There was a time when, long after he left office and even for a time after he died in 2004, Ronald Reagan remained the central figure in the mythology of the Republican Party.
However, in the decade since the rise of Donald Trump, he has taken that mantle.
Now, Reagan has emerged as a central figure in a kerfuffle between Trump and Canada. Per the Associated Press, Ontario’s provincial government ran an ad using Reagan’s words, opposing tariffs from a 1987 speech, to criticize Trump. As retaliation for that, Trump has pulled out of trade talks with Canada.
“CANADA CHEATED AND GOT CAUGHT!!! They fraudulently took a big buy ad saying that Ronald Reagan did not like Tariffs, when actually he LOVED TARIFFS FOR OUR COUNTRY, AND ITS NATIONAL SECURITY,” Trump said on Truth Social of the ad.
Trump said that Canada “took a big buy ad saying that Ronald Reagan did not like Tariffs, when actually he LOVED TARIFFS FOR OUR COUNTRY, AND ITS NATIONAL SECURITY.”
𝐖𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠! Reagan knew that in the long run tariffs will harm the national economy (Video: April 25, 1987) pic.twitter.com/kR82CdA7nZ— Latif Kassidi 𝕏 (@lkassidi) October 24, 2025
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Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, appeared with CNN’s Andreson Cooper this weekend, in which she ripped Trump- not for his reaction to the ad using her father, but rather for the East Wing teardown.
Davis had written a New York Times op-ed this week, making similar arguments.
🚨 BREAKING: Ronald Reagan’s daughter just blasted Donald Trump for “destroying the White House.”
When the Reagan family, the GOP’s sacred brand, starts calling out Trump by name, it’s not a feud.
It’s a fracture in the Republican soul. pic.twitter.com/RF9ji7Usjr
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) October 25, 2025
“The images we’ve now all seen of the East Wing being demolished are heartbreaking. Over the centuries, many presidents have altered the White House, and certainly older buildings need to be updated and repaired. But this is complete destruction,” Davis wrote. “Among certain jaded observers, there’s been a strain of chatter dismissing the damage, saying the East Wing was never all that architecturally distinguished. But it was not just a building made of brick and plaster; it was the people’s house, a building suffused with the spirit of the ideals that built it.”
Davis, like her brother Ron Reagan, has often expressed much more liberal political views than those of their father, although their brother Michael was long a conservative talk show host.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
