The daughter of former President Ronald Reagan, who was the oldest president ever elected when he assumed office, on Sunday endorsed the idea of cognitive tests for presidential candidates.
“Probably, yeah,” Patti Davis told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” in response to a question about whether there should be cognitive tests for presidential candidates.
She added, “Just what we know about what age can do — it doesn’t always do that — but it would probably be a good idea.”
When Reagan was elected in 1980, he was 69 and set the record for being the oldest president ever elected.
Since then, former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden have each broken that record, with Trump being elected in 2016 at 70 and Biden being elected in 2020 at 78.
“My father was 77 when he left office,” Davis said, adding: “That seems so young now doesn’t it?”
Reagan announced his Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis in 1994 at the age of 83, five years after he left office.
Davis added that Reagan would be “appalled” by the state of today’s politics, including the negative rhetoric coming from both sides of the political spectrum.
She said he “would be really scared for our democracy” if he were alive to witness politics today.
“He didn’t understand lack of civility. He didn’t understand attacking another person,” Davis told NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
“He didn’t understand cruelty, and that’s what we’re dealing with now,” she added.
Davis, who has never been a Republican, has previously criticized the GOP. She said Republicans are disgracing her father’s legacy by not speaking out more fervently against Trump, even telling CNN in 2019 that Reagan would be “horrified” by Trump’s America.
Davis wrote about her life and her relationship with her parents, which was strained at times, including during her father’s presidency, in a new book called, “Dear Mom and Dad: A Letter About Family, Memory, and the America We Once Knew.”
