Linda Taylor

There was an attempted assassination of him in 1981.

He nominated the first woman Supreme Court justice, and she was sworn in under him.

And then he died at 93 in 2004 from complications of Alzheimer's.

So that is a brief history of who Ronald Reagan is.

So just remember, you can thank Ronald Reagan for that.

So the term welfare queen, which I said, was popularized by Ronald Reagan during his first presidential campaign.

This stereotype typically portrays usually black, usually a woman, exploiting the welfare programs for personal gain, which we all know is such a super small, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny amount of people who want to exploit the system for their own personal gain.

The vast majority, if not almost all, Of the people who are using these programs actually need them and are using them for how they should be used.

Now, the woman was real.

We know now her name was Linda Taylor, and she probably was, according to Josh Levin's definitive reporting on the matter for Slate, also a kidnapper and maybe worse.

But she was a singular and spectacular criminal, not a representative case.

As Levin put it, quote, Linda Taylor's larger than life example created an indelible, inaccurate impression of public aid recipients.

Her case did not prove that as a group.

Public aid recipients were fur laden thieves bleeding the American economy dry.