JOHNSTOWN, Pa.: With 100 days left before the fall election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign bus wound its way through Donald Trump’s America as the Republican nominee picked a new fight with the bereaved father of a Muslim Army captain.
In a well-received Democratic convention speech, Muslim lawyer Khizr Khan said Trump has “sacrificed nothing and no one” for his country. Trump disputed that Saturday, saying he’d given up a lot for his businesses.
“I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures,” he said, in an interview with ABC’s This Week.
Khan gave a moving tribute to their son, Humayun, who posthumously received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart after he was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq in 2004.
Trump also reiterated his criticism of Khan’s wife, Ghazala, who stood silently on stage, wearing a headscarf. “If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.”
Ghazala Khan has said she didn’t speak because she’s still overwhelmed by her grief and can’t even look at photos of her son without crying. Trump’s comments sparked immediate outrage on social media, both for attacking a mourning mother and because many considered them racist and anti-Muslim.
In a statement, Clinton said she was “very moved” by Ghazala Khan’s appearance.
“This is a time for all Americans to stand with the Khans and with all the families whose children have died in service to our country,” she said. “Captain Khan and his family represent the best of America and we salute them.”
Trump’s comments about Khan come a day after, while campaigning in Colorado, he attacked retired four-star general John Allen while holding a rally in front of military aircraft, and slammed a Colorado Springs fire marshal for capping attendance at his event. The fire marshal, Brett Lacey, was recently honored by the city as “Civilian of the Year” for his role in helping the wounded at a 2015 mass shooting at a local Planned Parenthood.
“Our commander-in-chief shouldn’t insult and deride our generals, retired or otherwise,” Clinton told a crowd gathered on the factory floor. “That should really go without saying.”
She said Americans are living in a time of “really hot politics.”
“People say all kinds of things. Hateful things. Insulting things,” she said. “And sometimes because of all the static going back and forth, we lose track of where we are.”
On Saturday, Clinton made stops in rural Western Pennsylvania, a largely white part of the swing state that traditionally votes Republican.
Trump has made plans to visit some of the same areas Clinton is campaigning in during her three-day bus tour through Ohio and Pennsylvania, scheduling Monday stops in Columbus and Cleveland.