“Look to the past. You’re the historian,” Trump advisor and Fox host Sean Hannity tells emaciated Boris Yeltsin cosplayer Newt Gingrich. “We watched Ronald Reagan. He never, ah, put, ah, a single American, ah, foot on the ground when the former Soviet Union went into Afghanistan, but he did provide them Stinger missiles and those Stinger missiles to the mujahideen did make a difference. He did provide the freedom fighters, the contras in Nicaragua the weaponry that they needed. Uh, ah, that proved successful.”
Let’s parse this, shall we? First, Gingrich is no historian; he rewrites history. There were CIA operatives on the ground helping the mujahideen, and those arms were used by Osama bin Laden to slaughter thousands. The contras weren’t successful during Reagan’s term in office. And let’s not forget Reagan illegally got weapons to the contras in the Iran-Contra affair, starring his generation’s Mike Flynn, Oliver North.