Uncommon Communicators: Churchill, Reagan, Trump

January 26, 2025 by J.B. Shurk

After four years with a mumbling fool stumbling around in the role of “president,” we have a strong communicator back in the White House. The difference is striking.

While President Trump was simultaneously signing executive orders and answering questions from the press on his first day back on the job, he suggested to those in attendance that he might have taken more questions in those first few hours than Joe Biden had taken during all four years in office. The assembled journalists seemed to quietly concur. Joe’s handlers spent every minute protecting him from even the most trivial journalistic inquiries; President Trump handles hostile questions while juggling ten other things at once. Consequently, the first hundred hours of Trump’s restored presidency were historic.

President Reagan was the “Great Communicator,” and no honest listener could doubt that deserved appellation. Reagan’s unique combination of eloquence, strength, and wit made him a formidable adversary for anyone who got in his way. Reagan could be pithy or expansive as the occasion demanded, and some of his sharpest verbal attacks required only a few words. He summed up his entire Cold War strategy in just four: “We win; they lose.” It worked.

President Trump achieves much with concise rhetoric, too. Only six days after Republican backstabber Mitt Romney lost a winnable election to Barack Obama in 2012, Donald Trump signed his name to an application seeking trademark approval for his four-word strategy for igniting a political revolution: “Make America Great Again.”

That’s a fascinating glimpse into his long-term thinking. Before Romney repeatedly tried to sabotage Trump’s campaign and presidency, he begged Trump for an endorsement. Trump obliged and privately gave Romney some advice on how to win the 2012 election. Romney trumpeted Trump’s endorsement but ignored his counsel. After watching Romney crash and burn, Trump surveyed the damage and scrawled out a simple message. The rest, as they say, is history. Trump used MAGA as a rallying cry for pursuing Reagan’s clear objective: “We win; they lose.” It worked, too.

Clarity is the key. That cannot be said enough! In contests of immense moral significance, nothing is more critical to success than clarity of vision, direction, and purpose. You cannot lead a country to victory by appeasing those who wish to destroy it from within.

President Reagan did not try to placate American Marxists with squishy messages about socialists’ “good intentions.” He denounced the Soviet Union as an “evil empire,” promised to consign communism to “the ash heap of history,” defended America as “the last best hope of man on Earth,” and called for a “crusade for freedom” around the world.

Similarly, President Trump is not willing to appease propagandists in the press by calling criminal illegal aliens “newcomers” or “undocumented immigrants” or “unauthorized citizens.” He calls those who murder, rape, and thieve inside our borders “evil invaders” who should never be tolerated.

Words matter! They frame concepts in our minds and push the contours of public debate. And in a world in which Orwellian word games are so pervasive that prominent newspapers falsely define men in skirts as “women,” verbal clarity is paramount. Decades of “political correctness” have pushed the West toward the crumbling ground of nihilism’s abyss. Moral renewal and national purpose require leaders who are willing to champion what is right and fight what is wrong without wilting before critics who insist on framing black-and-white conflicts as vexingly gray.

How was President Trump able to withstand a decade of Establishment attacks and succeed nonetheless? As was true of President Reagan, in matters of great moral struggle, President Trump bravely leads. He describes the threats against America clearly. He never equivocates. He never accepts defeat. Once Trump outlines an objective, he pursues it doggedly.

For young readers who might dare to follow President Trump’s example in the years to come, pay close attention. You cannot lead anybody unless you believe what you say. And you have no business leading anyone unless you do what you say. You cannot carry the weight of history from your knees. As the quintessentially American adage goes, unless you stand for something, you will fall for anything.

One reason why the presidencies of Reagan and Trump feel linked is that both men have been America’s backbone during a modern era when most of the White House’s other occupants have embraced moral invertebracy. Would Reagan’s rhetorical gifts have translated to today’s social media landscape? I suspect that the “Great Communicator” would have adapted and thrived.

Someone who would have certainly thrived today is that great WWII leader from the other side of the Atlantic, Sir Winston Churchill. In fact, although Trump cuts an entirely American figure, his communication style is much closer to that of the boisterous Churchill than the mannerly Reagan. For periods of Churchill’s life, the press and his peers in Parliament considered him a bombastic and self-serving showman. He was a man unafraid to change his mind but also an opinionated pugilist who tossed verbal haymakers in very public fights. Sound like anyone we know?

As an avid writer who used the press to his advantage and as an early adopter of mass media with a skillful talent for self-promotion, Churchill would have relished being a leader during the age of social media. People often joke that no matter how unusual the subject, there is invariably a “Trump Tweet” from the past that covers the topic. If Churchill had an “X” or “Truth Social” account during his time, a similar joke would have surely taken hold.

Aside from sharing Churchill’s love for the spotlight, however, Trump also manifests his indefatigable spirit.

After the German Blitz on the United Kingdom but before Pearl Harbor and America’s entrance into WWII, Prime Minister Churchill addressed students at the Harrow School about the “stern” days they faced together. Encouraging the boys to be resilient, he charged them to “never give in! Never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

Churchill’s exhortation to the young students in the autumn of ’41 has come to exemplify his famous tenacity. Yet an American hearing those words could be excused for mistaking them as something President Trump might have said, too. At a time when so many people in the U.K. have been taught to think of Trump as some kind of dangerous “authoritarian” who threatens European norms, it might be edifying for Brits to consider the similarities between Churchill’s language and Trump’s.

In that same speech to Harrow School students, Churchill argued, “These are not dark days; these are great days — the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.” Churchill’s unflinching belief that Britain would persevere and overcome her enemies — his assertion that “dark days” should be seen as an opportunity for greatness — is almost Trumpian in form. Churchill simply wanted to make the U.K. great again.

Trying times require uncommon communicators. They must be willing to identify problems without fear of backlash. They must be willing to fight for what is right and to vanquish what is wrong. They must speak clearly and persuasively — and raise their voices to match any that threaten to drown theirs out. They must hold the moral high ground and resist attempts to drag them down. They must overcome dark and troubling days and seek great days still ahead.

If people see in Trump a reflection of Churchill and Reagan, it’s because where they once walked, he now treads.