During the course of his bizarre presidential campaign, Donald Trump has made countless scandalous statements that would have disqualified a normal candidate. He has mimicked a disabled man, insinuated that a conservative reporter asked him a tough question because she was menstruating and suggested that the Republicans’ 2012 nominee Mitt Romney would have traded oral sex for his endorsement.
So far, Trump’s Teflon veneer has held firm. Support from his hard-core supporters has not wavered, and it is not likely to. These are the same clueless voters who elected George W. Bush, twice.
But just hours after the general election began, Trump disparaged the parents of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who was killed in action in Iraq in 2004. In particular, Trump smeared Capt. Khan’s mother, Ghazala, by insinuating husband forced her to be silent while he addressed the Democratic National Convention Thursday night.
Now Ghazala Khan is speaking out.
At the Democratic Convention Thursday night, Capt. Khan’s father, Khizer Kahn, called out Trump’s bellicose style. “Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims,” Kahn said. “He disrespects other minorities: women, judges, even his own party leadership.”
With Ghazala standing silently beside him, Khizr Khan offered to lend Trump his copy of the U.S. Constitution. “Let me ask you,” Khan said, “Have you even read the United States constitution?”
Khan drove his point. “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Trump chose to attack the Khans with an Islamaphobic smear against the fundamentalist practice found in all three Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — of requiring women to be subservient.
“If you look at his wife,” Trump said, “she was standing there, she had nothing to say, she probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say, you tell me.”
In an interview with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, Trump also said, “I’d like to hear his wife say something.”
As it happens, Ghazala Khan had spoken publicly before Trump attacked. She was interviewed Friday night by Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC.
“First of all,” Ghazala said, “I thank of all America who listened from their heart to my husband’s and my heart. And I’m so grateful for that. It was very nervous because I cannot see my son’s picture. I cannot even come in the room where his pictures are. That’s why when I saw the picture [of her son projected behind the podium], I couldn’t take it, and I controlled myself at that time. So… It is very hard.”
Now she has written an op-ed for the Washington Post. Here is part of what she wrote:
Donald Trump said I had nothing to say. I do. My son Humayun Khan, an Army captain, died 12 years ago in Iraq. He loved America, where we moved when he was two years old. He had volunteered to help his country, signing up for the ROTC at the University of Virginia. This was before the attack of Sept. 11, 2001. He didn’t have to do this, but he wanted to.
When Humayun was sent to Iraq, my husband and I worried about his safety. I had already been through one war, in Pakistan in 1965, when I was just a high school student. So I was very scared. You can sacrifice yourself, but you cannot take it that your kids will do this.
We asked if there was some way he could not go, because he had already done his service. He said it was his duty. I cannot forget when he was going to the plane, and he looked back at me. He was happy, and giving me strength: “Don’t worry, Mom. Everything will be all right.”
The last time I spoke to my son was on Mother’s Day 2004. We had asked him to call us collect whenever he could. I begged him to be safe. I asked him to stay back, and not to go running around trying to become a hero, because I knew he would do something like that.
He said, “Mom, these are my soldiers, these are my people. I have to take care of them.” He was killed by a car bomber outside the gates of his base. He died trying to save his soldiers and innocent civilians.”
She said the loss of her son is still unbearable even after all these years. “I cannot walk into a room with pictures of Humayun,” she wrote. “For all these years, I haven’t been able to clean the closet where his things are — I had to ask my daughter-in-law to do it.”
She reiterated that seeing her son’s photo behind the podium at the convention nearly made her lose her composure.
“Donald Trump has children whom he loves,” she wrote. “Does he really need to wonder why I did not speak?”
