bush was the closest thing to a third term for ronald regan. >> the 40th president of the united stateshe leads office as our oldest president and as one of the most popular ever. >> he was a chief arc tekt of the 1980s. you don't always identify business the years but in this case '80s should be the regan years. >> they called it a regan revolution and i'll accept that. to me it was a great rediscovery. a rediscovery of our values and commonsense. as long as we remember our first principals and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end. >> the fair firmness of his etoric enabled him to be pragmati pragmatist. the fac thate raised taxes, the fact that he appointed two pro choice justices, they forgave all that because he had been for so long their champion. >> president regan understood that we judge our presidents on the basis of what they get accomplished and he understood politics, the art. that together with the fact that he was a beautiful human being, those were the secrets to his success. >> the las

. >> i looked back to see what ronald regan was doing and in the morning he was having breakfast withhad a full day. the idea that ronald regan would be watching television so he could make an immediate attack is unheard of. to my mind the greatest concern i had about what happened this morning was not that he didn't apologize. i didn't expect president trump to apologize. but that he doubled down. after republicans had criticized him. he decided that he didn't care about the tweet storm that he had created and so that raises questions about his judgment. he forgot that what's most important is the credibility as the president of the united states. important not just at home but with north korea for example, like right now. and he didn't care. what he wanted to do was keep playing the small board game with people on msnbc and forgot about the larger purposes of the administration. >> but it's harder because on the it one hand the white house keeps saying how great the president's tweets are, that it's a way to directly connect with people, to bypass the media, which they don't like. a

ronald regan talking about the freedom fighters and the bad guys.irsthand just what that really was all about and my dad was one of 29 people wounded in the attack which lead to the formation of pastors. we began doing the kacaravans i central america and began organizing to cuba and lifting up information about the blo blockade or embargo. we have done the caravan in a different variety of ways. and lately focussing in on the educational component. there is so much people don't know. you just mentioned the president barack obama and the openings that he made which were wonderf wonderful. it was really -- he talked about the approach to cuba being a failed policy and needed to be reversed and very pleased that what he was able to do. and now we find ourselves faced with donald trump there is a lot that can be done and that the why we continue to do this work. the death of fidel castro was a blow to the people of cuba but the reality is the revolution was about one man, it was about creating a society all could benefit so the things put into place ab

. >> you want to compare yourself to roosevelt, john f kennedy, to ronald regan. go ahead. you have to do it in terms of achievement and so far he doesn't have many to point to. >> it's delusional. i mean there's no other way to put it. it's destorted reality and there's nothing, as you said that he could point to that would put him on par with abraham lincoln or really any of our presidents. if you can't get anything done, if you can't even achieve one of your primary promises, something your political party has been promising for seven years and you control every branch of the government, then it's complete lunacy to say something like this. >> rick. >> what i'd say is that he has accomplished much within his administration on an administrative level. i think he's definitely changed the tone in washington d.c. from a regulatory state to one that's allowing more free enterprise. everything from the work being done by jeff sessions on immigration to work at the epa, work at department of labor. there's a lot of things going on to the regulatory process, the spending. a lot

so when ronald reagan replaces don regan with howard baker it's because of the iran contra scandal taking place in an effort to create order in the white house. and that's always the case. and the problem is it's not clear that this shakeup will change the behavior of the president or the basic infrastructure of this white house. so my guess is that kelly will be facing the same problems in two weeks or two months that priebus was facing in the last few weeks. >> but let me push back on that because -- >> yeah. >> general kelly is his own man. couldn't his behavior change the outcome here? >> it could. i can't see him though reigning in president trump. very few people can do that. at this point no one can. and he also has some liabilities. he doesn't have very strong relations on the hill. he's already admitted that he's taken aback by the toxic nature of washington, and political warfare is different than military warfare. and so i think in some ways he doesn't have some of the assets that priebus had with those relations with members of the republican party who as we heard from lindsey

the canadian prime minister wasn't able to figure gorbachev out in the same way that ronald reagan was. don regan is now the chief of staff. i liked him to tell you the truth. but he was catastrophe as chief of staff. he said boys, the president wants you to light up on gorbachev. he does, you hell want us to. he shrugged. a day later we went to the oval said, mr. he president, i told them. they won't take it from me. i just think this fellow gorbachev is different from the others, reagan said, i think he's serious about getting out of afghanistan. this had not been in the washington post. i had not heard anyone speculate . the first time i heard it was from the lips of ronald reagan. a speech writers walked out and asked, what do you do when ronald reagan go soft on communism? [laughter] reagan and, mike mikell gorbachev had a speaking gig going, in the 90's. mike and i were friends so he had me help him with questions. this is in sacramento, california. gorbachev,n is mr. 1953 in the soviets move in to put down the east germans. in 1956 they do it in hungary. then they move into prod then in 19

but exactly 30 years ago in 1987 when don regan was on his way out at reagan's chief of staff ronaldhoward baker of tennessee who was out of the house when he called -- the president called to offer him the chief of staff job. and senator baker was at the zoo with his grandchildren. and his wife said, mr. president, he can't come to phone he is at the zoo and president reagan said wait until he sees the zoo i have for him. and the reagan white house looks like the kennedy school. >> if the arrival of a marine four-star means these are better days ahead, do you think, indira, the bill for dysfunction kind of came due this past week. >> look, i think it's a great idea that general kelly is supposed to come in and restore order. but it's like the idea of rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic when it is halfway under water. it really doesn't make any sense. there is no amount of order that he can possibly restore to a dysfunctional white house, everybody is infighting with one another when it's the president himself who is encouraging in infighting, who encouraging scaramucci to giv

western dominated states, state that had are dominated by regan democrats, iowa, ohio, michigan, pennsylvania and wisconsin. the first person since ronaldreagan in 1984 to take all five of those states. the only way forward for the republican party if it wants to remain a center, is to make the coalition solid and expand by attracting back the republicans whom the negative aspect of donald trump pushed away from that party. that party is ronald reagan's new republican party. that party is a combination of republicans and conservatives of all faiths and backgrounds, one that has an ability to speak to people of all creeds classes and genders and one that gives people hand up in american life while still continuing the task of reducing tax that is are necessary giving deregulation and added spur and restoring competition to america's public services. it's one that interprets franklin roosevelt new deal rather than opposes it. it's one that will legitimately returns america on the path which it's been on well over a century, one that allows us to accommodate economic competition and modern life while enduring freedom. it's a hard row to ho

regan was not cut out for that job. he liked the sound of chief but not of staff. >> i am not the president. i am not taking charge of anything. ronalde of this country, and like a good caddie, i tee up the ball for him to take a good smack at. >> reagan needed good advisers. in the second term, he doesn't have the same quality of people surrounding him. it has huge political effects. >> from nbc news, this is "today." >> good morning. former hostage david jacobsen is a step closer to u.s. soil at this hour. jacobsen was freed sunday after 17 months of captivity in lebanon. >> because we're still negotiating for the other hostages, we're not going to say anything more about what process we went through to get mr. jacobsen out. >> the policy is that we don't negotiate with hostage-takers. we don't make deals. we don't pay ransom. reagan hammered on his staff to find a way to get those hostages out. >> today the story from middle east sources is that iran has helped the united states free a hostage from lebanon. >> in a bizarre tale worthy of a thriller, iran's news agency reports robert mcfarlane, president reagan's former national se