Former President Ronald Reagan’s youngest son believes Donald Trump’s family is using his presidency as a “grift” and that his late father would be “horrified” by the state of the Republican party today.
In an interview with CNN’s Ana Cabrera on “Newsroom” Sunday, Ron Reagan was asked about the way Trump’s children have been involved in his administration and reelection campaign.
“They’re certainly entitled to campaign for their dad,” Reagan said, saying that his siblings did the same for theirs.
“When you cross the line is ― I hate to say it here, I don’t mean to be blunt, but we’ve got a bunch of grifters in the White House. They’re treating this as a grift,” he added.
He said the Trumps were mixing business with pleasure and with statecraft.
“They’re using the hotels and the golf clubs to profit off the presidency,” he said.
He slammed Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, both of whom he said were awarded high-level White House positions despite having “no qualifications whatsoever” for those roles.
“They’re using it to make money, basically,” he said.
Trump and his inner circle have been accused of using his presidency for profit throughout his time in office. He has used his platform to promote his businesses, awarded government and campaign positions to friends and family, and pushed for government business to be conducted at his own venues.
Reagan, a liberal commentator, has been an outspoken critic of Trump in the past. In an interview published by The Daily Beast earlier this year, he said his father would have been embarrassed and ashamed to see a man as “incompetent and traitorous” as Trump in the Oval Office. Despite his views being at odds with those of his conservative father, Reagan said his dad led with dignity and class.
Reagan said Sunday that Trump had done tremendous damage to the GOP.
“When I think of my father, I think of words like integrity, decency, dignity, honor, and patriotism — not nationalism but patriotism — all of those qualities are in very short supply in this White House,” he said.
“And, frankly, the Republican party has been complicit in degrading those values.”
He said his father would be horrified by the Republican party’s “spinelessness in the face of this pathological entity in the White House.”
Watch the interview here.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
