But given that Trump’s faithful supporters have never found reason to desert him yet, it seems unlikely that his public showdown with Khizr and Ghazala Khan and a blind spot on Russian Federation policy will cause them to dump him now.
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McCain said at fund-raiser in the spring that Trump’s spot at the top of the ticket made McCain’s Senate re-election campaign the “race of my life”.
“Gold Star families deserve our utmost respect and admiration”, said Scott, whose brother received the highest rank in the U.S. Army for an enlisted soldier.
Meredith said she hadn’t wept over her son’s death for a long time, but the Republican presidential nominee “ripped the wounds right open again”. Mick Mulvaney, Jeff Duncan and Joe Wilson – as well as a statement from Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster, who was challenged Monday by S.C. House Democratic Leader Todd Rutherford to pull his endorsement of Trump.
Ryan Manion Borek, a Republican from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, said she is happy the Khans got to share their son’s story and hopes the backlash prompts both candidates to address Gold Star issues.
Pence’s late Sunday statement came after an afternoon of debate among his aides as to whether he should find a way to subtly distance himself from Trump’s comments, according to a person familiar with the internal campaign conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.
Noting he’d sat and grieved with families of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama said he’s specifically asked for a Gold Star mother – Sharon Belkofer – to introduce him ahead of his remarks at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last week. During the speech, Ghazala Khan stood quietly by his side.
Trump responded in an interview with ABC’s “This Week”, saying: “If you look at his wife, she was standing there”.
The Khans bristled at that suggestion and, in numerous television appearances over the weekend, said Trump was ignorant about Islam and about their family’s sacrifice. “She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say”. “Every day, whenever I pray, I have to pray for him, and I cry”, she wrote. “The place that emptied will always be empty”, she wrote. He also questioned whether Ghazala Khan had been forced to be quiet, alluding to the suppression of women in the most fundamentalist and extreme of Muslim communities. “Hillary voted for the Iraq war, not me!”
In his statement, McCain recalled how Humayun Khan died, saying that when a suicide bomber aimed his vehicle toward a building housing hundreds of USA soldiers, the captain told his subordinates to stay away, then ran toward it.
That doesn’t matter, said Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who enthusiastically endorsed Trump at the Republican convention.
“I watched Khan’s speech at the Democratic convention and I was touched”, said Arlington Cemetery visitor Gage Huey.
Lastly, I’d like to say to Mr. and Mrs. Khan: thank you for immigrating to America. “I’ve gone to too many funerals, met too many families. What they’ve sacrificed is just unbelievable”.
“The Khan family has chosen to promote their religion and promote freedom for people in the religion in their country from their son’s sacrifice”, he said, “and I think that’s a handsome thing”. The Republican leaders defended the soldier’s family without mentioning Trump by name. Their immediate goal is to keep Trump enmeshed in a fight against the Khans.
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Trump drew similar opprobrium a year ago when he said McCain, who as a naval aviator was shot down and taken prisoner during the Vietnam War, was not a hero since he had been captured.
