Reagan's Daughter: Trumps Are Surely in Shock

Patti Davis relates, hopes the shooting can change the nation for the better
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 15, 2024 7:55 AM CDT
Reagan's Daughter: Trumps Are Surely in Shock
President Ronald Reagan is hustled into the presidential limo after being shot outside a Washington hotel, March 30, 1981.   (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds, File)

If one person can relate to what the Trump family has gone through in the last few days, it's Patti Davis. In a New York Times essay, the daughter of Ronald Reagan recalls the day in 1981 when her own father was wounded by a gunman. Davis recounts personal details—"there was my mother sleeping with one of my father's shirts pressed to her face to breathe in his scent"—and writes that the Trumps have likely been in shock:

  • "For all of the apparatus around a president or a presidential candidate, for all the planning, the security, it still comes down to this: They are flesh and blood, they are human beings just like the rest of us, and their lives can change in a split second."

Of course, anyone who has had a loved one shot, famous or not, can relate to that, adds Davis. "It unravels you in the first horrible, chaotic moments, and it rearranges you in the days and years afterward." She hopes the Trump shooting might similarly change the nation—that it might "shock us into remembering who we are supposed to be," which is not people "riddled with rage" who use guns to sway an election. "I long for the America that wrapped itself around my family after my father was shot, and I pray we can find that in ourselves again." (Read the full essay, or read the latest on the shooting.)

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