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President Reagan, Mastermind - SNL

Saturday Night Live · 3.3M views · 2013-10-05 · 6:56

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Overview

A 1986 SNL sketch in which Phil Hartman's Reagan seems clueless in public but is a scheming mastermind in private.

On Hacker News

Used mainly as a reference for how contemporaries viewed Reagan's presidency, and occasionally as a joke.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2019–2025

Topics

Satire & parodyStand-up & sketch comedyUS politics & elections
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snlreaganphil hartmansketch comedysatire

What people said

DonHopkins · 2025-01 · Joke / meme

Because he's both an evil genius and a senile old man at the same time, just like Reagan. President Reagan, Mastermind - SNL: [VIDEO]

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hindsightbias · 2021-11 · Reference

This SNL skit provides one view: [VIDEO] Even my mother, a product of an FDR world, who threw shoes at Reagan on TV could not stop laughing about how over the top it was. I credit Nancy. She saw the ideologues he put in during the first term where driving for a cliff and brought Baker, Deaver and Schultz in to right the ship. It helped to have someone like Tip O’Neil in the House who thought impeaching over Iran Contra would be bad for the country. Reagan, like W Bush wasn’t incompetent, he was just incurious and easily led the farther he went up. Look at Reagan’s 1964 speeches and W’s Governor debates and it’s like they both fell of a skateboard and cracked their heads open once they ran for President.

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mixmastamyk · 2021-11 · Reference

Agreed with all of this. Also, skits like this one by SNL made in 1986 (copied from elsewhere) wouldn't have been made unless people were already noticing a disconnect... even if they didn't know the exact cause: [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Saturday Night Live, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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