Posted on 01/15/2011 3:13:19 PM PST by jazusamo
Ronald Reagan’s conservative son called his liberal half-brother “an embarrassment” Saturday for speculating in a new memoir that their father suffered from Alzheimer’s disease while president.
“Ron, my brother was an embarrassment to his father when he was alive and today he became an embarrassment to his mother,” Michael Reagan posted on Twitter.
“My brother seems to want [to] sell out his father to sell books,” he added in another tweet.
The sibling tension bubbles over just three weeks before Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday, which will kick off a year of events to honor the 40th president.
In “My Father at 100,” Ron Reagan recalls early warning signs of his father losing his mental faculties. “The question,” he writes, “of whether my father suffered from the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s while in office more or less answers itself.”
Michael Reagan, adopted during President Reagan’s first marriage, comes out with his own book on Tuesday. It’s a polemic called “The New Reagan Revolution: How Ronald Reagan’s Principles Can Restore America’s Greatness.” Newt Gingrich, a likely 2012 Republican candidate for president, wrote the foreword.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, closely tied to former first lady Nancy Reagan, issued its own statement, more delicate but still forceful, pushing back on the claim that he suffered from Alzheimer’s while leading the free world.
“We believe Ron has written a wonderfully warm and engaging book about life with his father, Ronald Reagan,” the foundation said. “It offers a tribute that only a son could present. As for the topic of Alzheimer’s, this subject has been well documented over the years by both President Reagan’s personal physicians, physicians who treated him after the diagnosis, as well as those who worked closely with him daily. All are consistent in their view that signs of Alzheimer’s did not appear until well after President Reagan left the White House.”
Indeed, Reagan was not officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s until 1994.
Ron Reagan recalled the earliest signs of Alzheimer’s during an interview that aired Friday night on ABC’s “20/20,” but he also argued that it should not undercut the legacy of his father’s presidency.
In the book, he guesses that his father probably would have resigned had he known he was ill. Excerpts from the book, which doesn’t come out until Tuesday, were first published on the U.S. News & World Report’s Washington Whispers blog.
“Pray for my brother,” Michael Reagan wrote in another post on Twitter.
That’s ok, Michael. We’ve known that for years.
Sorry, not unless he stops the publication of this shameful fiction.
Wells said, onyx. It’s clear to me he said this to sell books, he’s pathetic.
No need to be embarrassed Mike. We know what your brother is and don’t hold you accountable for his idiocy.
When I told hubby about Ron Jr.’s words, his first response was, “He must need $$$$$ and has a book to sell.” Who will buy this book?????????
I hope the book isn’t so bad in its entirety. This juicy tidbit has been cherry-picked and trumpeted by the MSM for days now ... sigh.
I miss Maureen, R.I.P.
There, he finally said what we knew.
I’ll pray his mother cuts him complete out of her Will -— leaving him nothing from his father.
Well my father’s passed on, and bless his heart. Ron JR. is scum. You just don’t speak ill of the dead.
Amen to that!
What’s so stupid - aside from the disgraceful disrespect for his own Dad - is that he ain’t gonna sell books to those lefty dweebs. If he wants to make money, he’d do a whole lot better marketing it to conservatives. They can read for one thing.
Ron has set himself up as the Anti Gipper. What ever his father said or believed Ron almost always takes the opposing view.
Chock one up for the nurture side in the nature versus nurture argument. Ron was the Gipper’s biological son and Micheal was adopted. Michael Reagan is one of the closest minds we now have to his father and Ron is a leftist and a lame one to boot.
No doubt Joe Scarborough already has Ron Jr. booked for Monday’s show.
I’d bet you’re right and what a love fest they’ll have, Joe will agree with him.
I heard Reagan speak in California, in 1992 (a desperate attempt to get Bush Sr. re-elected). He was OUTSTANDING. It was obvious that he was operating at full-tilt. He mentioned Santa Anna winds, and how Bill Clinton couldn’t deal with them...because of the ‘draft’. AWESOME.
...and that was 4 years after he left office.
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