Michael Reagan reflects on the JFK Assassination [VIDEO]
One person who vividly remembers the day J.F.K. died, is a man who's father would one day be president himself. Michael Reagan, son of Ronald Reagan, told CBS 13 he worried the same thing might happen to his dad. Including the day, it almost did
“He would give it all to Secret Service because he trusted them,” said Reagan.
Political commentator Michael Reagan said his father, Ronald Reagan, always trusted the secret service. He trusted them, literally, with his life. Michael Reagan did too, but worried for his father.
“And you think about that as the son or the daughter of a father who is president. And all of a sudden you have secret service in your life. This is something you think of more so maybe for your dad,”
A worry grounded, he says, in what happened November 22nd, 1963. Michael was a teenager in school in California that day, and he was also among the first at his school, to hear the news.
“When I went to class, I told everyone in class, 'The President of the United States has been shot.' They all laughed at me, thought I was kidding. I said, 'No. I'm not kidding. He's dead.' And a couple of minutes later the announcement came over the loudspeaker,” Reagan said.
Twenty years later, Michael Reagan was in California again. He got the news another president, his father, had been shot.
“You know, Mike Loody, was my agent-in-charge of my detail that day, in California. And I asked, Mike Loody, 'Mike, how in the hell can you allow someone to get that close to my father and shoot him? With all the Secret Service around him?' Mike Loody said this to me, I'll never forget. He said, 'Michael, you know we train 24-7 to protect you, your son, and the family. That's what we do. The one thing we'll never be able to do is train well enough to protect people from the crazies.' And John Hinkley was a crazy,” Reagan recalled.
Reagan says it's clear the secret service is constantly adapting, learning from events like the Kennedy assassination, and the attempt on Ronald Reagan, to anticipate any weakness, and try to prevent anything like those events from ever happening again.
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Source: WGME 13