Trump criticised on response to slain Muslim soldier’s parents

Billionaire’s proposed ban on Muslims sparks exchange about sacrifices for nation

Khizr Khan, a US citizen of Pakistani origin and a Muslim, won widespread praise when he spoke at the Democratic national convention, telling the story of his son, US Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed by a bomb in Iraq in 2004.

A mushrooming dispute between Donald Trump and the parents of a Muslim-American soldier killed in Iraq has put the Republican candidate's temperament and character centre stage as the US presidential campaign hurtles into its final 100 days. Mr Trump's response to a Democratic National Convention speech by Khizr Khan, the slain soldier's father, was criticised by both parties.

Mr Khan, a Pakistani immigrant to the US, electrified the convention when he assailed Mr Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the US and said the Republican had “sacrificed nothing” for his country.

Mr Trump fired back over the weekend, saying he had sacrificed by “working very hard” and “employing thousands and thousands of people”. He also suggested the Khans had been doing the Clinton campaign’s bidding and suggested the soldier’s mother had stood silently alongside her husband during his speech because “maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say”.

Purple Heart

Ghazala Khan

READ MORE

, the mother of army captain

Humayun Khan

, explained she finds it difficult to speak of her loss. “Walking on to the convention stage, with a huge picture of my son behind me, I could hardly control myself. What mother could?” she wrote in the

Washington Post

.

“Donald Trump said he has made a lot of sacrifices. He doesn’t know what the word sacrifice means.” Her son was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his actions in saving his men from an explosives-packed taxi in Baqubah, Iraq, in 2004.

Even as Mr Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort criticised the news media on Sunday for focusing on the exchange, his candidate continued to dig in. "I was viciously attacked by Mr Khan at the Democratic Convention," Mr Trump replied in a tweet. "Am I not allowed to respond? Hillary voted for the Iraq war, not me!"

The soldier's father said on NBC's Meet the Press that Mr Trump was "a candidate without a moral compass".

Mrs Clinton, meanwhile, faced questions over her honesty in her first television interview since becoming the first woman nominee of a major US political party last week. She again acknowledged having made "a mistake" in using a private email server while secretary of state and rejected allegations of any link between contributions to the Clinton Foundation or paid speeches by her husband, former president Bill Clinton, and her actions as the nation's chief diplomat. "I have work to do," she acknowledged in an appearance on Fox News.

A pair of polls taken since the end of the conventions has Mrs Clinton in the lead. Public Policy Polling gives her a five-percentage-point lead in the head-to-head match-up with Mr Trump – 46 per cent to 41 per cent – while a new Morning Consult survey has her ahead by three points.

Mr Trump's ties to Russia were also in the spotlight following his call last week for Moscow to find and release the 30,000 emails Mrs Clinton says she deleted from her private account. The Republican also praised Vladimir Putin as a stronger leader than Barack Obama and called for stronger ties between the two nations.

Support for Putin

Russia has been tied to an attack on the Democratic National Committee’s networks that resulted in the release of emails showing senior party officials siding with Mrs Clinton in her battle with Vermont senator

Bernie Sanders

. Several cyber security firms such as CrowdStrike say Russian intelligence was behind the break-in.

In her Fox interview, Mrs Clinton said the episode “raises serious questions about Russian interference in our elections” and she criticised Mr Trump for demonstrating “a very troubling willingness to back up Putin”.

The Republican campaign platform dropped a proposal to arm Ukraine in its fight against Russian-backed separatists. Mr Manafort, who worked as a consultant for Ukraine's former pro-Russian government, denied on Sunday the Trump campaign was involved in the shift.

On ABC, Mr Trump appeared open to accepting the Russian occupation of the Crimean peninsula. “The people of Crimea, from what I’ve heard, would rather be with Russia than where they were,” he said.

– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016)