AUGUST 2, 2016
Photo: POLITICO
It was a single dog-eared copy of the U.S. Constitution held up to the camera at the Democratic National Convention that may become the most iconic image to date of the 2016 Presidential race.
Khizr Khan, with his wife Ghazala standing by his side, addressed the DNC last Thursday night in what was by far the most effective speech (surpassing even nominee Hillary Clinton) that evening, confronting Donald Trump directly on his lack of knowledge and experience.
Khan questioned Trump (who just recently offered praise for articles of the Constitution that don’t exist) while holding up the Constitution and pointedly asked,
“Donald Trump, you’re asking Americans to trust you with their future. Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy. In this document, look for the words, look for the words, liberty and equal protection (under) law.”
The Khan family should know. Their son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan, was killed in Iraq in 2004 by a suicide bomber after warning his fellow soldiers of the impending danger and saving their lives. These Gold Star parents know what sacrifice is. From the DNC podium, Khan pointed his finger and said to Trump,
“You have sacrificed nothing! And no one!”
In Donald Trump’s world, no one dares to talk to him like that, so retaliation was inevitable. Just how Trump would attack the couple became evident in a Friday interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos where he took on Mrs. Khan, using coded language relating to her religion.
“His wife, if you look at his wife, she had nothing to say. She probably maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me, but plenty of people have written that.”
When Stephanopoulos went on to ask Trump if he has ever made any sacrifices, Trump began to list the tens of thousands of jobs he has created and the great buildings he has built. Stephanopoulos interrupted him incredulously, “Those are sacrifices?”
If Trump thought that Mrs. Khan was going to be silent, was he ever wrong, as she responded with a blistering op-ed piece in the Washington Post entitled “Trump Criticized My Silence. He Knows Nothing About True Sacrifice.” Just a sample:
“Without saying a thing, all the world, all America felt my pain. I am a Gold Star mother. Whoever saw me felt me in their heart…Donald Trump said he has made a lot of sacrifices. He doesn’t know what the word sacrifice means.”
Ooh, snap.
Clearly, Trump was getting nowhere attacking a Gold Star mother, but instead of wisely walking away, Trump instead doubled down on Dad:
“Mr. Khan who has never met me, 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.”
No right? An American citizen has no right to criticize the Grand Poobah of Fifth Avenue? On the many TV appearances that the couple made on Friday and Saturday, the Khans came across as real people still grieving over the loss of a beloved child. And Trump says that they don’t even have a right to criticize him?
By Sunday, the GOP hierarchy began to realize that this issue has becoming a big loser for the party as well as for Trump. House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell both issued statements praising Capt. Khan as a hero and thanking the Khan family for their sacrifice, basically telling Trump to zip it now. And that night, Trump’s running mate Mike Pence said much the same thing in speaking for the campaign. It appeared that damage was done, but the bleeding had stopped.
But someone forgot to tell Trump.
Monday morning arrived, and (incredibly) Day 4 of the Trump vendetta against the Khans began in earnest with a tweet-storm. A highlight was this delightful Trump tweet: “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!” By this time, Republican candidates from all over the country had had enough, and dozens began to speak, either in e-mails or tweets, against the words of their party’s candidate and in praise of the Khans and their sacrifice.
I can’t remember the last time that a candidate of a major party had failed such a high-profile moral and ethical test so thoroughly as Trump has botched this. The question, of course, is why?????
The obvious answer is that he can’t help himself. I’ve been warned by my psychiatrist husband Dan not to make any psychological judgments on any candidate whom I have not had as a patient, and he is correct. But I hope that I’m not out of bounds when I say that there is something about Trump’s psyche that makes him easy to bait.
Anyone could look at this situation and realize that fighting a grieving family of a brave American soldier is a bad idea, even if his parents did insult you. What makes it especially disastrous for the Republicans is that, by totally devoting his focus on attacking the Khans, Trump has taken his eye off the ball and failed to attack Obama or, more importantly, Clinton.
In fact, on Sunday, she made a major gaffe on “Fox News Sunday” when she asserted that the FBI Director said that she was completely “truthful” in her testimony about her e-mail server. (Hint: saying that there’s “not enough evidence to prosecute” is not the same as saying she was “truthful.”) Another GOP candidate who might not be quite as obsessed with avenging imagined slights could have turned Clinton’s interview into a four-day story and helped the Republican campaign. But that is not the candidate with whom the GOP is now stuck.
If Donald Trump loses the election on November 8, any post-mortems as to why Trump lost would have to include the photo of Ghazala and Khizr Khan holding up his copy of the U.S. Constitution. It may turn out to be the key moment of the campaign.
