In his first campaign rally since a public spat erupted with the parents of Muslim Army captain, Humayun Khan, who was killed in Iraq, Donald Trump sought to change the subject away from a topic that has led to an unprecedented media onslaught, and to direct confrontation with Hillary as well as economic issues and concerns he has about the course of the general election.
Criticizing Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ endorsement of Clinton, Trump pulled no punches. “He made a deal with the devil. She’s the devil,” Trump said of Clinton.
Trump also took on the latest polling numbers: following the latest CNN poll results released late on Monday which showed Clinton’s lead soar to 52 percent vs 43 percent for Trump in an head-to-head matchup taken after conventions, Trump told a crowd in Columbus, Ohio, that he is confident the general election in November will be “rigged”, launching a fresh attack on the legitimacy of the electoral process .
“I’m afraid the election’s gonna be rigged, I have to be honest,” Trump said.
As a reminder, Trump has repeatedly asserted that the Democratic primary was “rigged” against Sanders, a perception the Vermont senator fed for months before he endorsed Clinton on July 12. Ironically, this perception became a confirmed fact last Friday when Wikileaks released DNC emails which showed a massive campaign of collusion against Sanders, substantiating Trump’s allegations. Meanwhile, Trump’s critics saw his latest comment as an attempt to lay the groundwork to delegitimize the result of the election if he loses.
Going back to the ongoing Khan scandal which has transfixed the media, during Trump’s Ohio rally he didn’t mention the parents of Humayun Khan, whose speech last week at the Democratic convention touched off his campaign’s latest controversy. To Trump’s critics, his sniping with the Khans encompasses what they see as his most glaring shortcomings: a short fuse and tendency to attack. To his fans in central Ohio, the exchange reveals the qualities they cherish most about Mr. Trump.
And while Trump did his best to move on, his fellow Republicans continued to dwell Trump’s comments, which provoked a strong negative reaction among veterans groups that are typically aligned with the GOP.
GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a former prisoner of war and the party’s 2008 nominee, said Monday that he “cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump’s statement” disparaging Mr. and Mrs. Khan’s convention address.
“I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates,” he added.
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus on CNN said, “I believe that these Gold Star families are off limits,” but he dodged a question of whether Mr. Trump should apologize. Gold Star families are those who have had a loved one killed in combat while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces, like the Khans.
Veterans of Foreign Wars, one of the largest advocacy groups in the U.S., whose convention gave Mr. Trump a rousing welcome last week, issued a statement denouncing his treatment of the Khans.
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Still, it remains to be seen what if any impact Trump’s comments will have on his base: as the WSJ notes, Trump’s remarks left unfazed his core supporters. “He speaks his mind at a time when political correctness is ruining this country,” said 62-year-old Becky Engel, who runs a wellness company and attended Monday’s Trump rally. “I like that he’s a straight shooter.”
“I would rather have someone who is aggressive and doesn’t just sit back and let people walk all over him,” said 67-year-old retiree Mary Funkhauser. “Trump not wanting Muslims to come into the country has nothing to do with [Mr. Khan’s son] who died, he’s just trying to protect the country.”
Among Mr. Trump’s defenders Monday was Rep. Lou Barletta, a Pennsylvania Republican who introduced Mr. Trump at a rally last week in Scranton. Mr. Barletta on Monday said attention to the Khan family is “a media question” that most voters don’t care about.
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Ironically, even as Trump tried to “move on”, he couldn’t resist going back to square one, and told Fox News’ Hannity on Monday night that if he was president in 2004, Khizr Khan’s son wouldn’t have died serving in Iraq because America would not have been engaged in a war there. “If I were president, his son wouldn’t have died because we wouldn’t be in a war,” Trump said “I wouldn’t have been in the war.” Trump has frequently mentioned that he opposed the Iraq War, something he has used against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war while she served in the Senate
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