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.
Thanks, I follow you but it’s confusing. :-)
Bookie hell...he needs a new Tutu.
In my family the rest of that statement would be "Because I'm gonna KILL HIM!" lol
The shame those two misfits, Ron and Patty have brought upon their parents.
Prov 30:17 The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it. Yes, Pray for him!
Ronald Prescott Reagan is no Ronald Wilson Reagan, Jr.
Yup. I should have said what I usually say and call him Ron Ron.
I normally take anything by Politico with a grain of salt, but Michael Reagan was on Fox News and said the exact thing
There’s definitely a strong resemblance. :-)
The Tiny Ballerina should just disappear!
Maureen was a class act. Ron Jr. and Patty are creeps.
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