‘No defense’: Ronald Reagan’s daughter insists her father would have wanted ‘forgiveness’ for racist comments

President Donald Trump is not the only Republican who is being criticized this week for making overtly racist comments: on July 30, The Atlantic posted an unearthed 1971 audio recording of the late Ronald Reagan speaking to President Richard Nixon on the phone and making some overtly racist comments about African delegates to the United Nations. In the recording, Reagan (who was governor of California at the time) can be heard telling Nixon, “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries —  damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes.” The recording is being cited as a prime example of the fact that racism with the GOP certainly didn’t start with Trump. But Reagan’s daughter, liberal activist Patti Davis, candidly discusses the remarks in an op-ed for the Washington Post, asserting that she honestly doesn’t believe they are representative of her father on the whole.

Now 66, Davis has often stressed that as many political differences as she had with her father, she believes he was fair-minded. But the Reagan speaking to Nixon on that 1971 recording, Davis asserts, was indefensible.

Davis writes, “I listened to the tape twice before allowing myself to cry…. There is no defense, no rationalization, no suitable explanation for what my father said on that taped phone conversation.”

Reagan’s daughter goes on to say, however, that the person speaking to Nixon on that recording is “not the man I knew,” concluding that he said some unacceptable things in the heat of the moment. And she shares some memories of Reagan taking a stand against racism.

“I can tell you about a night when my father was in college, on the football team, and the team came to his hometown for a game,” Davis recalls. “They arrived at the local hotel and were told that the black players couldn’t stay there. My father said, ‘Then I’m not staying here,’ and he took them to his parents’ house.”

Davis adds, “When he was governor of California, he was given a membership to a ritzy country club in Los Angeles. He turned it down because the club didn’t allow Jews or African- Americans.”

Reagan’s entire history, Davis emphasizes, should be taken into consideration.

“The words he used in his conversation with Nixon cannot be interpreted as anything but ugliness,” Davis stresses. “That’s what makes this so painful. Legacies are complicated, though, and for people to be judged fairly, the landscape of a lifetime has to be looked at.”

David asserts that if Reagan (who died in 2004) were still alive in 2019, he would apologize for the comments he made in 1971.

“I believe, if my father had, years after the fact, heard that tape, he would have asked for forgiveness,” Davis stresses. “He would have said, ‘I deeply regret what I said — that’s not who I am.’ He would have sought to make amends for the pain his words caused.”