President Obama just ripped into Donald Trump and the Republican leaders who continue to support him.
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Trump criticized Obama in an interview hours after Obama had declared at a news conference that Trump is “unfit to serve as president”. Khan cited his son, Captain Humayun Khan who died serving in the Iraq War, for why Trump’s rhetoric is disrespectful to many Americans, but the billionaire real estate mogul quickly became defensive. The Pakistan-born Khan told the story of his son, US Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart after his death in 2004.
“For me, it is not enough to simply denounce his comments: He is unfit to serve our party and can not lead this country”, Hanna wrote in the letter posted on syracuse.com, the website of the Post-Standard newspaper in NY.
“This isn’t a situation where you have an episodic gaffe (from Trump). This is daily and weekly where they are distancing themselves from statements he’s making”.
Obama said that denunciations from Republicans of Trump’s remarks “ring hollow” without an accompanying withdrawal of support.
But Khizr Khan says that although the family has received hate mail and threats, the overwhelming support from strangers – from cabdrivers to teenage college students – is what has stayed with him. And, Ghazala Khan had spoken to the press about her son the day after the convention – and before Trump’s dig.
Trump has come under fire from within and without his party for his comments regarding the Khans.
Pierson has had a fast rise to one of the most visible positions in the Trump campaign.
Mr Trump released a statement on Tuesday afternoon responding to “President Obama’s failed leadership” but did not directly address the president’s criticisms.
“I never expect to agree (completely) with whoever is president, but at a minimum the president needs to consistently display those qualities I have preached to my two children: kindness, honesty, dignity, compassion and respect…” Then he turned his sights on other Republicans – the party leaders who keep expressing discomfort with Trump, yet still endorse him.
Fresh from his brash and futile intervention in the British vote to leave the European Union, President Obama has set out this time to reform the Republican Party, replace Donald Trump as the party’s nominee, and tutor Republicans in how, if they really try, they can be more like him.
But at least one Republican legislator has publicly announced a decision to vote for Trump’s Democratic rival.
The families are demanding that Trump should make a public apology to the Khans.
Barack Obama has been steadily upping the pressure on Donald Trump’s Republican Party supporters. His primary opponent, former Arizona state Senator Dr. Kelli Ward, immediately called McCain out for falling for the “cynical political stunt cooked up by the Clinton Establishment”.
“Had they won, I would have been disappointed but I would have said to all Americans … this is our president and I know they’re going to abide by certain norms and rules and common sense, will observe basic decency, will have enough knowledge about economic policy and foreign policy and our constitutional traditions and rule of law that our government will work”, he said.
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The president’s contempt for Republicans is well known, and he is entitled to his opinion of Donald Trump, but his clumsy intervention in the campaign just now getting under way is without modern precedent.
