In late June 2025, a widely shared video purported to show former U.S. President Ronald Reagan criticizing Democrats. The video, which spread on YouTube and Instagram (archived), shows the Republican stating: "You ever notice how every time a Republican takes office, the Democrats start acting like it's the end of the world? I mean the minute we cut taxes or trim the budget, they start screaming that the sky is falling."
Snopes readers also searched our site for evidence that Reagan made the above comments in reference to Democrats. The full video can be seen below:
We found no evidence that Reagan ever said those exact words. We also found the video was heavily manipulated and AI-generated. As such, we rate this video as fake.
A spokesperson from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library told Snopes over email: "The video of President Reagan appears to have been manipulated and the speech is not a speech that President Reagan ever gave."
We have reproduced the full text from the video below:
You ever notice how every time a Republican takes office, the Democrats start acting like it's the end of the world? I mean the minute we cut taxes or trim the budget, they start screaming that the sky is falling. Now don't get me wrong: I admire their consistency. If the stock market surges they say it's just helping the rich. And if it crashes they say, "Yup, that's what happens under Republican leadership." And don't even get me started on foreign policy. A Republican president could be shaking hands with world leaders and signing peace deals and they'd say, "It must be appeasement." But the minute there's tension overseas, they rush to the nearest camera like it's Black Friday saying, "See! We told you the world would catch fire if he was in charge!" Now, I've always said it's fine to disagree on policy, that's democracy. But if your best shot at winning is hoping the American people lose, well, maybe you're in the wrong country.
We looked up numerous sections of the above text in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library archives as well as the National Archives. We found no evidence of Reagan making the exact statement as presented in the video.
The video is clearly manipulated and AI-generated. The movement of Reagan's lips often does not match his speech, and his lips also appear to blur and pause at times. The footage is interrupted and cut at various moments in the middle of his speech.
However, Reagan expressed similar sentiments about Democrats. In a 1964 speech, while expressing support for Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee for president at the time, Reagan criticized Democrats. He made a number of similar comparisons between the Democrats and the Republicans on a range of issues highlighted in the above quote. He said (emphasis ours):
This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down — [up] man's old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.
[…]
Not too long ago, a judge called me here in Los Angeles. He told me of a young woman who'd come before him for a divorce. She had six children, was pregnant with her seventh. Under his questioning, she revealed her husband was a laborer earning 250 dollars a month. She wanted a divorce to get an 80 dollar raise. She's eligible for 330 dollars a month in the Aid to Dependent Children Program. She got the idea from two women in her neighborhood who'd already done that very thing.
Yet anytime you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being against their humanitarian goals. They say we're always "against" things — we're never "for" anything.
Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so.
In 1981, while speaking at a convention for Republican women, Reagan — at that point the president — addressed criticism he faced for his "economic recovery package" including government spending and tax cuts. He said (emphasis ours):
I'm as convinced today as I was when we introduced the package that this economic plan is as good as money in the bank, and if I were a betting man, I would wager the rent money on it.
Now, I've listened to those Chicken Littles who proclaim the sky is falling and those others who recklessly play on high interest rates for their own narrow political purpose. But this concern about a plan not even in effect yet is nothing more than false labor.
We have previously covered quotations attributed to Reagan, including when he said, "We should measure welfare's success by how many people leave welfare, not by how many are added."