Ronald Reagan’s Daughter, Patti Davis, Says Her Father Would Be ‘Heartbroken & Horrified’ With Today’s Republican Party

Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald Reagan, stated that her father would not want to have any association with today’s Republican Party.

“[Reagan] was much more moderate on a whole host of issues, while at the same time, much more hawkish on Russia than what you’re seeing from the modern day Republican party,” CNN’s Jim Acosta, the chief domestic correspondent for CNN, said to Davis during an interview.

“What would your father think about what he’s seeing right now,” he then asked her. “Do you have any insights on that?”

“Well I’d – I’d like to answer your question in sort of a bigger – from a bigger view than – than, you know, current – the current political scene,” Davis responded. “I’m not a political strategist, and quite frankly, I’m so tired of hearing about the current political scene.

“But – but so in a larger sense, I think that he would be heartbroken and horrified about where America is and how mired we are in anger, in violence, in disrespect for one another,” she then mentioned. “I think he would heartbroken, and I think he would be scared.”

“My opinion is – and I do think he would share it – is that one of the things that’s missing right now is a faith in our country that we can pull ourselves out of this, that we can function from our better angels,” she added.

“I mean, I didn’t grow up in calm times,” the former president’s daughter then admitted. “There was a civil rights movement, there was a women’s movement, there was the anti-war movement when I was in high school.”

“So it’s not like everything was calm and wonderful,” she stated. “But what there also was were people – particularly [during] the civil rights movement – people like Martin Luther King [Jr.], John Lewis who had a faith that we could do better as Americans. I don’t see that now, and I think – I think collectively something is broken in us, and I think it’s because we’re scared. There is fear everywhere you look. That’s my opinion.”

Acosta asked Davis if she believed that her father would be accepted in today’s Republican Party, and if he would feel somewhat lonely, or maybe “on the margins of it.”

“You know, I don’t think that he would, and I don’t think that he would – I don’t know, I don’t see how he would want to – to be in it,” she replied. “You know, it’s so diametrically opposed to what he believed and – and to the dignity that he felt that people in government should have.”

Davis then commented on how Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma) tried to get in a physical fight with labor union leader Sean O’Brien during of a Senate committee hearing in 2023.

“My father would be appalled at this,” she stated. “This is not a bar. This is in the Senate chambers.”

Davis had been estranged from her father for sometime, including during his presidency when she protested some of his policies. She also ridiculed him and her mother, Nancy Reagan, in a 1992 autobiography, The Way I See It.

She reconnected with the former president prior to his death from Alzheimer’s disease in 2003, and her new book about her parents, Dear Mom and Dad: A Letter About Family, Memory, and the America We Once Knew, was published on Feb. 6.

Back in August 2018, Davis said, during a CNN interview, that her father would be heartbroken about how America had declined as a result of then-President Donald Trump‘s leadership.

She mentioned how she hates the way he uses the word “enemy” in the media in a way that would frighten her father and dehumanize people.

Davis also brought up that Trump’s bashing of the press invoked fear among Americans.