President Ronald Reagan's oldest son Michael said Saturday that his father would not have supported Donald Trump's bid for the presidency, and that there's "nothing really Reaganesque" about the presumptive GOP frontrunner.
"My father was humble," Reagan, the bestselling author of
"Lessons My Father Taught Me" told
CNN's Michael Smerconish. "I mean, my father was humble. That's not what you find in a Donald Trump, I might say."
Trump often compares himself to the late president on the campaign trail, but on Saturday, Michael Reagan said there are many differences between the two men.
"He wasn't demeaning," Reagan, the president of the Reagan Legacy Foundation, told Smerconish of his father. "He didn't talk down to people. He talked with people, which is the complete opposite of what Donald Trump, in fact, does."
Reagan's comments came a few days after a tweet, tagged to Newsmax and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, stating publicly that his father would not have picked Trump:
Reagan also on Saturday told Smerconish he believes that should Trump choose former House Speaker Newt Gingrich as his running mate, that could make Republicans feel better about voting for the New York real estate mogul.
"I think it would be a good choice," Reagan said of Gingrich, with whom he is friends. "He needs somebody who certainly knows Washington. And certainly knows the Congress of the United States of America."
However, that might not be quite enough, as voters make their choice based on the person at the top of the ticket, not the vice president, he said. "What happens is people always vote for the top of the ticket. They don't vote for second place."
He also said Gingrich should tell Trump to show more humility, and that Trump would go a long way toward gathering more enthusiastic support if he would apologize for some of his more controversial comments.
"Donald Trump would go a long way to apologize to the judge, apologizing to Ted Cruz's father, apologizing to Marco Rubio and apologizing to many other people," Reagan said, and if Trump won't humble himself, "he's going to have a lot of trouble winning the election in November."
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