So when Karen Meredith heard the grieving parents of a decorated Muslim Army officer being belittled by Donald Trump, she cried. “You’re going to get attacked”.
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Trump’s criticism of Khizr Khan and Ghazala Khan, who took the stage at last week’s Democratic convention, sparked growing concern and dismay from Republican lawmakers responding to the latest Trump outburst to blindside his party colleagues. And he disputed their right to question his grasp of the Constitution. “The notion that he would attack a Gold Star family that had made suck extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country, the fact that he doesn’t appear to have basic knowledge around critical issues in Europe, in the middle east, in Asia means that he’s woefully unprepared to do this job”.
“First and foremost, the thing that appeals to me about Trump is his willingness to speak and not be politically correct and say some things that people like myself and others that I know have been thinking and saying for a long time”, Harris said. “I don’t doubt they were outraged about some of the statements that Mr. Trump and his supporters made about the Khan family”, he said.
Back in January, the Republican presidential hopeful said the USA military was “a disaster”, and last month he told a Virginia TV station “we have a military that’s depleted and in disgusting shape”.
Celeste Zappala, who also signed the letter, said the grief that Gold Star families suffer earns them the right to say whatever they want.
Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa said Trump’s comments “are not in line with my own beliefs about how the members of the military and their families should be treated”.
“Mr. Trump has made a firestorm happen that didn’t need to happen and that insults everybody who served”, said Zappala, of Philadelphia. “Nobody should say anything other than ‘Thank you for your service'”.
His counterpart on the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Mac Thornberry of Texas, echoed McCain, saying in a statement he was “dismayed at the attacks Khizr and Ghazala Khan have endured after they spoke about their son’s service and sacrifice”. Her brother, Marine 1st Lt. Travis Manion, was killed in Iraq in 2007.
She said that her son told her, “Mom these are my soldiers, these are my people”. Arizona Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said that while the party has bestowed upon Trump the nomination, “it is not accompanied by unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us”.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars said it won’t tolerate anyone berating a Gold Star family member for exercising his or her right to free speech. He didn’t mention Trump by name but implicitly rebuked him for criticizing the Khan family.
“No one has given more for our freedom and our security than our Gold Star families”, Obama said Monday, in a speech to the Disabled American Veterans in Atlanta. “This is daily and weekly where they are distancing themselves from statements he’s making”. Mrs. Khan said that she had begged her son to stay safe while fighting and to not try to be a hero because she knew “he would do something like that”. Army Spc. Christopher Neiberger was killed in Iraq in 2007.
Khan then told Trump to go to the Arlington National cemetery and see that there were soldiers buried there of every ethnicity.
“There’s no question that Donald Trump is making it very hard for House and Senate candidates who are running on the ballot in November”, said Brian Walsh, a Republican strategist and former spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “I actually saw her standing there as a kind of strength”.
Another group, VoteVets, published a letter from Gold Star families demanding an apology.
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“I think what’s been interesting is the repeated denunciations of his statements by leading Republicans”, he said in a press conference.
