McCarthyism was a prominent force in early 1950s American politics, spearheaded by Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. Both President Harry S. Truman and President Dwight D. Eisenhower acknowledged the dangers associated with this type of demagoguery and attempted their own unique approach to combating it. Specifically, Truman’s approach directly and publicly confronted McCarthy, while Eisenhower’s approach silently and bureaucratically undermined McCarthy’s influence in Congress and the Republican party. Although there is extensive literature on McCarthyism, Truman’s approach, and Eisenhower’s approach, there is a significant gap in the comparison between the two approaches and in analyzing them in terms of crucial psychological components of McCarthyism, specifically in-group and out-group thinking and anti-intellectualism. This paper seeks to fill that gap by comparing the Truman and Eisenhower approaches and providing additional analysis of their respective effectiveness. This effectiveness is determined by the ability to diminish McCarthy’s appeal among the public and congressional peers and his capacity to shape political landscapes through investigations and agenda-setting. To do so, I examined presidential speeches, press conferences, meeting notes, and political maneuvering in order to investigate each president’s approach. I also applied existing literature on intergroup leadership and misinformation corrections to each approach in conjunction with polling data and shifts in political alliances in order to analyze each approach’s effectiveness. I argue that Truman’s approach failed to stop McCarthy’s political influence in Congress and with the public due to Truman’s lack of ethos and trust among McCarthy supporters and the threatening nature of his attacks. The Eisenhower approach, on the other hand, effectively ended McCarthyism by undermining his support among Republicans, caused largely by Eisenhower’s trust among Republicans and the general public and his savvy political actions that made his agenda more receptive to McCarthy supporters in Congress. Finally, I briefly examine contemporary politics in light of McCarthyism by providing an explanation for Donald Trump’s political prowess through the Truman approach and potential remedies to his power through the Eisenhower approach.