Ron Reagan, the youngest son of former President Ronald Reagan, accused the Trump family of using their political power to enhance their longtime business ventures.
The 62-year-old outspoken liberal said that while he thinks it’s fine for President Trump’s children to campaign on his behalf, they’re doing so while promoting their brand.
“I don’t mean to be blunt, but we’ve got a bunch of grifters there in the White House,” Reagan told CNN’s Ana Cabrera on Sunday. “They’re treating this as a grift. They’re mixing business with pleasure. They’re mixing business with statecraft. They’re using the hotels and the golf clubs to profit off of the presidency.”
Reagan criticized Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, over their positions in the White House, saying they lack any kind of qualifications to be in those roles. Both are close advisers to the president.
Reagan also said his father never would have offered that kind of role to him or his siblings, or to be even that closely involved with White House affairs.
“It would be terribly inappropriate,” he said. “I’m sure my father would’ve thought so, to practice the kind of nepotism that we see now. I mean, he would not be of a mind to appoint an unqualified person, whether that person was his child or not, to a position high in the White House, given no experience there. Why would you do that? Why would I even accept something like that?”
Reagan’s father has remained one of the biggest conservative icons of the Republican Party, but the Reagan Foundation and members of the family have distanced themselves from Trump since he was elected in 2016.
His son added that he believes Trump has done a “tremendous amount of damage” to the party his father once shaped.
“He would be horrified by the Republican Party right now,” Reagan said of his father. “The spinelessness in the face of this pathological entity in the White House right now would shock him.”
