With J.D. Vance’s cousin emerging to criticize him this week, attention has been paid to relatives of political figures who sometimes disagree with their famous family members. One of those people was Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, who often made clear that she didn’t quite see eye-to-eye politically with her parents.
Now, Davis has re-emerged to criticize the Republican president.
On Tuesday, Patti Davis, now 72, appeared on CNN to share what she thinks her father might have thought of the Trump presidency. She believes the 40th president would be “heartbroken” by what’s happening today. It was about a New York Times op-ed she published this week, headlined “My Father Spoke to Me Only Once About Why He Led This Nation.”
My Father Spoke to Me Only Once About Why He Led This Nation https://t.co/iPCwvZDjk8
— Khalil Spencer (@khalil_spencer) March 9, 2025
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“The America that I grew up in, that we all have known, is one that had alliances and was friends with other countries, and it would go to other countries who were in trouble, who were being tyrannized, or invaded, or, you know, otherwise suffering from famines, for example,” David said on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.
Davis, who uses her late mother’s surname, Nancy, also referenced another 1980s touchstone, “We Are the World.”
“That’s the America that we know and have been bonded with, and suddenly that America is no longer that. Suddenly we’re hated in the world,” she said.
In the Times op-ed, Davis shared a conversation she had with her father on the night of his first inauguration in 1981.
“I think he would be heartbroken. I think he would be grieving … I feel that grief everywhere and it transcends politics”: Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, on what she thinks the late President would make of the current state of America’s global influence. pic.twitter.com/fFJply2vxd
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) March 11, 2025
“I really believe I can make this world a safer, more peaceful place. That’s why I ran for president,” Reagan told Patti that night, according to the piece. She also referenced Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s (D-MI) statement in her response to Trump’s address last week, saying that she was glad Reagan and not Trump were president during the closing phase of the Cold War.
While Patti and her brother Ron have tended more towards the liberal side of the spectrum over the years, their older half-brother Michael was a conservative talk show host.
Photo courtesy of screengrab
