Patti Davis, daughter of conservative icon and former president Ronald Reagan, went to social media yesterday to denounce Donald Trump for his comment encouraging his supporters to assassinate Hillary Clinton, saying that Trump’s violent rhetoric could easily inspire an assassination attempt like the one that nearly ended her father’s life.
To Donald Trump: I am the daughter of a man who was shot by someone who got his inspiration from a movie, someone who believed if he killed the President the actress from that movie would notice him. Your glib and horrifying comment about ‘Second Amendment people’ was heard around the world. It was heard by sane and decent people who shudder at your fondness for verbal violence. It was heard by your supporters, many of whom gleefully and angrily yell, ‘Lock her up!’ at your rallies. It was heard by the person sitting alone in a room, locked in his own dark fantasies, who sees unbridled violence as a way to make his mark in the world, and is just looking for ideas. Yes, Mr. Trump, words matter. But then you know that, which makes this all even more horrifying.
In December, Patti Davis said that her father would be “absolutely appalled” by the 2016 Republican candidates. “I don’t think he would be a Republican,” she told Sirius XM Progress. “If another Ronald Reagan came along, I don’t think the Republican Party would accept him.”
Davis also said that Ronald Reagan would “not be able to conceive” the level of gun violence in the United States today, and would advocate for gun control.
Ronald Reagan’s son Michael has also been a vocal critic of Donald Trump, saying that the Republican candidate is absolutely nothing like his father, who he claims “brought everybody together.”
“My father was humble,” Michael Reagan told CNN. “He wasn’t demeaning. He didn’t talk down to people. He talked with people, which is the complete opposite of what Donald Trump, in fact, does.”
Michael Reagan also told POLITICO that his father, who signed into law the greatest amnesty bill in United States history, “would never take 11 million people or three million people or a million people and throw them out of the United States of America.”
Both Ronald Reagan and then-opponent George H.W. Bush said in a 1980 Republican primary debate that illegal immigrants should have a path to citizenship. In a 1984 presidential debate, Reagan repeated his position: “I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.”
Michael and his brother Ron have said that their father would never support Donald Trump. In June, when Trump was still only the presumptive nominee, Ron Reagan told MSNBC:
“This is an absurdity of a campaign. We shouldn’t fall into the trap of a false equivalency that somehow Trump and Clinton are playing on the same playing field or at the same level. They are not. This is a joke, and it’s an absurdity, and it would be an embarrassment and a tragedy for this country if Donald Trump were somehow to be elected president, and it’s the shame of the Republican Party that he’s their presumptive nominee.”
Donald Trump has refused to apologize for his comment encouraging his supporters to assassinate Hillary Clinton.
