Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis has defended Meghan and Harry and said ‘you have no idea what it’s like to walk in their shoes’.
Davis, 68, fiercely opposed many of President Reagan’s policies including being an vocal supporter of the anti-nuclear movement.
In an op-ed for The Daily Beast Tuesday she reveals she was once called ‘an argument for abortion’ for publicly slamming her father’s politics.
Davis writes: ‘For anyone who sees fit to criticize Meghan and Harry for choosing to tell their truth, I would like to suggest that you have no idea what it feels like to be vilified publicly.
‘Because my father was president, our family drama traveled across the seas. A celebrity in the UK said I was an argument for abortion.’
Calling herself a former ‘favorite topic of derision in the media’, Davis adds: ‘There is no level playing field for speaking your truth when you are a public figure embroiled in a family dispute.
‘You’re always going to be trudging uphill, trying to balance the weight of what you shouldn’t say with the truths you want people to know.’
Davis was dubbed the ‘Reagan family’s number one outcast’ and made headlines during the 1980s and 1990s as she protested her father’s policies and wrote novels and autobiographies about her own family.
Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis, pictured at her mother’s funeral in 2016, has defended Meghan and Harry and said ‘you have no idea what it’s like to walk in their shoes’
Harry and Meghan sat down for a tell all interview with Oprah, which aired Sunday night, in which the Duchess described feeling so isolated and miserable inside the royal family that she had had suicidal thoughts.
She also said a member of the family had expressed ‘concerns’ to Harry about the color of her unborn child´s skin.
Harry also revealed the ruptured relations with his father, Prince Charles, and his brother, Prince William; divisions that led the couple to step away from royal duties and move to California last year.
Harry and Meghan sat down for a tell all interview with Oprah, which aired Sunday night
Davis said Tuesday she ‘had it easier’ than Harry and Meghan because there was no social media, adding: ‘I was excoriated for speaking at anti-nuclear rallies in defiance of my father’s policies, and later writing a book that revealed in detail my family’s turmoil and tensions.
‘But my nightmare was newsstands and people on television and radio, not an entire world of nastiness as close as my computer screen.’
She notes ‘there is nowhere you can go to escape the opinions, the criticism, and the threats from hordes of people who you will never meet’.
‘The best that everyone else can do is realize they have no idea what it’s like to walk in their shoes, and they never will,’ Davis adds.
Davis, 68, fiercely opposed many of President Reagan’s policies including being an vocal supporter of the anti-nuclear movement. In an op-ed for The Daily Beast Tuesday she reveals she was once called ‘an argument for abortion’ for publicly slamming her father’s politics. She is pictured with her father, center, after his assasination attempt, and mother, left
President Ronald Reagan escorts his daughter Patti Davis at her wedding. The father and daughter reconciled after being estranged for many years
Davis’ first novel, Home Front, followed the life of a rebellious daughter to a California governor – the same position Reagan held before he became president.
Released just a year after Reagan’s reelection, the former Hollywood actor used his connections to get his daughter banned from the talk show circuit as she tried to drum up publicity for the book.
In 1992 Davis released The Way I See It, an autobiography in which she claimed her mother Nancy Reagan would routinely pop tranquilizers – despite her infamous ‘Just Say No’ drug campaign.
Davis also claimed that her mother would slap her daily as a child and even monitored her bathroom schedules and what she could tell her therapist.
‘I felt it was time to tell the truth,’ Davis told the Baltimore Sun at the time. ‘It if was money and exploitation I was after, I could have written it at election time.’
Former U.S. first lady Nancy Reagan (1921-2016), center, and her children Ronald Prescott Reagan and Patti Davis at Ronald Reagan’s funeral in 2004. The 40th president of the United States died aged 93 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease
Davis says she ‘had it easier then’ because there was no social media She notes ‘there is nowhere you can go to escape the opinions, the criticism, and the threats from hordes of people who you will never meet’
The Reagans issued a statement at the time, saying they were ‘saddened’ by their daughter’s ‘false’ charges, but refused to comment further.
Just two years later Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease and Davis began to mend their broken relationship.
Writing of her father’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease later in life, Davis said she was able to reconcile her differences with both her parents.
Ronald Reagan died in 2004 prompting an outpouring of grief across the country, and tributes on both sides of the house.
Nancy Reagan died in 2016 and Patti spoke at her funeral service.