The parents of a US Muslim soldier who was slain in a 2004 car bombing in Iraq reiterated Monday their rebuke of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who criticized their appearance Thursday at the Democratic convention.
Khizr Khan, the father of Army Captain Humayun S. M. Khan, told NBC’s “Today” show that the outpouring of support has reaffirmed his belief in the goodness of America, but the candidate’s remarks over the weekend proved the point Khan made at the convention.
“He can get up and malign the entire nation, the religions, the communities, the minorities, the judges, and yet, a private citizen in this political process, in his candidacy for stewardship of this country, I cannot say what I feel? That proves the point. He has not read the Constitution of this country. Had he read that, his behavior would be different.”
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Ghazala Khan also addressed Trump’s insinuation that she didn’t speak at the convention because she was not allowed to. On Thursday, Khan had stood silently by her husband’s side as he addressed the audience.
“My religion doesn’t prohibit me [from doing] whatever I want for the goodness of mankind and for the goodness of myself,” she told the “Today” show.
Khan has previously said her son’s death 12 years ago remains painful for her.
“I cannot walk into a room with pictures of Humayun. For all these years, I haven’t been able to clean the closet where his things are,” she wrote in a column for The Washington Post.
The Khans also spoke with CNN Monday, and apparently Trump was watching as he tweeted during that appearance that the “story is not about Mr. Khan . . . but rather RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM.”
This story is not about Mr. Khan, who is all over the place doing interviews, but rather RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM and the U.S. Get smart!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2016
Mr. Khan, who does not know me, viciously attacked me from the stage of the DNC and is now all over T.V. doing the same - Nice!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2016
Khizr Khan told CNN that he and his wife “want to be out of this controversy.”
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“That is not our style. . . . This is not our path.”
Several Republicans, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, have further distanced themselves from their party’s candidate in the wake of his remarks.
Comedian John Oliver also tackled the controversy on his HBO show, calling Trump a “self-serving half-man.”
“Honestly, the main takeaway from these two weeks [of the conventions] is that incredibly, we may be on the brink of electing such a damaged, sociopathic narcissist that the simple presidential duty of comforting the families of fallen soldiers may actually be beyond his capabilities, and I genuinely did not think that that was a part of the job that someone could be bad at.”
(Warning: Contains language that may be offensive to some)
Material from the Associated Press was included in this report. Nicole Hernandez can be reached at nicole.hernandez@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @NRHSJax.