Tony Dolan in the Oval Office with Ronald Reagan on January 1, 1989 (c) Alamy Limited

FGF Books, 3/25/25 — Anthony “Tony” Dolan who drafted President Reagan’s famous “Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall” and “Evil Empire” speeches, died unexpectedly on March 11, 2025 in a hospital in Alexandria, Virginia. He was 76.

Trump called Tony Dolan “a great person and brilliant writer”

Tony Dolan worked for four years in President Trump’s first administration as a Special Assistant to the President and Advisor for Planning. Donald Trump hired him again to work in his second term. Mr. Dolan had recently begun his new job at the White House as Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Planning before his untimely demise.

Upon learning of his death, Trump stated that Tony Dolan “was a great person and a brilliant writer. He will be very greatly missed.”

Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, to Joseph and Margaret Kelley Dolan, he attended Fairfield Preparatory School and then Yale University where he earned a B.A, in Philosophy and History. After graduating from Yale University, Dolan, a former U.S. Army Specialist 4, enjoyed a brief career as a conservative folk singer. His album “Cry, The Beloved Country” was featured on “The Merv Griffin Show.” He also worked to elect James Buckley as a Senator from New York in 1970.e

Dolan was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting on organized crime

He then devoted himself to what became a lifelong career in politics and journalism. In 1978, he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his diligent investigative reporting and exposure of organized crime and public corruption in Connecticut.

In 1980 he joined the Reagan Administration where he served as the President’s special assistant and speechwriter for 8 years. In 1982, Mr. Dolan was asked by Attorney General William French Smith to give a presentation on organized crime to the senior staff of the Department of Justice. This soon led to the establishment of the President’s Commission on Organized Crime, and to a successful strategy for taking down the mob.

He drafted many speeches for President Reagan in his 8 years in the White House.

In 1981 President Reagan delivered the “Source of All Strength” speech, at Notre Dame University. At Mr. Dolan’s suggestion, the President stated that America’s greatest weapons are “rooted in the source of all strength – a belief in a Supreme Being and a law higher than our own.”

In 1982, Dolan drafted Reagan’s famous “Crusade for Freedom” speech (also known as the “Ash Heap of History” speech). Addressing the British Parliament at Westminster Hall in London, Reagan said: “What I am describing now is a plan and a hope for the long term – the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history – as it has left other tyrannies which stifle freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.”

Dolan drafted Reagan’s “Ash Heap of History” speech

In a 1983 speech, President Reagan declared to the world that the Soviet Union was an “Evil Empire” in a speech delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida.

In a speech to the Portuguese Assembly in Lisbon, Portugal in 1985, he used Mr. Dolan’s idea to state that there is more power “in the prayers of simple people everywhere, simple people like the children of Fatima…than in all the great armies and statesmen of the world.”

President Reagan declares the Soviet Union as the “Evil Empire”

On President Reagan’s last day in office, he presented Tony Dolan with a thank you note describing his speechwriter as the “Keeper of the Flame.”

Mr. Dolan later worked for 7 years in George W. Bush’s Administration, as a senior advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell, and as a special advisor to Secretary of State, Donald Rumsfeld.

Dolan went to Medjugorie to pray for his dying brother

Mr. Dolan was a devout Roman Catholic. In Paul Kengor’s tribute in the American Spectator, he discusses the great devotion that Tony Dolan had for the Blessed Mother. When his brother Terry Dolan, 36, founder of the National Conservative Political Action Committee, was dying, Tony Dolan went on a pilgrimage to Medjugorie to ask Our Lady to heal his brother. Terry Dolan was not physically healed but died serenely as a devout and practicing Catholic.

Anthony Tony Dolan is survived by his nephew Robert A. Shortley and his wife, Mrs. Jenn Shortley and their daughter, Violet. He was preceded in death by his parents, Peg and Joe Dolan, his brother John T. “Terry” Dolan, and sister, Maiselle Shortley and her husband, Robert L. Shortley.

May Anthony “Tony” Dolan rest in peace.

See John Gizzy’s tribute to Tony Dolan at Newsmax

See obituary at Money and King Funeral Home

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Anthony “Tony” Dolan’s funeral arrangements are as follows:

Friday, March 28, 2025
6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Visitation
Money and King Funeral Home
171 Maple Avenue West
Vienna, VA 22190
703-938-7440

Saturday, March 29, 2025
10:30 a.m.
Mass of Christian Burial
The Basilica of St. Mary
310 South Royal St.
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-836-4100

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