Trump belittles the mother of dead soldier
Comment provokes social media backlash
JOHNSTOWN: Donald Trump belittled the parents of a slain Muslim soldier who had strongly denounced Mr Trump during the Democratic National Convention, saying that the soldier’s father had delivered the entire speech because his mother was not “allowed” to speak.
Mr Trump’s comments, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, drew quick and widespread condemnation and amplified calls for Republican leaders to distance themselves from their presidential nominee. With his implication that the soldier’s mother had not spoken because of female subservience expected in some traditional strains of Islam, his comments also inflamed his hostilities with US Muslims.
Khizr Khan, the soldier’s father, lashed out at Mr Trump in an interview on Saturday, saying his wife had not spoken at the convention because it was too painful for her to talk about her son’s death.
Mr Trump, he said, “is devoid of feeling the pain of a mother who has sacrificed her son”.
Governor John Kasich, a rival of Mr Trump’s in the Republican primaries who has refused to endorse him, castigated him on Twitter. “There’s only one way to talk about Gold Star parents: with honour and respect,” he wrote, using the term for surviving family members of those who died in war.
And Hillary Clinton, Mr Trump’s Democratic opponent, said he “was not a normal presidential candidate”.
“Someone who attacks everybody has something missing,” she told a crowd in Youngstown, Ohio. “I don’t know what it is. I’m not going to get into that.”
Mr Khan’s speech at the convention in Philadelphia was one of the most powerful given there. It was effectively the Democratic response to comments Mr Trump has made implying many US Muslims have terrorist sympathies or stay silent when they know ones who do. Mr Trump has called for a ban on Muslim immigration as a way to combat terrorism.
At the convention, Mr Khan spoke about how his 27-year-old son, Humayun Khan, an army captain, had died in a car bombing in 2004 in Iraq as he tried to save other soldiers.
He criticised Mr Trump, saying he “consistently smears the character of Muslims”, and pointedly challenged what sacrifices Mr Trump had made. Holding a pocket-size copy of the US Constitution, he asked if Mr Trump had read it. Mr Khan’s wife, Ghazala, stood silently by his side.
Mr Trump told Stephanopoulos that Khizr Khan seemed like a “nice guy” and that he wished him “the best of luck”. But, he added: “If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say. She probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed — to have anything to say. You tell me.”
Mr Trump also told journalist Maureen Dowd on Friday night: “I’d like to hear his wife say something.”
Ghazala Khan did speak on Friday to MSNBC, saying she “cannot even come in the room where his pictures are”.
When she saw her son’s photograph on the screen behind her on the stage in Philadelphia, she said: “I couldn’t take it. I controlled myself at that time.” She spoke while choking back tears. “It is very hard.”
In a statement late on Saturday, Mr Trump called Humayun Khan a “hero” and reiterated his belief that the US should bar Muslims from entering the country. “While I feel deeply for the loss of his son,” he added, “Mr Khan, who has never met me, has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution, [which is false] and say many other inaccurate things.”
Even given Mr Trump’s reputation for retaliating when attacked, his remarks about the Khans were startling. They called to mind one of his earliest counter-punches of the campaign, when he responded to criticism from Senator John McCain, once a prisoner of war in Vietnam, by saying at an Iowa forum: “I like people that weren’t captured.”
In his interview with The New York Times, Khizr Khan said his wife had helped him craft his convention speech and told him to remove certain attacks he had wanted to make against Mr Trump. But on Saturday he unmuzzled himself.
“Unlike Donald Trump’s wife, I didn’t plagiarise my speech,” Mr Khan said, referring to how several lines from a Michelle Obama speech found their way into Melania Trump’s address at the Republican convention. “I also wanted to talk about how he’s had three wives and yet he talks about others’ ethics and their religion,” Mr Khan said. “She said, ‘Don’t go to his level. We are paying tribute to our son’.”
Mr Trump’s comments provoked another avalanche of criticism on social media and again put Republican leaders in a difficult position, facing new demands that they repudiate their presidential nominee.
Even before Mr Trump’s remarks to ABC News, Mr Khan had asked that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, and Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the House speaker, denounce Mr Trump.
On Saturday, neither directly addressed Mr Trump’s new comments. Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr McConnell, referred to Mr McConnell’s response late last year that a ban on Muslims entering the US would be unacceptable.
AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Mr Ryan, delivered a similar response: “The speaker has made clear many times that he rejects this idea and himself has talked about how Muslim Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice for this country.”
In the same ABC News interview, when Stephanopoulos said that Mr Khan had pointed out that his family would not have been allowed into the US under Mr Trump’s proposed ban, the candidate replied: “He doesn’t know that.”
And when asked what he would say to the grieving father, Mr Trump replied: “I’d say, ‘We’ve had a lot of problems with radical Islamic terrorism’.”
Stephanopoulos also noted Mr Khan said Mr Trump had “sacrificed nothing” and had lost no one. “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices,” Mr Trump replied. “I’ve worked very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs.”
Some of the fiercest condemnations came from Republicans who have argued — unsuccessfully to date — that Mr Trump is unfit to be president.
Tim Miller, a former communications director for Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, called Mr Trump’s comments “inhuman”.
“Memo to Trump supporters,” Peter Wehner, a speechwriter for former president George W Bush, wrote on Twitter. “He’s a man of sadistic cruelty. With him there’s no bottom. Now go ahead & defend him.”
Reihan Salam, a conservative writer for National Review, said Mr Trump had an opportunity to declare remorse for the Khans while still holding to his own views.
“He might have asked why Humayun Khan had died in the first place — because of a war that many if not most Americans regard as a tragic blunder,” he said.