On Thursday, Khizr M. Khan gave a moving speech that he wrote himself to the Democratic National Convention about his son, Captain Humayun Khan, who died in Iraq in 2004, and about Donald Trump’s plans to openly discriminate against Muslims. “You have sacrificed nothing and no one,” he said. His wife stood silently beside him.
On Friday, the Khans appeared on MSNBC’s The Last Word, during which they said that Ghazala Khan did not speak becasue it would have been too painful for her—she is still grieving.
On Saturday, however, Donald Trump, first in the New York Times and then on ABC, implied that Ghazala Khan was not allowed to speak, which was quickly taken to be an Islamophobic insinuation (that is, Trump suggested Ghazala was not allowed to speak because she is Muslim, not because, as she had already said, it would have been too painful for her). Also, he said that he has sacrificed a lot.
And so, on Sunday, Khizr M. Khan was back in the press, this time telling the Washington Post that Donald Trump’s comments against his wife were “typical of a person without a soul.” Since Trump had gone on to release a statement that Khan’s son was a hero but “radical Islamic terrorists” are the real problem, Khan went on, too.
From the Washington Post:
Responding to Trump’s latest statement, Khan said, “This is faked empathy.”
“What he said originally — that defines him . . . That proves that this person is void of empathy. He is unfit for the stewardship of this great country. You think he will empathize with this country, with the suffering of this country’s poor people? He showed his true colors when he disrespected this country’s most honorable mother… all the snake oil he is selling, and my patriotic, decent Americans are falling for that.”
Trump responded on Twitter.
