It wasn’t as bad as Trump, but I’m going to disagree somewhat with the general idea here. It wasn’t discussed on the news as much, but it was mentioned in comedy and satire. The cold war wasn’t over so displaying weakness in the President would have been bad.

I don’t know if I can link a video here, but to give an example, please look up the video for “Land of Confusion” by Genesis. This video had heavy rotation on mtv and was nominated for video of the year. This was 1986-87. Reagan left office in 1989.