Dateline 1980


Anybody remember how they used to do news of the future? Well one night they did news from 1980 or thereabouts. The headline was about President Ronald Reagan! the audience just about busted up with laughter. Who knew how prophetic this would be!

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Not only that but the date was 1988 and President Ronald Reagan demands East Germany tear down the Berlin Wall....I believe the punchline was that they agreed and then replaced it with something even worse.

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In 1988, President Reagan denied he was a candidate for Governor of California.

In 1989, East Germany tore down the Berlin Wall and quickly replaced it with a moat full of alligators.

Of course, nobody had any idea that either of those events (Regan being President in 1988 and the Berlin Wall coming down in 1989) would actually happen.

I can vaguely remember one News of the Future report refrring to Vice President-elect Ringo Starr.

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"I can vaguely remember one News of the Future report referring to Vice President-elect Ringo Starr."

Odd choice, since that couldn't happen without a Constitutional amendment. Presidents and Vice-Presidents must be natural-born US citizens (unless they were born before 1788, which seems unlikely at this point), and Starr was born in Liverpool of apparently-British parents.

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By the time Laugh-In was on TV it wasn't that crazy to predict that Reagan would be President some day. Reagan was already the Governor of California by then, and had even tried to get the Republican Presidential nomination in '68 (losing it to Nixon).

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