Local Pastor Speaks Out Against Trump’s Muslim Remarks

Donald Trump questioned why the Muslim-American mother of a fallen US soldier stood silently by her husband during his moving speech at last week’s Democratic National Convention, intimating that there was some kind of religious prohibition at work.

In an interview with ABC News, the GOP presidential candidate tried to respond to Khizr Khan, who, with his wife Ghazala, stood at the DNC podium last week and railed against Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigrants and his insistence that he alone can keep America safe.

The retired Episcopal pastor says he watched both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, but out of all the speeches, he was moved the most by the Khans – parents of a Muslim American soldier slain in Iraq 12 years ago.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid blasted Republican leaders for failing to revoke their endorsements of Donald Trump after the GOP nominee criticized the pair of Gold Star parents who slammed him at the Democratic National Convention.

But Trump took issue with Khan’s convention night speech, including his claim that the billionaire candidate had never read the United States constitution. He has held up Trump’s proposal for banning Muslim immigration as characteristic of a campaign Khizr Khan has called bigoted and contemptuous of the Constitution.

“Donald Trump has children whom he loves”.

Clinton has used the days following her convention to try and win back some of the white working class voters that once made up a key piece of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition.

“A number of Republicans have said that”, Clinton said.

In a column in The Washington Post on Sunday, Ghazala Khan responded to Trump’s questioning why she didn’t speak. “Mr. Trump, of course, feels sorry for what the Khan family has gone through”.

“Just when I think, Trump can’t possibly be a bigger jerk, he proves me wrong”, she said on Twitter. Then Trump, who avoided the draft during the Vietnam War, said he, too, had made “sacrifices”, citing his hiring of “thousands and thousands of people”.

His remarks gathered storm as some Republicans also rounded on their candidate, with Ohio Governor John Kasich, a former rival to Mr Trump for the Republican nomination, tweeting: “There’s only one way to talk about Gold Star parents: with honour and respect”.

With that in mind, declaring Trump’s policies on Middle Eastern migration as a barrier to the military getting the personnel they need to protect this country is not at all accurate.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC’s “This Week”, Trump suggested that the people of Crimea would rather be part of Russian Federation. He said, “I love when they have a little bit of progress and their faces, they light up”.

Mrs Khan’s powerful message comes after Trump lashed out at her husband, who accused the NY businessman of sacrificing nothing for his country.

Asserting that Trump is “unfit for the stewardship of this great country, ” Khan maintained that a person “void of empathy for the people he wishes to lead can not be trusted with that leadership, ” while suggesting Republicans and Trump supporters repudiate him and reconsider backing him.

In the column, Khan also called Trump’s view on Islam “ignorant”. “You are behind enemy lines, able to strike them where it hurts them most”. “As I have said on numerous occasions, a religious test for entering our country is not reflective of these fundamental values”.

McConnell praised Capt. Khan as an “American hero”, while Ryan noted that many Muslim Americans have served “valiantly” in the USA military.

“It’s just not how I was raised, that’s not how I was taught in my church”, said Clinton, who grew up as a Methodist.

Trump – who received student and medical deferments that helped him avoid serving during the Vietnam war – pushed back against Khan’s assertion that he’s sacrificed nothing.

Of Trump, she told “Fox News Sunday”, “He’s not temperamentally fit to be president and commander in chief”.

The controversy is over Trump’s response to Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose son was killed in Iraq by a suicide bomber in 2004. “She probably – maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say”, he said.

TRUMP: Well, I would say, we have had a lot of problems with radical Islamic terrorism, that’s what I’d say.