"}\nHovering outside was a habit of Bush\u2019s. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had \nbeen Carter\u2019s national security adviser, told me that he had been \ninvited to brief the president early in his first term on the Soviet \nthreat. When he had finished his summary, he said, he asked Reagan if he\n had any questions. Reagan responded: \u2018Do you know the one about the \nnewly elected black judge in Mississippi?\u2019 Brzezinski said no. Reagan \nexplained that the judge, after being told by his clerk that the case \ninvolved a charge of rape, said: \u2018Well then, bring in the fuckee and the\n fucker.\u2019 That was it. Brzezinski was ushered out of the Oval Office and\n found Bush waiting outside, eager to learn of Reagan\u2019s response to the \nbriefing. \u2018I said he told me a joke,\u2019 Brzezinski recalled. The vice \npresident replied: \u2018Oh no. Not the one about the Mississippi judge.\u2019\n\n
Bush was petrified that the president\n would say the wrong thing to outsiders about what was going on, and he \nwas hanging around the Oval Office,\u2019 the officer said. \u2018You never knew \nwhether the president might start talking about an operation in China or\n into Vietnam.\u2019\u200b\u00a0\nReagan was kept out of trouble at important national security meetings \nby being given a script. \u2018My colleagues and I would write a talking \npaper for the president before meetings that resembled movie scripts, \nbecause the Old Man knew scripts as a reference. We were constantly \nupdating the script, because if we made a dumb mistake, he would read \nit. We\u2019d talk among ourselves about where to put the emphasis for \ncertain words and phrases.\u2019 In Deadly Gambits, his 1984 study \nof arms control, Strobe Talbott showed what happened when Reagan didn\u2019t \nhave a script. During a conversation about arms control with a group of \ncongressmen, the president suddenly proclaimed: \u2018Land-based missiles \nhave nuclear warheads, while bombers and submarines don\u2019t.\u2019 \u2018Even as he \nsaid these words,\u2019 Talbott wrote, \u2018his voice dropped and wavered, as \nthough he had forgotten his lines and knew there was something not quite\n right about his attempt to improvise.\u2019
in case you thought trump was the first moron in the oval office
also vice president george hw bush helped build jsoc from the ground up as his personal wetworks squad and conducted dozens of off the books operations including assassinations until, in an attempt to gain the advantage in a turf war with cia director bill casey, his underlings made the initial iran-contra leak to a lebanese newspaper and ended up almost putting bush and themselves in jail.