Donald Trump isn’t making it easy to be a Republican in 2016.
Some GOP lawmakers are looking for a way to distance themselves from their anointed standard-bearer, after the Republican presidential nominee, in what certainly seemed like a new low, hurled an attack at the bereaved parents of a Muslim American soldier who died in a car bombing in Iraq while trying to save other troops.
Khizr Khan, father of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, had given an emotional seven-minute speech last week at the Democratic National Convention invoking the memory of his son, who died in 2004. Humayun Khan was 27.
In his speech, Khizr Khan challenged Trump’s comments about Muslims and his call to halt Muslim immigration to the United States. He said Trump has “sacrificed nothing and no one.”
I've made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard.
Donald Trump, seeking to tell the Khans, that like them, he had sacrificed for this country.
“Let me ask you: Have you even read the U.S. Constitution?” he rhetorically asked Trump as he pulled a copy from his suit jacket pocket. “I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words ‘liberty’ and ‘equal protection of law.’”
Trump, in a statement Saturday, said Khan “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.”