Ron Reagan is former President Ronald Reagan’s youngest child. His and Patti Davis’ mom is Nancy Reagan (Michael and Maureen Reagan’s mom was Jane Wyman). The notable thing about Ron and Patti is how much their politics ran in opposition to their parents. While Patti was openly feuding with her mother in the media over her father’s nuclear arsenal, Ron kept pretty quiet about his views until his father left office for good. Ron claimed it was because the media didn’t care but I suspect it was more on Ron’s part out of respect for his dad. Ron, who is a former radio personality and actually had a pretty decent show, called into CNN over the weekend to discuss The Trump White House. Given Ron has maintained his liberal values, is not too surprising that Ron is unimpressed with the Trump Dynasty, basically calling the whole lot a bunch of grifters.
Ron Reagan — the son of former president Ronald Reagan and former first lady Nancy Reagan — is speaking out about Donald Trump’s administration.
Ron, 62, appeared on CNN Sunday and said that Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are unqualified for their roles as the president’s advisors.
“Well, they’re certainly entitled to go campaign for their dad,” Ron said of Trump’s children. “My eldest brother and sister did that, and there’s nothing wrong with that. When you cross the line is — I hate to say it here and I don’t mean to be blunt — but we’ve got a bunch of grifters there in the White House. They’re treating this as a grift.”
Ron went on to explain that the Trump family is “mixing business with pleasure.”
“They’re using the hotels and the golf clubs to profit off the presidency,” he said. “Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have no qualifications whatsoever to be in the position they’re in. Zero. Zip. And they’re using it to make money, basically.”
I detect nothing wrong in Ron’s words. My parents have used this exact term, repeatedly. And that’s what makes #45’s giant Snake Oil Sales Pitch rallies so much sadder, that so many are still buying it. I have likened Trumps’ White House to the Mob, hiring family because they can’t testify against you and all that. But I suppose grifting is a better analogy because #45 is constantly changing his grift when he gets caught, sometimes mid-sentence. I was talking to a friend the other day about my desire that, should we be lucky enough to elect this SOB out of office, can he go away and just never, ever be mentioned again. Can we erase him from history and never have to hear or talk about him or his disreputable family a hangers-ons? She brought up history repeating itself and so on, so we settled on a five-year #45 silence (I know, but a girl can dream).
The other big headline pull from Ron R’s CNN talk was that he said his father, would be, “horrified with the Republican party right now.” I didn’t lead with that because I don’t agree that he would. Pres. Reagan (also a former Democrat, like #45, although Reagan’s conversion was probably more swayed by Nancy than anything) would be embarrassed that the GOP was showing its slip, but ‘horrified’ is overselling it. Reagan, as president, would not have stood for the party not falling in line with him. Ron can talk about “integrity”, “decency” and “patriotism,” but his father would have done whatever he needed to get what he wanted. The difference is Reagan would have been quieter about it and he definitely would have let Nancy control his Twitter account.
Photo credit: Getty
He should know seeing how his dad was one of the greatest grifters.😌
Erasure of this motherf**ker from history would be great, as I live in Europe and the news is still full of him and that’s the way he wants it and I’m sick of it. But there’s a lesson to be learned from all this, so I guess we shouldn’t blot him out completely. But it will be a huge relief when he is not a pressing threat. Godspeed Election Day and may it deliver us from tangerine Satan
Erasure would be amazing, ***AFTER*** he and his tadpoles have been locked up and the key thrown away. Then we can all breath a deep, clarifying sigh of relief.
His father invited the evangelicals into bed with the GOP. Loved a good racial dog whistle. Got off on busting unions. Destroyed the middle class. And financed death squads all over Central America. His father was a nightmare.
exactly. Kaiser is spot on. Trump is not an aberration of Republicans, he is *exactly* the final product of what Republicans have been doing since Nixon & Reagan — he just tore the mask of gentility off the ugly racist politics hiding beneath. He doesn’t use the coded language anymore; he just states it outright. Republicans have been organized around the white supremacist ‘southern strategy’ since the 1970s, and this happening in the 2010s is the fruit of all that disgusting work. Also I hate the ‘whole George W Bush wasn’t so bad’ nostalgia. That administration – helmed by Dick Cheney – TOTALLY set us up for where we are. That admin used Fox as its propaganda machine, it outright lied all the time (Iraq War!!), discredited the mainstream media & blocked it from access, made naked power plays (as McConnell is doing now), drummed up Islamophobia, etc.
The democrats will have to use naked power as well to completely tear down and rebuild the entire system almost from scratch. Gerrymandering, the stolen courts, the electoral college, everything has to be re-built.
The Republicans will screech at the top of their lungs and be as destructive as possible, but the democrats have to be prepared for that and do their own screaming right back in their faces, no backing down or pissing their pants.
I would suggest the Democrats set up a referendum to ask the American people to choose: electoral college or popular vote. I strongly suspect the Popular vote would win the day. That should remove the inbuilt bias the Republicans enjoy.
A lot of work to be done if the Dems can overcome the intense cheating going on right now.
Exactly, @Naomi
Let’s not forget Reagan emptied the mentally ill out of hospitals, leaving many homeless and unmedicated. His horrible stance on the AIDS crisis…
45 is dangerous and mentally unhinged. Even Ronnie at the height of his dementia wouldn’t have done some of the things Trump has done. e.g. coronavirus policies. Reagan was vile but no one will ever be as bad as Trump.
Don’t forget laughing at the AIDs pandemic because it affected a community he didn’t care about and his extreme Alzheimers being hidden by a party that was doing what they wanted. Reagan helped usher in the nightmare GOP as we know it
This @chicken tetrazzini!
Phew. Thank you, Aang, and also SunshineG, above.
I thought I was going a bit troppo for a minute there, thinking I must be remembering someone different. Thank goodness my recollections of RR are the same as yours.
I’m not American, but I want that orange maggot out of the Big House and straight into the big house. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. He likes orange, so he’ll be pleased to know he can wear it every day.
And I’ve been speaking a lot on the phone to my lovely friends. (We are allowed friends to visit, but my daughter is on chemo, killing off her immune system in preparation for stem cell transplant on Nov 13, so our house is off-limits.) When I said I didn’t believe Rump ever had coronavirus, they all jumped in and shouted. ‘’Neither do I!” He’s a pathological liar, a cheat, a deceitful bastard, a crook, an unscrupulous wanker and although it’s not a word I’ve ever heard an Australian use, I agree: grifter. I’ll be with you all in spirit, come Election Day.
@ Annakist
I wish I could go on a date with your comment! So many juicy little insults, orange maggot, GO TO JAIL! DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200! Lmao!
So sorry your daughter is going through this at such a shitty time, I wish her a speedy recovery and plenty of great health in the future.
Also ran A racist dogwhistle campaign (references of “welfare queens”). He was the first one to use the slogan “Make America Great Again.” I like Ron Reagan a lot but he has a blind spot here.
Yes, he did all those things. It really gets my goat when people (mostly Republicans – like Governor Larry Hogan who wrote him rather than vote for Biden) pretend that Saint Ronnie was some good guy. He was not. He also ignored AIDS as long as he possibly could.
The rot was already in the GOP by the time Reagan was elected, but he accelerated it.
He’s been saying this for the entire administration. I used to watch a lot of the MSNBC evening shows and he was on regularly and just slammed the Trumps for being grifters.
as for his father…I mean, this is his father’s legacy. I know Reagan is revered by Republicans as sort of the epitome of what a republican should be, and even many Democrats are like “well I wish they were more like Reagan” but the Republican party of today…honestly, policy-wise, they’re not doing a lot that Reagan would disagree with. He would certainly love their financial policies.
I do think he would be horrified by Trump’s twitter account though.
Although I am quite fond of Ron Reagan, I detest his parents so much. Reagan was the second worst president in history (we know who number one is). He destroyed the middle class, taxed Social Security, ignored the AIDS crisis, made way for the era of corporate greed that exists today & so many more awful things. I include Nancy in my hatred because I believe she was running the show while he had Alzheimer’s & I always I heard she was a stone cold bitch. Plus Ron Sr. also named names during the Hollywood blacklist & was a failed actor. The Reagans were grifters of the highest order. Sorry, i have an axe to grind, my parents didn’t fare well under his crooked administration.
Agreed. Don’t apologize, he was a monster but with a congenial veneer that Trump doesn’t have.
Thanks, Esmom. That congenial veneer, what a great description, of his was such bullshit. Even as a young & naive teenager I saw through his hokey facade. I also forgot how he threw desperately mentally ill people out of hospitals when they so needed medical care. My mom received Social Security for a massive stroke she suffered. Under Reagan’s horrid administration, in order for my mother to keep her SS benefits, I had to attend college part time while attending high school. I was juggling a full honors load at my Catholic prep school for most of the day & took 4-5 classes each day at a local college. I was so exhausted I collapsed with mono at one point. That bastard Reagan stole two full years from my childhood.
I don’t know much about Reagan’s presidency other than it started what Dump and his cohorts are finishing.
He sure did. He was not a good man. He was just good at acting Presidential.
And the “War on Drugs” and war on Black people through laws that decimated our communities. The list goes on and on. He was a horror who ushered in this current moment.
This is one thing I’ve never gotten about trump cultists since he first ran for the Republican primaries and I still don’t get about them today: the ‘drain the swamp’ chant. After he finally goes, they’re going to need a rather large plughole.
Reagan may have been a bad president, but at least he ACTED like a president.
ivanka and jared are in their roles for one purpose, to help get trump re-elected. Everyone knows they are completely without experience for their supposed roles. We’re always finding out about some advice one of them gave daddy and it’s clearly not for the good of the people or the country. E.G. The photo opp in front of the church where ivanka pulled the bible out of her purse, but not before they tear gassed the peaceful protestors so trump could walk across the street.
I wore my feet out protesting against Ronald Reagan when he was in the White House. The revisionist story-telling is disgusting. Ronald Reagan was a HORRIBLE president. And Ron Reagan and his sister are born-again liberals. They were more than happy to suck up the perks when Daddy was Governor of California and then President. One of the reasons that Nancy Reagan was so protective of her husband was because she knew the kind of sleaze bags he had around him.
Have you guys seen Ron Reagan’s ads for some National Atheists group? It’s so awesome! At the end he goes ,I’m Ron Reagan, Unabashed Atheist, and not afraid of burning in hell. “