CNN anchor Chris Wallace confronted “Reagan” series star Dennis Quaid about his personal support for former President Trump, saying the former president, who Quaid plays in the film of the same name, would be “appalled” by the 2024 Republican nominee.
Asked by Quaid, who plays the 40th US president in the new film, how he supported Trump, Wallace said: “Many people say there's no place for Ronald Reagan in Donald Trump's Republican Party.”
The actor argued that the principles of the two Republican presidents are “very similar.”
“Well, in a way, I don't really agree with that,” Quaid said during an appearance on the Max series “Who's Talking to Chris Wallace?” Available from Mediaite.
“Ronald Reagan was a man of his time,” he added, “and Trump is a man of his time, too. But I feel that the ideals of Ronald Reagan and the ideals of Donald J. Trump are very similar.”
Wallace noted that Trump's approach to foreign policy, trade and party politics is very different from Reagan's, and argued that the late president “would be appalled by what President Trump is doing.”
“Well, take Reagan's take on Russia,” Wallace said. “He talked about an evil empire, and that's what you talk about in the movie. Trump doesn't do that. Reagan supports free trade. Trump imposes tariffs. And Reagan's 11th commandment was never to speak ill of other Republicans. I have to say Reagan would have been appalled by Trump's actions.”
The actor responded that while today's Republican Party looks different than it did under Reagan, the issues in the 2024 election are similar to those in the 1980 election.
“I think we're seeing Trump 2.0 here in terms of what the Republican Party and Trump are doing well this time around,” Quaid said. “I would argue that Ronald Reagan was America First. That situation, the issues surrounding the 1980 election, are very similar today.”
“We had inflation, we had high gas prices, we had the hostage crisis in the Middle East,” he continued. “We were being told the country was in decline, we were feeling the same depression that President Jimmy Carter himself described, and we had problems very similar to what's going on right now.”
Quaid said in late May that he planned to vote for Trump in this year's election, saying the Republican candidate was someone who would “stand up for the people.”
