Interview program after words bill oreilly discusses his book killing reagan with bay buchanan president of the american cause. He discusses the career of Ronald Reagan and the challenges he faced following the assassination attempt in his early in his presidency. Host hi bill. How are you doing today . Guest im good thanks for taking the time to talk to me. Im delighted to talk about your new look killing reagan. Is the fifth in the series. Guest thats correct. Host the other, Lincoln Kennedy patent all died violent deaths and maybe in the case of patent it was accidental but in this particular case of Ronald Reagan the assassination was an attempt and it did not kill reagan. Its a bit different. Why reagan . Guest we think the story involved with the assassination attempt was in context with our series so Ronald Reagan was shot very shortly after he was elected president. He was at a certain age that when you get a trauma like that it affects you physically and mentally. That certainly happened and it was almost a miracle that he pulled through so we wanted to tell the story in the context of killing reagan. Why hinckley wanted to kill him and how that went down and are repercussions afterwards. Host fair enough. Do you consider that this attempt on the president s life on reagans life actually change the course of history . Guest yes. There is no doubt that Ronald Reagan was a different guy after he came out of that hospital and its interesting because he was so rob boston so vigorous that when he appeared with nancy reagan shortly after he was shot and people said and i said this myself wow what a miraculous recovery. Hes out there in his bathrobe with his wife and a smiling. He is cracking jokes to the medical staff before he went into the operation. What a guy about what we didnt know and that was never told to the American Public was that Ronald Reagan had a lot of changes that took place in his persona physically and mentally and that is what the book is about. It chronicles that situation. Host if indeed it has affected him would you say it was adversely and you think that reagan could have done more but he was less capable after the assassination because of the physical and emotional and mental changes . Is that what you are suggesting . Guest everyone who works with Ronald Reagan in the white house after he recovers said he had his good days and his bad days. No one said that about him when he was governor of california so there was a change and i believe that reagan somehow almost miraculously lifted himself up via sheer will and overcame the physical destruction upon his body. Not every day. Some days reagan was so detached that he didnt even come to work. He watched soap operas in the private residence of the white house so we chronicle all of that but something within reagan holds it together and allowed him to have a very successful presidency in the top 10 of all president s. Host thats an interesting point because as you say this assault occurred within six weeks of his taking office and he goes on to win another election to do phenomenally in a debate with the exception of one and to inspire a nation to lift them up economically and to win the cold war. What more could he have done do you think . Where did this assault change things for the worse or did it in fact empower him to do more . Guest its impossible for me to say that. All i can tell you is you asked a question marketing of done more . He delegated an awful lot of authority in the white house. Perhaps he could have done more himself. Perhaps if he had his full energy level that he would have known about the irancontra situation which we believe he didnt even know about. That was taking place without his knowledge but its all speculation. What isnt speculation is that his own advisers at one point after he was reelected were saying we might have to remove him from office because he isnt concentrating. Hes not able to grasp things. His own guys and thats the key part of the book. Host you point that out and you say a study was done and they observed him for a few days after they were concerned about this and he passed with flying colors. There is no effort whatsoever to take it to the next step. And your words you may have just had a bad day. Guest you dont launch an investigation without a reason so wasnt just an investigation. They were worried. Taker and all the guys were worried about him and they were loyal to him by the way. They were loyal and they were so relieved that when he came into the oval office on that day we describe and he was able to engage in all of the issues they felt a sigh of relief. They didnt have to go to the Vice President george bush and invoke the constitution but believe me there was concern that the highest level and this was not undertaken lightly. Host well you know i was there for nine years in different capacities and in the Campaign Campaign of the 80s which is the year before the assassination attempt on his life it was very clear during the primaries especially that mrs. Reagan made it clear and all the political people agreed that he should only go out for four days a week and be down for three days. We had monday through thursday and the reason is you dont want him to be looking old and being tired, not a good thing. This seems to me to be very much the same thing. He did tire easily. He was almost 70 years old. Not there yet but im telling you these things happen so to suggest that all of a sudden theres an attempt on his life when he comes out and has a couple of days where he takes naps in the afternoon, something we all do, he used to joke about it himself. How can you jump to the conclusion that he had these terrific acres following this assault and you are suggesting that he was armed mentally, physically any way that would bring to cause him doing things differently than he would have otherwise . You just made my case for me. You just made my case for me. You said before the shooting he needed rest, that he had to look vibrant and you had to give him time off. That was before he was shot and then, and then he almost died. Hes on the operating table and they dont know whether hes going to pull through. The trombitas so intense. Are you going to tell me that didnt affect them adversely from that moment forward . He was already being pacing him . Host we are pacing him for a good reason. Guest in a trauma like that it can only exacerbate the condition that was in play before but i believe that reagan was a very strong man. A lesser man would have died on the operating table because he was very strong. We go through his regiments come his horseback riding on his ranch. He was a very physical guy and he embraced as Teddy Roosevelt said the vigorous life. That is what really pulled him through and he fought against the trauma that was inflicted upon him by hinckley. He fought against it and he rises above it and he became a great president so thats all we have in the book. It doesnt diminish Ronald Reagan, it enhances his legacy in my opinion. Host lets go to a few points. As you say he was a great president. He was beloved. He wasnt just somebody who did good things. The American People just loved him and theres a reason for that. Its not just his accomplishments which is half of it or a portion of it but also the person he was. One of those qualities he had is hes at good and decent man who came across as a kind man and get while there are many opportunities that you have taken to talk about affairs in his life some 70 years ago to one night stands, women talking about Different Things that would suggest intimacy with the former president after the divorce. Understand by reading the book why all of this is in there with great detail. If he felt it was necessary for us to know that he had this wild side are those three or four years all you needed to do was say that he was a playboy. Why go into the details . What is the purpose of talking about all of these many and which theres no way we know what really happened. Guest number one we dont go into great detail. Its not a tablet book. Number two we dont use anything that was a double source of names on it. We took out a whole bunch of stuff that we found out that we couldnt really nail it down and the people wouldnt put their names on it so we didnt use it. Just as in killing kennedy, just as in killing lincoln, the same thing. We want to present these people as human beings. We are all sinners and we all have our our downsides and we all do things were not proud proud of. Every single human being on earth does that but the overarching the book is that Ronald Reagan was a great man and this was the essence of his greatness. We spell it out. For me to ignore that, what he did, and theres nothing in the book that isnt true, while i wrote about kennedy in the same vein would have lincoln in the same vein and patton in the same vein. George patton had an affair while he was on the battlefront. So we are not in the business of deifying anyone and i understand why people might not like that and they dont have to read the book but when you read killing reagan you will get a picture of Ronald Reagan as he truly was with the good and the bad. And i agree with you i think the man was majestic in the way he inspired fellow americans, and his kindness but he wasnt a saint. Host nor did he ever suggest that he was. Guest thats right and i think Ronald Reagan would like this book very much. Host i would disagree with that because theres so much that you say was he said she said, affairs and one night stands. Guest that is fallacious. Host do you have evidence of one night stands . Guest all of the things that we write about our footnoted in the book as you know few have read it. They are footnoted with names. Did you not read the book . Host oh yes i read the book. Guest they are footnoted on the page and in the back of the book as well. No anonymous stuff. Host why nancys personal life in there as well . Guest at the same thing. Nancy reagan was three people. First this driver who wanted to marry Ronald Reagan and we have to explain why, where she came from and how she got to hollywood, what happened there and then the diva who got a cogovernorship. Nancy was very smart and very protective of Ronald Reagan. There were a lot of people who believe that Ronald Reagan would not have become governor of california or president without nancy reagan. I cant say yes or no on that but i can say the portrait of nancy is accurate. She was a diva in the white house and she was to some overbearing and to some cruel but then nancy reagan emerges at the end of the president s life as a true hero. Somebody who was unbelievably sensitive to her husbands ailments protecting him and making sure he has the best care, devoted her whole life to him for a decade. Its an amazing story of love and we portray that story very vividly. Host you you do in the end at it every chance you take nancy reagan and you put a negative light on her. Guest that is not true. Host for the first 200 pages it is. Guest let me state this for the cspan viewers were watching this interview. You were reading this book on an ideological level. You adore ronald and nancy reagan and for me to put anything negative in the book against them offends you. Understand you are an ideologue and i understand you were reading it that way. Im not. In presenting these people the way they were. Once again i will tell you everything is sourced. Everything is footnoted when its controversial and who said it or where they were. Theres no tabloid stuff in the book. There are now your responsible allegations in the book. It all happen the way we wrote it. We took painstaking we went over this with three or four reagan scholars when they read the book. Is it accurate, is it out of context . Are we overstating . Are we understating. I didnt hear you say anything about jfk when i wrote about him or abraham lincoln. I will tell you if you read this from an ideological point of view. Host im reading it from this point of view. He was a good and decent man who inspired people. Lets go into another aspect of being a great man. Strong, courageous man. You give a great story about when he was a Screen Actors Guild involved against the Vice President at the time and there was that awful violent strike. Can you tell the readers and its a wonderful story about the kind of person he was. They were suggesting maybe he go through the l. A. Tunnels rather than to break the picket line. Tell that story. Guest thats an astute question i just cool that you and im going to compliment you. What you put your finger on is the genesis of Ronald Reagan. Ronald reagan when he first arrived in hollywood was a shallow, i wouldnt say naive, he was intelligent that he wasnt a sophisticated man and he made it as an actor and an almost miraculous way which would document. Politically he didnt know what he was talking about and he would almost join the communist party. They didnt want him. The communist party did not want him because they didnt feel he had the gravitas but then there was a strike in hollywood and the strike, the commies were trying to shut down the studios against the Screen Actors Guild which wanted to continue making movies. It got so vicious that the communist strikers would threaten the actors if they came to the set. So the actors had to go into a time of, had to go underground to get to the studios or they have to go on a bus and they had to go on the floor of the bus. Ronald reagan refused to go on the floor of the bus and refused to go to the backdoor. He sat on the bus so everybody could see him and because of that he was threatened and so was his family by the communist, directly threatened. He had phonecalls and what reagan did was he got a gun. He carried a gun in protection but he never wavered, he never backed down. We made that quite clear that he was a man of courage. Now that experience turned him against the communists. And that stayed with him his whole life and that was the centerpiece of his president ial administration. We laid out vividly. We laid out that he was a man of courage. We lay out all the things that he did and all the things he stood up for but we also dugard did inform on others in the fbi. So we are telling the truth about Ronald Reagan and thats why this book i think if youre really interested in the man i dont ask you to agree with everything. Host i know you dont. Guest is a balanced picture as we did with lincoln and patton and jesus, he was just a good guy. Host he was officially a good guy you might say. Then he went on and talk about a sitdown meeting with the leader of the strike and how that man is used to try to intimidate and reagan came to that meeting and no intimidation whatsoever. Guest and gene kelly, the famous gene kelly singing in the rain was at the meeting and through his prism we write about it. Reagan never backed down. He never backed down. Host let me ask him on page 50 you write nancy reagan possesses an inner steel that her husband lacks. Guest a. Host what we just talked about was something that occurred before he knew nancy, before they were married and he was close to 40 years old when he married nancy and this occurred before so here is a man is thats incredible the only guy standing on the bus began youre suggesting that he lacks an inner steel . Guest i took it you took it out of context. What we are saying about nancy reagan is she would do the dirty work their reagan didnt want to do because as you pointed out hes a very kind man. He didnt have the heart to fire anybody or to even scold anybody. It wasnt like jimmy carter who was pretty tough in the white house. Reagan wasnt like that so while he was a man of courage and while he stood up for his convictions and wasnt afraid of people who wanted to hurt him he didnt have the heart to yell at anybody or fire anybody or to tell them that they werent doing the job. Thats what nancy reagan brought and she did it and thats this deal we were talking about. Host okay, all right. I may just go back to that point. Through the book as you read it, this was the first note that i took concerning that. You have nancy almost the individual who is running the show. Almost the puppet and she is the puppeteer. He constantly says she is the one whos become dominant and he at one point said nancy had more influence over him than his aides. Guest no doubt about that. She had the last word. Host this is where the clarification needs to take place here. She had the last word on his personal life and on his social life. She never interfered with policy. Guest you know what . I think you are correct on that. Nancy was in lockstep with Ronald Reagan on policy. We didnt find any disagreements that they had politically. So reagan was anticommunist and nancy was anticommunist. Reagan was pros. , proprivate marketplace, Smaller Government and so was nancy. So we didnt see any tension there. What nancy reagan did after the assassination attempt was she took off all of the stuff that she felt Ronald Reagan her husband shouldnt have to deal with and it was a lot. Nobody got in to see them without nancy saying yes. Thats big. That is power and we chronicle that but i think you are correct where nancy reagan and Ronald Reagan pretty much agreed on all policies. We never found where she pulled them aside and said maybe we do this or maybe thats not correct. They were pretty much a one line politically. Host thats going to another one. Let me ask you because its kind of a mixed message i believe for the reader in the book on his religion, on the depth of his religious beliefs. You mentioned at times that he didnt go to church for instance and say that does not make an issue out of his belief in god is another quote. But at the same time you do mention theres a spirituality there. In your words what message are you trying to relate to the reader . Is this a deeply religious man in your opinion . Guest i think he was a spiritual man and certainly he used his belief in god to define his public policy. Im going to give you an exclusive bay. Are you ready for an exclusive . I have a handwritten letter by Ronald Re