Now here's a highlight from coast to coast am on iHeartRadio cootape.
Of an incident that took place less than fifteen minutes ago at the Washington Hillton Hotel when shots were fired at President Recond. Here you see the President coming out.
Now we just have to watch. I don't know whether we can hear this or not. There it does shops flop.
He was on the agents and leaders and bide in after the asservants are two or three people down on the on the ground. We understand, but one Secret Service agent one had made me another Washington policeman and who was injured. I can't hear the sound on this. You can't hear the sound. We understand also that James Brady, the White House Press secretary, was among those injured. President just a Nott of the fanfranc Yes, there is.
To Brady.
All this happened the two third of this afternoon. As the President was coming out after talking to the er called Cio. This is the first time that any of us has seen any of this of this tape, the president. Let me repeat once again, the President was immediately pushed into his cars. The agents are trained to do the situation of this kind, and the car immediately took off at fast to the whiteout.
That's the way it sounded. March thirtieth, nineteen eighty one ABC News anchor The Lady Frank Reynolds reporting on the
attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. We'll get into that and much more with Ken Kashigian, who served as trusted speechwriter confidence strategists to political legends and presidential giants Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, whether in the Oval Office, on Air Force One, at Camp David, or the Western White House, Ken was an eyewitness and insider to the twentieth century's
greatest historical moments. Widely regarded as president as the President's favorite speech writer, the remarks Kashigian crafted for Reagan's delivery in nineteen eighty five at Bergen Belson's former concentration camp has been described as the best speech of Reagan's career.
Kashigian quickly mastered Reagan Reagan's speaking style and gained his confidence after joining the candidates struggling nineteen eighty presidential campaign, earning the distinction from political writer Anthony Yorke as an architect of Ronald Reagan's nineteen eighty White House victory. Appointed Special Consultant to the President and senior White House staff member,
they formed a unique personal relationship. Beginning with Reagan's acclaimed first inaugural address, Ken kashigi In collaborated to craft language shaping the historic Economic Recovery plan that marked the Fiscal Revolution for America's turnaround and renewed the new national spirit. Ken teamed up with Reagan to prepare dozens of other
prominent public addresses. Among them were Reagan's re election announcement and convention acceptance speeches in nineteen eighty four, critical foreign policy remarks at the UN General Assembly, State of the Union Remarks, and speeches before Joint Sessions of Congress. Preparing to leave office, Reagan asked Ken to draft his dramatic nineteen eighty eight farewell address to the Republican National Convention. Ken Kashigein's new book is behind closed doors in the
room with Reagan and Nixon. Ken, Welcome to Coast to coast, Am. How are you good?
Richard? Great to be here. Thank you boy. That listening to that recording just sent NU took me back nineteen eighty one. Sent tingles down my spine all over again. That just made me shake just hearing that. Those sounds of taking me back to that day of assassination attempt. It was such a well bed.
Yes, yeah, well let's start there. I mean, you weren't, as I mentioned, you weren't with President Reagan when he was shot. But what what's the detail about that day that most people don't know?
Well, it was the day started for me. We had a senior staff meeting and then I I uh delegated that speech to it. The brand new speechwriter, Mariray Moss sing I had carried such a heavy load that she was the rookie speechwriter. So I said, you know, why don't you take a shot at this. And I oversaw the speech and it was before the Union group and and uh, but the President himself took a heavy hand to the speech up at Camp David and sent her
back down. And then he had inserted a sam a quote into Samuel Gumper's quote, and when uh, he sent him back down to the White House. So he called me that morning and to verify the change in the quote right, and we had to have it correct that he didn't get it quite right, and so he called me, and so we had to change that, and we had to change another statistic, and then he called me again, and so after that we were going to deliver the
reading copy to him. So I grabbed Murray, she's not married George will I grabbed her and I said, let's go. You haven't met the president yet. Let's go to the west wing and delivered the speech to him. So we ran over the west wing and it was now about just after twelve fifteen or so we went over the
west We've delivered the reading copy to him. And normally, Richard, I always attend these events with the President, but I was exhausted from I mean, done so much of the work on the initial the speech with the president, and I was just exhausted. And I said, Bori, I said, you know you had worked this is your first initial speech, rookie speech. I said, no, where do you go with the president on this one? And take a look at
how he delivers these speeches. So and for once I could have a nice relaxed lunch and take it easy today. And so I sent her on and and so Richard, I would have been as a senior staff member, not as junior, as Marie was. I would have been up in the motorcade setting up with Deverer and Brady, and then I would have been coming out of Washington Hilton alongside of them, and so but I'm fast forwarding now.
But instead I went to have leisurely launched and went up to have a meeting with Marty Anderson, the Domestic Policy Advisor, right after lunch. And then it was a rainy day that day, and as we're meeting, the sirens were going off loudly and loudly, and I said to Marty, I said, you know, there must be an accident over on seventeenth Street or Pennsylvania Avenue. And then Barbara Honeger, his secretary, burst into the office and said the President's
been shot. And I said, you know, those words just ring into your head, and of course I was what took me back to nineteen sixty three, when I was a sophomore in college heading out to my English class, when President Kennedy was shot. And that's when, of course, the first thing you think, you turn on the TV and see what you can find out. And there was that picture of Jim Brady laying on the pavement there, and all I could think about was I piled around
with Jim Brady all through the night ad campaign. We were the closest of buddies. We sat across the work table from each other all throughout the campaign. If you read my book, those first chapter six chapters on the eighty campaign talks about how Jim Brady and I piled around all the time. I would have been standing right next to him coming out of the Washington Hilton.
That day unbelievable, and that you and I might not be talking right now had been had it not been for a little fatigue.
Yeah, dodging the bullet had all new meaning to me that day.
So did President Reagan ever talk about how the assassination attempt changed him personally? I mean, did it make him more fearless or more fatalistic?
It made him, he said later on, we've been especially when we were filming some commercials in eighty four. But he did tell it again to Missus Reagan.
And to.
The Catholic cardinal. He said, you know, he felt that there was an angel on his shoulder, and he said, whatever time I have left belongs to God. But he felt that life had no meaning for him. And right afterwards too he penned a long letter to the Soviet, to the Soviet premier that you know, some changes had to be made in terms of how they viewed each other. But he you know, when when you escape death as
he had, there had to be some changes. And when you watch the film commercials we did in eighty or four, he talks about it explicitly. Yes, it did make a big change.
In his attitude and his humor after the shooting became legendary. Was that was that one Reagan? Or was there a conscious effort maybe from his team, maybe from you, to craft that image, to craft that image of resilience.
No, No, that was the humor in the hospital undown. He didn't have any joke writers in the hospital room. You know where he's at. Honey, I forgot the duck and then he said to the doctor, he said, I hope you're all Republicans. No, that was all the classic Ronald Reagan. You know, the guy had a gift for gap.
There's no question about that. Later on, when we delivered a prepare to speech before the Joint Session of Congress, when he came back on April twenty eighth, and we milked, and we milked the public sentiment for all we could. And I tell that story in great detail in my book about how we did that, but that we specifically wrote some great stories into that speech to get a lot of humor in it. So that was I plead guilty.
Let's talk about his rise and the nineteen eighty campaign. I mean, he was a political outsider. He took on the GOPI establishment. What's the biggest myth about his nineteen eighty campaign that people still get wrong?
Oh, the biggest myth, Richard, is that we were in the dumps back in late September, in early October. You know, everybody thinks Reagan's campaign in nineteen eighty they he won a landslide and this was just we were gliding all the way through. Everything was easy, peasy, but this was a struggle. In early October, we were going through a nightmare. We were having demonstrators at every stop over the Equal Rights Amendment. So we had women demonstrators that every stop
were demonstrating against them. And then he had he had made a big mistake at one stop where he said that he said that the trees give off more as much as much, if not more pollution than cars. And I don't know where that came from, just came out out of left field, and I don't he read that somewhere in some goofy magazine publication, and uh, it just
slipped out. And so now here he's saying the environmental environmental problems are caused by trees, and the women are chasing him all over the place because of the Equal Rights Amendment issues, and we're being dogged. In the first week of October, Jimmy Carr is ahead of us and and we're we've got a nightmare situation. And so, uh, the campaign was really behind, uh the first week of
October and going into the second week of October. But I did come up with a line, and I don't want to still still the thunder two truly in our discussion here, but I did come up with the line that may have helped us a little bit later in the campaign. But that the that we might talk about later. But those first two weeks in October, we were in big, big trouble and it was largely because of all those demonstrators.
And it wasn't until we exceeded to agree to a debate, and as ste Spencer, our campaign strategist, came up with the idea of putting a woman on the Supreme Court, and that changed the dialogue a little bit. And but still they felt that Reagan was sort of a cowboy, that he was going to be dangerous in foreign policy issues. And it was about that time that I was having secret discus lessions with the former President Nixon, who was giving me private, secret advice to pass along the governor.
The governor who was then Governor Reagan, that we called him, and we start changing the course of the campaign a little bit and coming up with some new lines and better messaging that helped later turn around the campaign, but early on, So that's one of the myths, Richard, that things were going along really easy for regular along.
Obviously, Nixon and Reagan had very different styles, yet Reagan, as you say, leaned on Nixon's expertise a little bit. What's the most surprising advice Nixon gave Reagan about winning the presidency?
Well, I think this will surprise a lot of people. And this I go into great detail in the book, which I hope people will spend some time in because I reveal in these secret memos that Nixon wrote to Reagan that nobody had ever seen before until I published them in my book. And that is people would normally think that Nixon would advise Reagan about foreign policy issues and recommended to talk to him about foreign policy and the advisement of foreign policy. But it's just the opposite.
Nixon said that Reagan must focus on economic issues and talk about inflation and the economy. So Nixon wrote very specific, very brilliant strategic memos to Reagan on economic issues in the eighty campaign, and in these secret memos as well
as in secret conversations that he had with me. Now I say that their secret for a good reason, Richard, and that was we were still close enough to Watergate that hadn't been known in nineteen eighty that anyone that Reagan was in communication with Nixon, the Carter people would have jumped on it, as we used to say, like a hen on a ginbug.
I'll bet listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at one am Eastern and go to Coast to coastam dot com for more