President Donald Trump sometimes attempts to cast himself as the heir of some kind of historically great conservatism or something — but in reality, he is leading a de facto political cult dedicated to his ego. Ron Reagan outlined this situation in a new interview with the Daily Beast, in which he insisted that his father — the late Republican President Ronald Reagan — would have nothing but disdain for Trump. Not only that, the younger Reagan also added that his famous father would have condemned the current Republican Party as well for enabling Trump’s belligerence, and adding in his own take, Ron suggested that the current GOP is careening towards oblivion and irrelevance.
Ron Reagan insisted:
‘My father would have been ashamed of this Republican Party. He would have been embarrassed and ashamed that a president of the United States was as incompetent and traitorous as the man occupying the White House now. He’s a disgrace to the office of the presidency.’
Notably enough, even with the older Reagan’s avid conservatism firmly in place, the late Republican president and the White House’s current occupant would be at odds over policy too, and not just morals or dignity or something along those lines. For example, in 1986, Reagan signed an immigration reform bill into law that made any undocumented immigrant who’d entered the U.S. before 1982 eligible for amnesty. Amnesty! It seems like Trump would sooner relocate to a farm in Kenya than respect a single undocumented individual, let alone grant amnesty to them.
And he’s been enabled to spin wildly out of control like this, down winding paths of violent racism, thanks to the Republicans who’ve occasionally simply looked the other way or, more often these days, jumped right down those paths with Trump, belligerence and all. In a recent interview, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) openly admitted that Senate Republicans were plotting to acquit Trump in his impeachment trial because of political expedience. He said any other vote might not go over well with Trump-supporting voters.
Ron Reagan insisted:
‘The Republican party at this point, for a whole host of reasons to do with Donald Trump, is an entirely illegitimate political party just made up of a bunch of sycophantic traitors mouthing Kremlin propaganda to defend this squalid little man who is occupying the White House.’
And he offered his take on their future:
‘This is a dying party. They either have to remake themselves entirely or they will disappear eventually. Within a decade the Republican Party will be a minor fringe group if it continues going this way.’
Some of Trump’s top allies have peddled that Kremlin propaganda that Reagan mentions. For example, figures like Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) have pushed the baseless claim that Ukraine led 2016 meddling in U.S. elections, not Russia. And they’ve used these claims as a basis for their continued support of the president.
Polls pitting Trump against leading Democratic presidential primary candidates in hypothetical general election match-ups consistently have him losing. Now it’s just a matter of getting to November and casting the votes.
