Compilation of President Reagan's Humor from Selected Speeches, 1981-89
May 01, 2020Or ask President Reagan Mr. President, I want to raise an issue that I think has been lurking for two or three weeks and phrase it specifically in terms of national security. You are already the oldest
president
in history, and some members of your staff say you were tired after your most recent meeting. with mr. Sir. Mondale I still remember that President Kennedy had to spend entire days getting very little sleep during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Do you have any doubt that it could work under such circumstances? No way, mr. Truitt and I want you to know that I will not be making age an issue in this campaign either.I am NOT going to exploit the youth and inexperience of my opponents for political purposes. If I still have time, I could add mr. Truitt, I might add, it was Seneca or I was Cicero. I don't know, I would like to say that if it weren't for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young there would be no state. I like to head to the fence and try to catch it. one before I finish, but I'll move on to another question, mr. speaker mr. President, distinguished members of Congress, honored guests, and fellow citizens, today is my first State of the Union address.
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compilation of president reagan s humor from selected speeches 1981 89...
Constitutional duty is as old as our Republic. President Washington began this tradition in 1790, after reminding the nation that the fate of self-government and the preservation of the sacred fire of Liberty is ultimately at stake in the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people for our friends in the press who They place a lot of importance on precision. Let me say that I didn't actually hear George Washington savor it, but it's a matter of historical record on our way here on Air Force One. I was looking down over the field here because most of the way from Oklahoma I was looking up at the clouds. and I could say it reminded me of a story, but I really wanted to tell a story, whether something reminded me of it or not, it was about a guy driving down a country road and all of a sudden I looked and next to him was a chicken he was doing about 45 and the chicken was running next to him so he took a step. with the throttle he turned it up to about 60 and the chicken caught up with him and was right next to him again and then he thought he was looking at him but the chicken had three legs but before he could make up his mind for sure. the chicken took off in front of him at 60 miles an hour turned down a lane towards a pen, well he made a quick turn and went down to the pen too and there was a farmer standing there and he asked him and he said yes he made a The chicken passed by you, yes, well, he said: Am I crazy or did the chicken have three legs?
He says yes, it's mine, he says I raise three-legged chickens and the guy said, for God's sake, why well, he says I like the drumstick. Mom likes the drumstick and now the boy likes the drumstick and we just got tired of fighting over it the driver said well how do you know he says I don't know I have never been able to seriously catch one since thank you very much thank you all thank you as Henry VIII said to each of their six wives I won't entertain them much I talked about the difference between our two countries I try to follow the
humor
of the Russian people we don't hear much about the Russian people that we hear about the Russian leaders, but you can learn a lot because they have a sense ofhumor
and you can learn from the jokes they tell and one of the most recent jokes that I found most interesting personally maybe you can tell yourself something about in their country, the joke they tell is that an American and a Russian were arguing about the differences between our two countries and The Americans said: look in my country, I can walk into the Nobel office, I can hit a desk with my fist and say President Reagan, I don't like the way you govern the United States and the Russian said: I can do that, the Americans said what he says, I can enter the Kremlin, enter Brezhnev Sophos, I can hit the puck Brezhnev snez and I can say mr.President, I don't like the way Ronald Reagan governs. I know many of you have been having fun with my advanced age. They even linked my recent surgery to my age. Well, I have to be honest with you. I had the same. I had surgery when I was young and it felt so good I wanted to have it done again, but I'm conscious of my age when I go in for a physical. Now they no longer asked me how old I am, they just gave me a carbon date by the way. I have news for you, we have a spin-off from our Star Wars research, it's a helmet I can wear at press conferences, all I do is press a button and it shoots down incoming questions, although you have to admit my attitude is better that linebacker George Atkinson when he was with the Oakland Raiders someone asked him what the players' reaction would be if the press box exploded he said we would have 30 seconds of respectful silence and then continue with enthusiasm now honest I'm not sorry That way, maybe Now and then, Nancy, would you like to join me here?
Please, I know it's getting late, dear, but it's not often that we have so many people who have written and broadcast about us all together in one room. this and I thought maybe you would like to say some nice words to them, they are all from the press, radio and television, maybe just a little friendly greeting would be enough, how about just a word or two with something friendly, even a word gentle? I'm thinking, I'm seriously thinking, my friends, as always, that our share of laughter tonight at the expense of others, which is as it should be in a city where the issues are important and the passions are so deep, can be the fun and the good nature of Nights Like This are a good place to start, so thank you for your hospitality and thank you for having us.
Thank you, thank you, thank you very much everyone. In the 36th anniversaries of my 39th birthday, this has undoubtedly been the most memorable, George Barbra. all of you up here on the top shelf along with me and all of you ladies and gentlemen I'm huge Lee touched yesterday it's my birthday 75 years ago I was born in Tampico Illinois a small apartment above the bank building he had no other contact with the bank and then now Here I am living above the tent again and it has already been mentioned that, speaking of old times, you may have heard that tomorrow is my birthday, now you know that I prefer to think of it as the 36th anniversary of the 39th , but I will be about to suffer a midlife crisis.
I'm thinking about a career change. Leave this political business and see if I can do something different like radio. or to the cinema maybe give politics another three years this time of year always tends to be a time of summary for me it has been the time of swearing in and the new year every year and a birthday the 36th anniversary of my 39th birthday me I always think that age is relative. It was once a very famous baseball pitcher's purse page and no one knew exactly how old the purse was, but he was still throwing that ball and someone asked him about it and his wise answer was how old would you be if you didn't?
I don't know how old you were, that's how I came up with 39, well the late Jack Benny had something to do with him being 39 for over 40 years. I can't end without a story about the doctors that he will understand very well. Have you ever noticed how easy it is if you are introduced to someone at a party or a dinner or something and they and he introduce you as a doctor and then there are always those people who suddenly start saying doctor, I've been having a good time , we had a partner in show business Mosshart, the playwright who was inveterate in that line, one night at a cocktail party in Hollywood he was introduced to a dr.
Jones and almost immediately started talking about I've been having this lower back pain and the guy who introduced them said Moss dr. Jones has a PhD in economics and that didn't stop Moss at all. He said doctor. He was buying some stocks the other day. No, I don't want to go on too long. After all, this is Las Vegas and outside just now. I saw a colleague exchange ten passes to Regan's talk for one ticket to Frankie Valli. I am also aware that bringing things to a good conclusion is always a complicated matter. They told you I was a Des Moines sportscaster back in the day.
Days the great evangelist Amy Semple McPherson was touring the country holding revival meetings and one of them in Des Moines now the station thought it would be a good idea and an enterprising public relations man to interview Amy Semple McPherson but why Did you choose a sport? announcer to interview that prominent evangelist, I will never know, but there we were in the studio and I asked her several questions that I thought were appropriate and then she responded kindly, but then she made a very fervent plea about the success of her meeting and I I sat until suddenly I heard her say goodnight to our radio audience and I looked at the clock and there were only four minutes left.
Well, I didn't know enough about Amy Semple McPherson to be able to talk, but I could fill four. minutes, so I got up and in those days of radio and disc jockeys and so on I began to thank the notable evangelist, that is, simple McPherson and so on, but I liked this, which means preparing a record and it fell in the recording room control through the The window opened, there were always records around for such contingencies and I grabbed one and put it on the table and said, ladies and gentlemen, we conclude this broadcast by noted evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson with a brief interlude of transcribed music .
I did not wait something less. that Hail Mary brother Millard started singing many of the moochers on the wedding day she never said goodbye she just closed the studio doors she walked out and by the way on the INF treaty issue I told the Senate not to worry about verification I told them I would take care of it and while Gorbachev was here I even made him write a hundred times I will not cheat I will not cheat oops oops but during my presidency I have always emphasized diplomacy but sometimes the moment comes period, you have to use force in foreign affairs and here I am fighting with General Noriega for Panama.
We really enjoyed our trip to China and were surprised that the population was over a billion people and as you can see here the queues are terrible on another trip. The Indonesian government gave us these gifts and they are our friends. I actually love this shirt. I finally found something louder than Sam Donaldson and, speaking of the press, I remember during the vote against ade when the networks wouldn't let me go on air, I bet. You wondered how I finally managed to spread my message. It's no secret that the press and I are sometimes not alone.
In addition to my usual strategy of using the noise of helicopters to avoid questions from journalists. Now I have added a new method to avoid the questions. Tear gas. I have loved almost every minute I have been in office, although there were a couple of trips to the hospital in case you were wondering what happened here. I just said it. Don't you say you're going to write a book? One of my greatest enjoyments is talking to the young men and women who defend us from attack. Here I am on top of the white house listening to the soldiers explaining where they think the next book will come from.
It's a good thing it hasn't all been spilled into these books. However, I mean, I hope environmentalists never find out about this thing we used to fly Air Force One over Wyoming Lo and shoot Buffalo out the window, but I will tell you someone I totally trust, George Bush, has been a wonderful vice
president
. He is an excellent president and that is why I supported him and why I will work hard for him this fall. Here we are listening to one of hisspeeches
. You guys here tonight do some good creative work and I respect that too as we say goodbye here. tonight this greets you and now thank you very much but I think George and I should applaud you I thought it would be good to get together now that we have all rested from our summer holidays and although it is true summer holidays are not always quiet, you know that leads to a story: he was a guy heading to a mountain resort and the cop stopped him and said: did you know you're driving without taillights? and the driver jumped out of the car who was so shocked that the officer took pity on him and said "when I wait a minute calm down it's not that serious and the violation said it might not mean crazy to you but to me it means that I have lost my trailer, my wife and four." Kids I was in Las Vegas a few years ago to address the annual farm bureau meeting on the way to the hall, a fellow recognized me and asked me what I was doing in Las Vegas and I told him I was there what I was for and he said what?Are they doing a group of farmers in a place like Las Vegas? And I couldn't resist. Said. They're in a business that makes a Las Vegas craps table look like a guaranteed annual income. You know, there's a story about a pig and a chicken. They got tired of life on the farm. They decided to look for work in the town they knew before. They came to town when a chicken saw a sign in the window of a restaurant that said ham and eggs. dollar and a quarter a chicken suggested they come in and present their application and a pig said wait a minute this job only requires a contribution for me it is a total commitment you know I can'tresisting they accuse me and by the way and some elements accused me of too much telling anecdotes and so on but I think it would be appropriate, before saying anything else, that one of my favorite stories about the government had to do with an employee who was sitting in a desk and some papers arrived on his desk, he read them and determined where they should go, he initialed them and I sent them and one day a classified document arrived there, but it reached him, so he read it initially.
He didn't send it 24 hours later, it came back to him with a note attached saying you weren't supposed to see this deletion. your initials and initially draft but even HowardBaker is writing a book about me, it's called three by five, the measure of a president. Mike Mike D. The verse in his book says he had a short attention span, well I was going to answer that, but what the hell let's move on to something else, George. Bush is doing well. George has been a wonderful vice president, but no one is perfect. I put him in charge of the fight against terrorism and the McLaughlin group is still in the air, but with so much focus on the presidential elections I have been feeling a little lonely these days. days I'm so desperate for attention that I almost considered holding a press conference.
I even had time to watch the Oscars. I was a little disappointed in that movie The Last Emperor. I thought it was going to be about Don Regan. Now an example is. a story they tell, you know you have to wait ten years there for delivery after ordering a car and therefore if L had finally scraped together the money and was going to buy a car, only one in seven families has it in that country and he went through all the paperwork and everything and finally he signed the last piece of paper, he left his money and then the man behind the counter said come back in ten years to get his car and the man said tomorrow or later, the guy behind the counter says , good that?
Is there a difference in ten years? And he said, well, the plumber will come in the morning. I know some of you were novices when it comes to writing headlines. Reminds me a bit of a rookie reporter. You knew something would remind me. of a rookie reporter whose first solo assignment was to interview a guy who was just celebrating a birthday that made him the oldest person in town and arrived at the address: it was an older building outside of there, all in the outskirts of the city and older people. The gentlemen ushered him in, he sat down and the reporter determined that he was the man and said he was there for the interview and took him right to the issue of how old are you and the man said 96 and said what do you attribute your longevity to? and the guy said I don't smoke or hang out with wild women and at that moment there was a crash from above and the journalist looked up and said what was that, the old man said oh, that's dad, he's drunk again, you know?
It was a moment, but being a Republican in this part of the country felt a little like being Gary Cooper in High Noon, greatly outnumbered. I remember the story of a guy here a while ago who was running for Congress as a Republican and he stopped by a farm to campaign and when the farmer heard he was a Republican his jaw dropped and he said, wait here, he said, I want, I'll get MA. She had never seen a Republican before, so she took MA. The candidate looked around for a podium to give his speech. The only thing he could find was a bunch of those things that Bess Truman spent 35 years trying to get Arey to call fertilizer, so he climbed up on the mound and when they came back, he gave his speech and finished off the farmer.
He says it's the first time I've heard a speech from a Republican candidate He said it's the first time I've given a Republican speech from a Democratic platform It can be best described in a story I like three guys who left the building and got into their car and they discovered that they had left the keys inside, they were locked outside and one of them said to get a wire coat. He had hangers, we straightened him out and I can understand the other one saying you can't do that, someone thinks. We're stealing the car and the third one said well, we better do something pretty quick because it's raining, starting to pour.
This convention brings back so many memories for a guy like me. I can still remember my first Republican. convention Abraham Lincoln giving a speech that sent tingles down my spine no, I have to confess that I wasn't actually there the truth is that back then I belonged to the other party it seems that 25 of the main bootleggers in San Francisco this is a little story to illustrate what I just said about candor, they were arrested there in those Volstead Act days and while they were being prosecuted the judge asked the usual question of course about their occupation and the first 24 were all involved in the same professional activity each. he claimed he was a real estate agent and then he came to the last one on the 25th and said and what are you?
Yes, the last prisoner and the guy says the Honor of him, I am a smuggler and a judge. He was surprised but laughed and said okay. How is business going? He said it would be much better if there weren't so many real estate agents around President Alphonsine and I have a lot in common. We've both been through a lot of campaigns and asked for votes from a lot of different types of people in Texas during the 1976 campaign. In the primary they had me knocking on doors and I remember a kind of rural area where I had been governor of California but I wasn't very acquaintance in Texas and I knocked on the door and an old guy in a t-shirt and jeans came.
I came to the door and told him that he was running for president and that he had been in the occupation that he had been in for several years. I was a little surprised when he asked me what I did for a living and I told him I had been an actor and then he asked me what my name was and I thought well maybe if I give him a hint so I said well my initials were RR and with that A face lit up and he turned around and then ran back into the house. and he was yelling mom, come here quickly.
Roy Rogers is out, so of course asking for help suggests a certain degree of trust, which reminds me of a story involving a guy who fell off a cliff and grabbed a limb. way down and there he hung over the rocky canyon and he looked up and saw no one and finally he shouted oh lord if you are up there tell me what to do and a moment later a voice boomed from the heavens saying if you have faith let it go well, he took another look at those rocks 200 feet below and looked up again and said, is there anyone else up there?
Let's go to the fourth cartoon, now this mmm is called titled the Great. Communicator, but as you can see there was some mistake there, they left the balloon blank so I think I forgot what I was going to say. It reminds me a little of the story of the man who took his young son-in-law and was going to introduce him to him. He took him to golf, told him everything to do, and put the ball on the tee when the boy swung and completely missed the golf ball, but he hit an anthill there and in the air, so he lined up and He hit it and again hit another crack in the anthill and now they were ants flying all over the air and while he was lining up with a third attempt two ants looked out of the crater he left and one of them said if we want to survive it would be better if we Let's get to work being a former Democrat.
I know how difficult it is, we are proud to have you all with us. I must tell you that I started working for the party before I joined it and one. The night of the 1962 state campaign in California I was speaking at a fundraiser and a woman stood up in the audience and asked me if I had moved and she should know, but I'm going to. She said: "I'm a registrar she walked down the middle I'll put the paper down and sign up and then I said no where was I could I just say something here about this I'm half Irish for the other part it's English and Scottish but I just can't help but tell it to the Union and you can take this with you as I am going to take it with me when I was visiting Ireland, just the background and community of my father's ancestors etc. and then I found myself in Castle Rock where St.
Patrick erected the first cross and the young Irish guide was taking us through the old cemetery and we came to a headstone and he pointed proudly and on the headstone it was inscribed Remember me as you pass because as you are like this I was once but as I too will be glad to follow and this had proved too much for some Irish wood that had scratched the stone beneath to follow you I am glad I wish I knew where you went You know a lot of what we are trying to do and a lot of it depended of real communications and I can't resist.
I've told this story before and if some of you have heard it before, it illustrates communications you'll have to forgive me, but life. not only does lumbago start or should I say not only does it start at 40 but the tendency to tell the same story over and over also starts but I have always thought about the importance of communication and where in plays and what that you and I what we're all trying to do and one day, a former kicker for the Los Angeles Rams who later became a sportscaster, Danny Villanueva, told me about the communications and said that he had been having dinner at the house of a young baseball player with the Dodgers, the young wife was busy preparing dinner, they were talking about sports and the baby started crying and over her shoulder his busy wife told the players that they changed the baby and that it was a young man criminal who was embarrassed in front of Danny and he said, what do you mean changing the baby?
I'm a baseball player, that's not my line of work and she turned around, put her hands on her hips and communicated, she said, look buster, you spread the diaper like a diamond, you put second base on it. home plate you put the baby's butt on the pitcher's mound you connect the first and third slides to home plate below and if it starts to rain the game is not canceled you start over with something else. I have to intervene here although this is not an occasion for humor, but lately I have had a kind of hobby of collecting, through dissidents, stories that people themselves tell behind some of those curtains and iron walls, showing their own cynicism. about the system under which they are forced to live.
I live and one I recently heard had to do with three dogs that were talking, an American dog, a Polish dog and a Russian dog and the American dog was telling him how well he barks and then in our country his master gives him some meat and the Polish dog said what is meat and the traveler the Pope the Russian dogs are what do they bark reminds me of a story in case you are wondering this is my way of slipping into a story that many of you here work on this -west trade issues and I like to collect stories that I can verify that the Russian people tell each other, so I'm going to tell you that this is about General Secretary Gorbachev, it seems that that is part of the campaign to fix things in his country. had issued an order that anyone caught speeding should be fined no matter how important they might be one morning when he was at his country house and realized he was late for work. a meeting I had in the Kremlin and they succeeded.
He went out to get into his car and told the driver to sit in the back seat that he would drive and he did so and down the street he went and two police officers on a motorcycle passed by and one of them went out after him and a little while then he returned and he joined his partner, the other motorcycle officer, and the guy said, did you give him a ticket? and he said no, well, he said why not, when he said no, it was, he was someone too important, well, he said they told us. to give it to, it doesn't matter who they were going to take it to, no, that's not what he said, who was good, he said, I don't know, I couldn't recognize him there, but his driver is Gorbachev, I have to tell you well, here I have been collecting stories that I can establish with certainty. told by the people behind the Iron Curtain in the communist bloc and are stories that reveal their brand of cynicism about the system they live under and one of the most recent I heard the man walking down the street at night.
The Soviet soldier in Moscow called to him to stop. He started doing the soldier show. He shot him. Another man said. Why did you do that?. He said curfew. Well, he said it's not curfew. However, he said: I know that he is a friend of mine. I know where he lives. He couldn't have done it. Slander number three. I shouldn't know, but that triggers another one of those stories I learned from there. They went to General Secretary Gorbachev and told him that there was a woman in the Kremlin that he wouldn't leave unless he could see her, so he said, we'll bring her and they brought her and he said, old mother, what is she? ? she said I have a question he said okay she said communism was invented by a politician or a scientist what a politician said she said that explains it the scientists would have tested it on mice first you know there is a story about a young man from the city who hired to work on a farm during the harvest season and the first morning everyone got uplong before dawn that new worker and the farmer walked in the dark to the oat field and neither of them said a word and finally the town man asked what kind of oats they used to cut wild oats or domesticated oats.
The slightly surprised farmer said, well, domesticated oats, of course, why do you ask? Well, he said, I was just wondering why we're sneaking up on him in the Dark, there's a story and I understand it's true, it's about a newspaper photographer in Los Angeles, something that reminds me of Howard, who he called as editor and told him about a fire that was raging in Palos Verdes, which is a mountainous area in the southern part. from Los Angeles County and the photographer's task was to rush to a small local airport, board a waiting plane, get out and take some pictures of the fire, and return in time for the afternoon edition.
Well, he ran down the highway and violated all the traffic laws. He arrived at the airport, drove his car to the end of the runway and, sure enough, there was a plane revving its engines ready to take off. He jumped into the plane shouting "let's go" and they took off at about 5,000 feet. He started pulling the camera out of him. The bag told the guy flying the plane to take him over the fire so I could take his pictures and get back to the paper. And from the other side of the cabin there was a deafening silence and then he heard those words that he will always remember.
Aren't you the instructor? Know? When I think about the welfare system it reminds me of a story and I know some of you here have heard me say this before, maybe everyone knows it, but pretend you haven't heard it because I like to tell that story, it's a story about a father. with two sons and two sons, and one of them was a dyer. Lana's pessimist and the other one was an incurable optimist and they thought they were both so unrealistic that they talked to a psychiatrist about it and he said he thought he could solve the problem and they said well well he said let's make the best of it Magnificent set of toys like any child has ever had and we'll put him in a room, we'll get the pessimists in there and then we'll turn him loose and when he sees those toys and knows they're all for him, he'll get over his mood.
A pessimist said what he could do with the optimist but he said I have a friend who has a racing stable and he said we can take a lot of what they clean out of the stable and we will put it in another room and when the optimist has seen his brother get those toys and then he realizes that he will stop being optimistic, well they finally did after a period, then they went in and followed where the boy was with the toys and he was sitting there. crying and they said why are you crying? He said well, I know someone could have come and taken them away from me and they went down to the room with the optimist and he was on top of that pile of stuff and he was pulling.
He put it over his shoulder as fast as he could and they said, what? You are doing? He says there has to be a pony here somewhere.
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