Ronald Reagan Got It. Trump Still Doesn't

No. 40's daughter Patti Davis argues that Trump needs to tell the truth about his health
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 5, 2020 10:00 AM CDT
Ronald Reagan Got It. Trump Still Doesn't
President Ronald Reagan waves just before he's shot outside the Washington Hilton on March 30, 1981.   (AP Photo/US White House)

Ronald's Reagan's daughter is following the news from Walter Reed hospital, and she doesn't like what she sees. "When you're president, privacy is not an option—including, and maybe especially, privacy about your health," writes Patti Davis in the Washington Post. "Instead of accurate and complete information, Americans are receiving only sketchy details and evasive answers" about Trump's battle with COVID-19. Davis contrasts the current crisis with one that sent shockwaves through America and her family nearly 40 years ago: the shooting of her father and White House press secretary James S. Brady. Amid all the ensuing chaos, Davis says, Reagan's team did its best to tell the truth about his condition.

She admits they made mistakes—like failing to say a bullet hit one of his lungs—but the White House "honored the fact that the American people deserved to be informed about what was happening to their president," she writes. By contrast, Trump's team is trying to convey confidence by reassuring "either the patient or the American people" with those "sketchy details and evasive answers" she mentions. Not a good idea, says Davis: "Regardless of what any of us think" about Trump, "his health, his fitness, his ability to be present and accounted for, has everything to do with our safety as a nation. It has to do with our trust in the government. And that trust is being eroded—at the worst possible time." More from Davis here. (Meanwhile, Trump is taking a drug that's been called a "red flag.")

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