{"id":47270,"date":"2026-08-15T20:15:43","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T15:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=47270"},"modified":"2026-08-15T20:15:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T15:15:43","slug":"ronald-reagans-daughter-says-john-hinckley-jr-s-assassination-attempt-shouldnt-be-papered-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=47270","title":{"rendered":"Ronald Reagan\u2019s Daughter Says John Hinckley Jr.\u2019s Assassination Attempt \u2018Shouldn\u2019t Be Papered Over\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5751370\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5751370\" class=\"wp-image-5751370 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/am14.mediaite.com\/med\/cnt\/uploads\/2026\/08\/22-1200x691.jpg\" alt=\"John Hinckley, Mark Joseph and inset: Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan\" width=\"1200\" height=\"691\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-5751370\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenshot; Scott Stewart, AP File Photo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>President Ronald Reagan&#8217;s daughter recounted <strong>John Hinckley Jr.&#8217;s<\/strong> &#8220;cold, calculated plan to kill&#8221; her dad and slammed the would-be assassin&#8217;s recent podcast appearance &#8212; in which he said he wished actress <strong>Jodie Foster<\/strong> well.<\/p>\n<p>In an op-ed for <em>The New York Times<\/em> Saturday, <strong>Patti Davis<\/strong> noted she&#8217;d heard of Hinckley&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=k8-m4mm3dnw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">appearance on <em>The Mark Joseph Show<\/em> podcast this week,<\/a> and called it &#8220;particularly creepy.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/politics\/man-who-shot-ronald-reagan-says-hes-a-victim-of-cancel-culture\/\">Hinckley<\/a> infamously opened fire on Reagan and his security team as they left the Hilton Hotel in Washington D.C. on March 30, 1981 after an event &#8212; in a bizarre bid to &#8220;impress&#8221; Foster, who at the time was an immense Hollywood star.<\/p>\n<p>The shooting left <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reaganlibrary.gov\/permanent-exhibits\/assassination-attempt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reagan hospitalized for 12 days<\/a> and several others, including then-Press Secretary James Brady, partially paralyzed and brain damaged when one of Hinckley&#8217;s bullets struck him in the head.<\/p>\n<p>Davis, 73, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/politics\/john-hinckley-jr-responds-after-apparently-being-flooded-with-election-week-trump-requests-im-a-man-of-peace-now\/\">called out the timing of Hinckley&#8217;s podcast appearance<\/a> and linked it to the release of a new film called &#8220;The Brink of War,&#8221; about Reagan&#8217;s 1986 meeting with Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-12m5bll evys1bk0\">&#8220;I shudder to think what other bookings he\u2019s got lined up,&#8221; she wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Davis went on to recount the devastation wreaked by Hinckley attempt to murder her father:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Mr. Hinckley didn\u2019t wait for a clear shot; he just kept pulling the trigger, and in the process wounded three other people. I want people to visualize that. I want people to remember that during this man\u2019s hospitalization, which ended in 2016, he was writing to Ted Bundy and sought the address of Charles Manson. With the help of his lawyers, he has worked the system for decades and does not seem to be planning to stop.<\/p>\n<p>Because I suspect his timing for this latest reappearance had to do with the release of the film about my father, let me draw my own link between the shooting and that historic meeting with Mr. Gorbachev. Mr. Hinckley\u2019s bullet landed an inch from my father\u2019s heart. He believed God saved his life for a reason: to try to make the world safer and more peaceful. As he recovered, he wrote to Leonid Brezhnev, to no avail. Mr. Gorbachev\u2019s ascent renewed my father\u2019s hope.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly after the shooting, he said that he believed his healing depended on his willingness to forgive John Hinckley, whom he called \u201ca misguided young man.\u201d My father was more spiritually advanced than I am. I do believe in forgiveness, but I make exceptions. I also believe that people can change; I just don\u2019t think John Hinckley is one of those people.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Davis noted many people today are &#8220;too young&#8221; to remember the assassination attempt or &#8220;weren&#8217;t even born yet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But it lives on, because it is a part of history. It shouldn\u2019t be rewritten as the consequence of one man\u2019s troubles, as Mr. Hinckley is trying to do. It shouldn\u2019t be papered over with bizarre statements of cheery good will. That\u2019s not contrition; that\u2019s self-promotion,&#8221; she wrote.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/media\/news\/ronald-reagans-daughter-says-john-hinckley-jr-s-assassination-attempt-shouldnt-be-papered-over\/\">Ronald Reagan\u2019s Daughter Says John Hinckley Jr.\u2019s Assassination Attempt \u2018Shouldn\u2019t Be Papered Over\u2019<\/a> first appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediaite.com\">Mediaite<\/a>.<\/p>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Screenshot; Scott Stewart, AP File Photo President Ronald Reagan&#8217;s daughter recounted John Hinckley Jr.&#8217;s &#8220;cold, calculated plan to kill&#8221; her dad and slammed the would-be assassin&#8217;s recent podcast appearance &#8212; in which he said he wished actress Jodie Foster well. In an op-ed for The New York Times Saturday, Patti Davis noted she&#8217;d heard of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47271,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/am14.mediaite.com\/med\/cnt\/uploads\/2026\/08\/22-1200x691.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsweek-trending"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}