leteatjellybeans

Besides, really, what does any of this matter if Armageddon is imminent?

10/13/83 Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker is informed that President Reagan has appointed William Clark – as unqualified for this job as for all his others – to be the new Secretary of the Interior. “You’re kidding,” says Baker. “Now tell me who it really is.”

10/19/83 Asked at a press conference about the safety of the US Marines in Beirut, President Reagan says, “We’re looking at everything that can be done to try and make their position safer. We’re not sitting idly by.”

10/23/83 A truck bomb at the US barracks in Beirut kills 241 Marines.

10/24/83 In the face of political strife on the island of Grenada, White House spokesman Larry Speakes calls press speculation about a US invasion “preposterous.”

10/25/83 Claiming that US medical students there are in grave danger, President Reagan diverts attention from the Beirut fiasco by launching an invasion of Grenada. Lest there be any doubt about Presidential involvement in this decision, photos are released showing a pajama‑clad Reagan – up at 5:15 a.m.! – being briefed on the situation. Curiously, reporters are prevented from covering the invasion.

10/26/83 American students from Grenada kiss the tarmac upon landing in South Carolina. Scoffs school bursar Gary Solin, “Our safety was never in danger. We were used by this government as an excuse to invade Grenada.” President Reagan says US troops “got there just in time” to prevent a Cuban takeover.

11/3/83 President Reagan explains that the military action he ordered in Grenada was not an invasion but was, rather, a “rescue mission.” As for a UN resolution deploring this action, “It didn’t upset my breakfast at all.”

12/3/83 Concrete barricades are erected in front of the White House to prevent truck bombers from cruising in as easily as they seem to in Beirut.

12/6/83 The Israeli newspaper Maariv reports that during a meeting with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, President Reagan – who spent World War II making training films in Hollywood – claimed to have served as a photographer in an army unit filming the horrors of Nazi death camps. Shamir says Reagan also claimed to have saved a copy in case there was ever any question as to whether things had really been so bad. When asked just that question by a family member, Shamir quotes him as saying, “This is the time for which I saved the film, and I showed it to a group of people who couldn’t believe their eyes.”

12/6/83 Revealing his rather disturbing view about the “coming of Armageddon,” President Reagan says, “[Not] until now has there ever been a time in which so many of the prophecies are coming together. There have been times in the past when people thought the end of the world was coming, and so forth, but never anything like this.”

All entries are excerpted from the “Reagan Centennial Edition” of my 1989 book The Clothes Have No Emperor, available here as an enhanced eBook. More to come.