Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” the adopted son of President Ronald Reagan, Michael Reagan, objected to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump comparing himself to his father.
Mitchell asked, “I want to ask you straight out. What does Donald Trump have in common with Ronald Reagan?”
Michael answered, “Not much. I mean, the fact that they are both running and they both ran for the candidacy for the Republican Party, that’s what they have in common. But that’s really where it stops. and I think all of them make a mistake by invoking Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was not invoking Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, he was invoking what he was going to do and how he was going to, in fact, run the presidency of the United States of America. And I think everybody makes a mistake by putting Ronald Reagan’s hat on. They need to put their own hat on to let us know who they are and go forward and win the nomination.”
He continued, “Andrea, you and I have been around a long time, you knew Ronald Reagan and now Donald Trump. They both have their own ways but Ronald Reagan is not someone to attack people personally. He believed in the 11th commandment, thou shall not speak ill of another Republicans. Donald called me for 15 minutes the other day, and I said, you’re attacking personally. If you want to do anything, you have to put the building back together at the end of the day to get everybody on your team to win the presidency. So if you’re a Trump Republican where you’re going to attack personally, and then talk about picking up 11 million people and throwing them out of the United States of America, that’s a lot different than Ronald Reagan ever was. He never talked about throwing people out of the United States of America.”
He added, “When you’re the president of the United States of America, you have to find a way to work with congress. Ronald Reagan had to find a way to work with Tip O’Neill. He had to work with Democrats to get things done. If you are going into the room to blow it up on the way in, then don’t expect that people are going to be on your team as you move forward to get those things done you want to get done, building walls or trade issues or whatever it might be.”
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