I was Donald's closest friend

Roger's the first one who introduced us to Donald, and Donald was one of our clients at Black, Manafort, Stone in the early 80s and was a client of ours for a long time.

Madam President, there are many of us who will come to the floor this afternoon to pay tribute to one of the great Presidents in American history. Many of us will recollect times and experiences and contacts we had with President Reagan and the way he inspired us personally as well as a nation. When I was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, the Vietnamese went to great lengths to restrict the news from home to the statements and activities of prominent opponents of the war in Vietnam. They wanted us to believe America had forgotten us. They never mentioned Ronald Reagan to us or played his speeches over the camp loud speakers. No matter. We knew about him. New additions to our ranks told us how the Governor and Mrs. Reagan were committed to our liberation and our cause. When we came home, all of us were eager to meet the Reagans, to thank them for their concern. But more than gratitude drew us to them. We were drawn to them because they were among the few prominent Americans who did not subscribe to the then-fashionable notion that America had entered her inevitable decline.

Donald was to my grandfather what the border wall has been for Donald: a vanity project funded at the expense of more worthy pursuits. Fred didn't groom Donald to succeed him; when he was in his right mind, he wouldn't trust Trump management to anybody. Instead, he used Donald, despite his failures and poor judgment, as the public face of his own thwarted ambition. Fred kept propping up Donald's false sense of accomplishment until the only asset Donald had was the ease with which he could be duped by more powerful men. There was a long line of people willing to take advantage of him. In the 1980s, New York journalists and gossip columnists discovered that Donald couldn't distinguish between mockery and flattery and used his shamelessness to sell papers. That image, and the weakness of the man it represented, were precisely what appealed to .

During that time, he asked me for my phone number, which I gave to him. Later that evening, he invited me to his room. I said I didn’t feel right going alone, so two other women came with me. In the penthouse suite, I met Donald again. When we entered the room he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each of us on the lips without asking for permission. He was wearing pyjamas. [...] Donald then asked me "What do you want?" "How much?"

I had a soft spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth, and also because his wife gave the best head in Hollywood.

Mr. President and Mrs. Reagan and friends of my brother here at this ceremony and everywhere, on behalf of Ethel and her children and all the members of our family, let me thank you, Mr. President, for this great honor that you have given to Robert Kennedy. And it is appropriate that he should receive it from you, for he understood so well that the common love of our country transcends all party identification and all partisan difference. And you should know that after he debated you on international television in 1967, my brother Bob said that Ronald Reagan was the toughest debater he ever faced and, obviously, he was right.

Through the French doors, I could see the meeting... Vice President Mike Pence... Paul Ryan... Chuck Schumer, and a dozen other congresspeople were gathered around Donald, who sat behind the Resolute Desk. The tableau reminded me of my grandfather's tactics: he always made his supplicants come to him... and he remained seated while they stood.

Mr. President, today, we celebrate the birthday of a giant, Ronald Reagan. America is indebted to President Reagan for reviving our national spirit and ensuring that we prevailed in that "long twilight struggle" against soviet totalitarianism. His leadership not only revitalized our economy, but gave us a rebirth of patriotism and national greatness. My fellow Vietnam Prisoners of War share a special affection for Ronald Reagan. Word of his steadfastness against aggression even reached us in our cells thousands of miles away from freedom. When we were released, he befriended and supported us. He understood and appreciated the "noble cause" for which so many brave Americans made the ultimate sacrifice. Today, America enjoys unprecedented peace and prosperity largely due to the policies of Ronald Reagan. So, to celebrate your 90th birthday, we salute you President Reagan, a brave soldier in the battle for freedom.

Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of the twentieth century.

Whether you love or hate Ronald Reagan, he was a great leader. He really fundamentally changed America.

I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his.

I am thinking that Ronald Reagan is the same age as my father. They have some things in common. They are both young in spirit, buoyant, well-preserved, and optimistic. Beyond that, I can find only outstanding differences. The President is either ignorant of, or unconcerned by the ills of the world about which my father and I have been speaking. He is particularly immune to any part America may have in engendering these ills, as he dislikes the inconvenience of thinking beyond his own definitions of good-guys/bad-guys, and also doesn't like to be depressed. His pleasant, bumbling demeanor is preferable to the murderous efficiency of Kissinger and Kirkpatrick, but on the other hand, he is involved in the same dark and bloody deeds, all done under the same vast, all-encompassing and convenient banner of anticommunism. He feels that God is on his side, and that he really can do no wrong. What piques me is how this man and his followers can write off someone like my father. Because of my father's protestations about the raping of the Amazon forests, the pollution of our rivers, the misuse and depletion of natural energy, and the poisoning our children's air, people like my father are explained away with the flick of a wrist as a doomsayer, a depressive, a pessimistic liberal.

Ronald Reagan is a triumph of the embalmer's art.