Comparisons have recently been drawn between the Reagan years and concerns over President Joe Biden’s fitness to serve in office — while Saturday’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump also hearkened back to the 1980s.
Peggy Grande, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s executive assistant during his post-presidency years, spoke to The Post just moments after Trump was shot in the ear at a rally in Butler, Pa. Saturday evening.
Reagan himself survived an attempt to take his life in 1981.
“All the early reporting when Reagan was shot, you know, wasn’t quite what they thought it was, so it just grazed him. And if so, [Trump] is the luckiest man on the planet,” Grande said as details were still emerging about the tragic situation at Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania.
“He is standing for something bigger than himself. He knows that he is out there and that he puts himself out in that danger every single day, every time he does a rally, not for himself, but for the American people. What a fighter. To stand up and to have that be his instinct to fist pump and say, ‘Fight, fight, fight.’ I mean, the awareness,” she said of Trump.
Grande, who is also a California delegate for at the Republican National Convention this week in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, addressed those who are comparing concerns about Reagan’s age during his own 1984 re-election campaign and later presidency to Biden’s own woes following a poor debate performance last month.
The former Reagan staffer suggested that it has less to do with age and more to do with cognitive capability.
“There is no similarity between the two. I mean, father time equally comes after all of us, and we’ve all watched grandma and grandpa, and our parents, and aunts and uncles. Everybody ages. There’s nothing we can do about that. Some age more easily and gracefully, and some struggle at different ages. It’s not about the age,” said Grande, author of “The President Will See You Now.”
“And to go after President Reagan, who lived for 15 years after he left the White House about his cognitive issues is completely unconnected. He was transparent with the American people, but that was five years after he had left office.”
“Joe Biden is sitting in the Oval Office currently, and not only do people feel like they have been lied to, that this has not been a transparent process, but now they’re getting angry and beyond the anger comes worry. This is a man who, it’s not just us seeing this, it’s the world seeing this,” she added.
Reagan died in June 2004, which was a decade after he announced his Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis in a letter to the American public. Grande worked for him from 1989 up until 1999.
“Our enemies are looking at this probably thinking that they’ve got a small window of time before Joe Biden leaves office, where they have a very weak commander-in-chief in the Oval Office. And so to compare to Reagan, everybody’s entitled to age. Reagan did it beautifully and was very transparent with the American people, with his beautiful letter that he wrote talking about going into the sunset of his life. But he wasn’t holding the nuclear codes at that time, like Joe Biden is.”
Follow The Post’s latest stories on the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump:
- Trump says he ‘felt the bullet ripping through my skin’ in first statement since assassination attempt
- Donald Trump urges the nation to not let ‘evil win’ and ‘fear not’ after shooting
- Gunman behind attempted assassination on Trump had head blown off by Secret Service, sources say; rally-goer killed
- Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks was loner ‘relentlessly’ bullied in high school: classmate
- How Trump’s split-second head turn may have saved his life from assassin’s bullet
- Ex-volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore ID’d as Trump sniper victim, shielded his daughter from assassin’s bullets
- Search for Trump shooter’s motive delayed by explosives found in home and car: sources
Keep up to date on updates with the Post’s live blog on the assassination attempt on Trump
In the letter penned on Nov. 5, 1994, Reagan displayed an optimistic vision for the US.
“I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead,” he wrote.
The assassination attempt has served as a turning point in the presidential race, as both Biden and Trump called on Saturday night. Meanwhile, Biden continues to say he will remain in the race, but questions loom as more leaders in the Democratic Party call on him to pass the torch.