more than Q&A sessions with the Leftist media running the show and whose moderators now make themselves the stars of the show. Pathetic really.
Before the first debate, Reagan was saturated by his political “experts” who, as they do with Trump, thought Reagan should be more like them rather than simply letting Reagan be Reagan. The result was a relatively lousy performance by Reagan.
In the second debate, Reagan was just being Reagan and won the day and won the election in a landslide.
Then they said he turned the Contras loose to indiscriminately rape and murder innocent people when in reality it was a couple of criminals that were in their ranks that got loose and started trouble and that the Sandinistas used cooperative militias and human shields. They were fighting back against armed civilians who were either sycophants or draftees forced to serve in the militias.
We were also told Reagan was a racist and a white supremacist which is also false, we were told Reagan axed programs to favor the rich when he had to cut back spending to invest in a better future and to stop taxes from draining wealth.
So many damn lies about the Reagan. None of them factual, none of them true.