People ask Patti Davis what her father, former President Ronald Reagan, "would say if he were here now," she wrote in an op-ed The Washington Post published Sunday night. "He'd be pretty horrified at where we've come to." While Davis did not mention President Trump by name, she suggested Reagan "would be appalled and heartbroken at a Congress that refuses to stand up to a president who not only seems ignorant of the Constitution but who also attempts at every turn to dismantle and mock our system of checks and balances."
Reagan, a GOP icon, recognized the "difference between immigration laws and cruelty," Davis said. "He believed in laws; he hated cruelty." She didn't mention trade, but Reagan's Nov. 26, 1988, radio address sounds eerily like a posthumous response to Trump's policies, most recently his unilateral tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and the EU. Reagan lamented that "the trade deficit has led some misguided politicians to call for protectionism." In free trade, "there are no losers, only winners," he said, continuing:
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