Washington: Lashing out at Donald Trump, the father of a fallen Pakistani-origin Muslim American soldier today said 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 wherein 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.
Responding to a question, Khan said he appreciates the late night statement of Trump in which he described Humayun as a hero.
“I appreciate his response, his press release that was issued last night, confirming that he accepts my son as a hero of this country,” Khan said.
“But his policies, his practices do not reflect that he has any understanding of the basic fundamental constitutional principles of this country, what makes this country exceptional, what makes this country exceptional in the history of the mankind,” he said.
“There are principles of equal dignity, principle of liberty. He talks about excluding people, disrespecting judges, the entire judicial system, immigrants, Muslim immigrants. These are divisive rhetoric that is totally against the basic constitutional principle,” he said.
Khan refuted Trump’s allegations that his speech was written by the Clinton campaign.
“There is no truth to that. Over there, I had limit of the time. I had written a longer speech. I am going to say the rest of the speech to you right now. There is no Clinton campaign here. There is no prompter here,” he said and then went out to read, what he said was the second part of his speech.
“I am an articulate person. I can utter my thoughts and utter my feelings. And I address — which my wife asked me to not include those things, but this is the time to say those things I wanted to address, and I address them now,” he said.
Khan called on House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to withdraw their support for Trump.
“It is a moral obligation — history will not forgive them,” he said. “This election will pass, but history will be written. The lack of moral courage with remain a burden on their souls.”
“In addition to this, there was in the speech that my wife asked me to refrain from saying. I wanted to say, we reject all violence. We are faithful, patriotic, undivided loyalty to this country. We reject all terrorism. She asked me not to say that because that was not the occasion for such a statement,” Khan said.
PTI