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President Reagan's Iran-Contra Scandal

537 Words3 Pages

The United States is a country that has gone through many triumphs and scandals. These events are important to American history, and have shaped our country into what it is today. To learn more about our history, we should learn not only about our accomplishments but about our losses, too. Two examples of very influential events in American history are President Roosevelt’s New Deal and President Reagan’s Iran-Contra scandal. The New Deal is best known for guiding America out of the Great Depression, while the Iran-Contra affair centered around how people in power lied and did illegal trade to get what they wanted. Former President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed several programs, projects, reforms and bills called the New Deal. Roosevelt created …show more content…

Former President Ronald Wilson Reagan and other people in power decided to use that money to fund an organization called Contra in Nicaragua. This was very controversial since the U.S. government had voted and vowed not to interfere with terrorists or the situation in Nicaragua. The Contras were against the elected Nicaraguan government. To make things worse, the Contra was mainly funded trading cocaine. When the public found out, they demanded to know the truth. For the longest time, Reagan and several other government officials tried to cover up their deals, which didn’t work. After eight years of investigation, 14 people were charged, excluding Reagan. Reagan’s deals actually pressured Nicaragua to remove Sandinista candidates from the 1990 election. In the next presidential term, Reagan’s Vice President, George W. Bush, became president. This taught Americans one lesson: if you’re in the government, you can get away with scandals. This can be proved because many people who were involved in the Iran-Contra scandal still held high places of power in the government. What’s even more disappointing is that Reagan became even more influential, and he left the office with the highest approval rating since President Roosevelt. To conclude, the Iran-Contra scandal left many untrustworthy people in power, stripping credibility away from the American

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