Writing in The New York Times in 1987, William Safire discussed the increasing use of the term "useful idiot" against "anybody insufficiently anti-Communist in the view of the phrase's user", including Congressmen who supported the anti-Contras Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Dutch socialists.[1] After President Ronald Reagan concluded negotiations with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev over the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, conservative political leader Howard Phillips declared Reagan to be a "useful idiot for Soviet propaganda".[2][21]