Khizr Khan slammed White House Chief of Staff John Kelly on Sunday, lamenting that the death of a Florida soldier had become a ‘political football.’
Khan, who is promoting a book, is the Gold Star father who set President Trump on a collision course with families of fallen servicemen and women when he attacked him from the stage of last year’s Democratic National Convention.
He specifically went after Kelly in an interview with ‘Face the Nation’ on CBS, saying the retired four-star Marine Corps general had ‘made the situation even worse’ after Democratic congresswoman Frederica Wilson accused Trump of botching a condolence call that she heard on speakerphone.
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‘Instead of advising the president that restraint and dignity is the call of the moment, former general Kelly indulged in defending [the] behavior of the president,’ Khan said.
‘Our political leaders, elected by the people, are deserving of equal dignity and equal respect instead of being maligned on misstated facts. And that was beyond the call of the moment.’
On Thursday Kelly called Wilson an ’empty barrel,’ and mistakenly claimed that she had taken credit for sceuring the funding for a federal building named after two falled FBI agents.
Video of a speech Kelly referred to showed that she only bragged about guaranteeing the building’s name.
Kelly’s gaffe overshadowed an otherwise gripping and heart-wrenching account of what it was like to learn that his own son had been killed in action.
He told the story to underscore his belief that Trump had handled the call to the widow of Sgt. La David Johnson appropriately and with compassion.
Khan on Sunday also berated Kelly for standing with Trump after his infamous August soft-pedaling of the white supremacist’s killing of a counterprotester in Charlottesville, Virginia.
‘I was shocked – I was shocked – to see citizen Kelly standing next to the president when [the] president could not have the proper word to condemn the attack on the blessed city of Charlottesville, Virginia, by neo-Nazis,’ he said.
Khan is now a Charlottesville resident.
Captain Humayun Khan, the elder Khan’s son, was killed in 2004 in Iraq.
During his Democratic National Committee speech in 2016, Khizr Khan brought delegates to their feet by addressing Trump through TV cameras.
‘You have sacrificed nothing and no one,’ he said.
Khan, a Muslim, also claimed a president Trump would have deported him and his son because of their religion.
‘Have you even read the United States Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy!’ he said, pulling a pocket Constitution out of his pocket.
‘In this document, look for the words “liberty” and “equal protection of law”.’
Trump later said he would never have been responsible for the deaths of Humayun Khan and other U.S. fighters in Iraq.
‘I was viciously attacked by Mr. Khan at the Democratic Convention. Am I not allowed to respond? Hillary voted for the Iraq war, not me!’ he tweeted.
Two Trump campaign surrogates claimed in the days following the spat that Khan was a ‘Muslim brotherhood agent’ intent on helping Hillary Clinton.
Khan claimed in March that he was forced to cancel a speaking engagement in Canada because his travel privileges were ‘being reviewed’ by the Trump administration.
That claim was never substantiated. Khan is originally from Pakistan, which is not among the countries covered by the president’s terrorism-oriented travel ban.
Khan also made an ad for the Clinton campaign last year, asking Trump: ‘Would my son have a place in your America?’