Ronald Reagan’s daughter takes shot at Trump for cozying up to Russia: ‘I think he would be grieving’

Former President Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis took aim at President Donald Trump during an appearance on CNN, saying that her father “would be grieving” over Trump’s recent moves to isolate the U.S. from its traditional allies.

“The America that I grew up in, that we all have known, is one that had alliances and was friends with other countries, and it would go to other countries who were in trouble, who were being tyrannized, or invaded, or, you know, otherwise suffering from famines, for example,” Davis told CNN’s Anderson Cooper, saying her dad “would be heartbroken” by Trump’s actions.

The president has spent the first month and a half in the White House starting trade wars with U.S. allies such as Canada, Mexico, and the European Union, and berating Ukraine as it attempts to fight off Russian aggression, prompting widespread concern among European leaders. His administration has also gutted the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Davis said Reagan believed in an America that was “this force in the world that if another country was in trouble, would cross oceans to help them.”

Speaking about the 1985 song We Are the World, which was recorded in support of sending aid to Africa, she said, “That’s the America that we know, and that we have been bonded with, and suddenly that America is no longer that. Suddenly we’re hated in the world.”

Davis, who uses her mother Nancy Reagan’s maiden name, has previously slammed the Republican Party.

“I disagreed with my father,” she told CNN. “I protested some of his policies.”

But, she said, “This is beyond politics.”

In a New York Times op-ed that ran over the weekend, Davis recalled the only conversation she ever shared with her dad on why he wanted to become president. It was the evening of Reagan’s first inauguration in early 1981, and he told her in the Lincoln Bedroom that he believed he could “make this world a safer, more peaceful place.”

“When he left and the stillness of Lincoln’s bedroom folded around me, with all of its history and stories, I was struck by the fact that he spoke about the world, not just America,” she added.

Davis, 72, noted that while she at times disagreed with her father’s policies, she never had any doubts regarding his intentions.

“I knew he wanted America to be a strong partner in the world, bonding with other countries to defeat tyranny and aggression,” she wrote in The Times.