Ronald Reagan's daughter has a stone-cold suggestion about Trump and national tragedies

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/CNN)

published 30 October 2018

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss told The Washington Post on Monday that "almost any president of my lifetime would have canceled the campaign rally" President Trump held Saturday night, hours after a gunman murdered 11 Jewish congregants inside their Pittsburgh synagogue. "Even at a time of national crisis like this," you see Trump "dividing in order to conquer," he added. "He has shown himself completely incapable of healing our wounds." Presidential daughter Patti Davis made a similar argument in an op-ed in the Post on Sunday night.

Davis pointed to moments when her father, Ronald Reagan, and his successors Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama offered "comfort and solace to a grieving nation," and "we didn't doubt that their hearts were breaking along with ours." Trump, she added, "will never offer comfort, compassion, or empathy to a grieving nation. It's not in him. When questioned after a tragedy, he will always be glib and inappropriate. So I have a wild suggestion: Let's stop asking him. His words are only salt in our wounds."

CNN's Jake Tapper asked Davis about her op-ed Monday evening. After watching Trump's first remarks to reporters after the Pittsburgh tragedy, she said, "I thought, Why are you even asking him? You know, there's no law that says that reporters have to question the president while he's walking to the helicopter or to the plane. What if you just don't ask him at times like this, and don't give him that opportunity to literally rub salt in our wounds?"

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Tapper told Davis that George Conway, Kellyanne Conway's husband, had retweeted part of her op-ed, and Davis seemed surprised, agreeing with Conway that Trump doesn't have anything inside to communicate. "At some point, we do show what is inside of us, and Donald Trump has never shown compassion, ever," she said. "He didn't just burst on the scene — he's been in the public eye for over 40 years."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.