Washington:
Father of a fallen Pakistani-origin Muslim American soldier has lashed out at Donald Trump, saying the Republican presidential nominee has a “black soul” who needs counselling on “empathy”.
“This person is total incapable of empathy. I want his family to counsel him, teach him some empathy. He will be a better person if he could become—but he is a black soul. And this is totally unfit for the leadership of this beautiful country,” Khizr Khan told CNN.
Khan, father of Army Capt Humayun Khan who was killed in Iraq in 2004 in a suicide terrorist attack, came to national spotlight after he delivered an electrifying speech at Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Philadelphia on Thursday. He slammed Trump for his rhetoric like banning Muslims from entering the country.
He asked Trump to “go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America”. “You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
Trump hit back over the remarks that he has “sacrificed nothing” for the country and mocked the soldier’s mother for keeping silent, triggering a bipartisan backlash.
Following a national backlash, Trump late last night made a u-turn and described Humayun as a hero, but called for “vigilance in defeating radical Islamic terrorism”. Khan, who now lives in Virginia, said that Trump is “unfit” to be the leader of the US.
He said Trump’s “policy, his practices, do not reflect that he has any understanding of the basic, fundamental constitutional principles of this country.”
“He talks about excluding people, disrespecting judges, the entire judicial system, immigrants, Muslim immigrants. These are divisive rhetoric that are totally against the basic constitutional principles,” he said.
He slammed Trump’s suggestion that his wife, who was also on stage at the DNC, was not allowed to speak. He said she has high blood pressure and didn’t want to speak for fear she wouldn’t be able to hold herself together discussing her Gold Star son on stage.
“For this candidate for presidency to not be aware of the respect of a Gold Star Mother standing there, and he had to take that shot at her, this is height of ignorance. This is why I showed him that Constitution. Had he read that, he would know what status a Gold Star Mother holds in this nation,” Khan said.
“This country holds such a person in the highest regard. And he has no knowledge, no awareness. That is height of his ignorance. She is ill. She had high blood pressure. People that know her looked at her face, and she said, ‘I may fall off the stage’. And I told her that, You have to assemble yourself and stand for the beauty of this tribute that is being paid,” Khan said in response to a question.
