The Muslim-American Gold Star father who denounced then-candidate Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 criticized the president for attacking John McCain while praising Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.
Khizr Khan is the Pakistani-American whose son Humayun Khan, a captain in the United States Army, was killed while serving in Iraq in 2004.
‘He has good words to say about Putin, our adversary,’ Khan told CNN on Thursday.
Khizr Khan (left) slammed President Trump (right) on Thursday for his comments about the late Senator John McCain
Khan revealed on Thursday that he and McCain were friends for years. The late senator (above) died of brain cancer last summer
‘He has good words to say about Kim Jong-un, yet he disrespects our hero, he disrespects Senator McCain and his family.
‘What a moment of shame for us to have such a commander-in-chief.’
The bereaved father said that he had known McCain, the late senator from Arizona, for years.
Khan told CNN on Thursday that the last book his son read before he was killed in Iraq was McCain’s Why Courage Matters: The Way To A Braver Life.
After Humayun Khan told his father that he and the other soldiers in his camp were reading the book, Khizr Khan said that McCain agreed to personally sign the book and inscribe a message to dozens of cadets who were serving alongside his son.
Khan is the father of Humayun Khan, a United States Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004
In the ensuing years, Khan and McCain would meet so that the senator could sign and inscribe books for newly enlisted cadets.
Khan on Thursday took a swipe at Trump, saying that the president needed to read the book in order to understand ‘some things that are not teachable’ like ‘empathy’ and ‘feeling...the pain that the other person may be feeling.’
‘At least somebody should pick up that book and in easy English read it to him, maybe he will learn,’ Khan said.
Trump has repeatedly criticized McCain in recent days, once again sparking outrage given that the late senator died from brain cancer last summer.
The president told a crowd gathered for a rally in Ohio this week that the McCain family did not thank him for approving the funeral arrangements.
The comments prompted McCain’s daughter, The View co-host Meghan McCain, to defend her father.
Meghan McCain said on Thursday that the president’s comments reminded her of Trump’s criticisms of the Khans from 2016.
Khan also slammed Trump for continuing his attacks on McCain even though he is not alive to respond.
‘Senator McCain had passed seven months ago,’ Khan said.
Khizr Khan says that McCain's book, Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life, was the last book his son read before he was killed
‘There is [a] limit. There is height of this clownishness.
‘I really don't have the words to condemn his behavior except to say that that office, that place where he sits has not changed him a bit.’
He said that Trump's recent comments about McCain should give the president's supporters 'pause.'
'He's exactly saying what he was before the election, before he became [a] candidate, how he has lived his life and this is a moment to pause for those who support him,' Khan said.
'Nothing has changed.'
Khan said Trump has 'defrauded' his supporters 'as a hoaxer.'
'He showed them something that is not there,' he said.
'Now they have seen the true Trump who supports Putin, Kim Jong-un, but does not support the hero of this nation.'
Khan is a former Republican who switched allegiance to the Democrats after Trump proposed banning Muslims during the campaign and escalated his rhetoric against illegal immigrants.
He appeared with his wife, Ghazala Khan, at the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia and held a copy of the Constitution while slamming Trump.
Trump criticized Khan and his wife, wondering aloud why she stood there silently while her husband spoke.
The remarks by Trump sparked outrage, and prompted McCain to come to the Khans’ defense.
Trump attacked John McCain yet again on Thursday, calling him 'horrible' after the late senator's two daughters begged earlier that day for the president to leave their dad and family alone.
'I'm not a fan. He was horrible what he did with repeal and replace. What he did to the Republican Party and to the nation, and to sick people that could have had great health care was not good. So I'm not a fan of John McCain and that's fine,' Trump told Fox Business Network.
The president has repeatedly complained about McCain's 2017 vote on the GOP's so-called 'skinny repeal' of Obamacare, which would have repealed the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate and rolled back a tax on medical devices.
Khizr Khan and his wife, Ghazala, appeared at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July 2016 to slam Trump for his comments about banning Muslims from the United States
McCain gave a dramatic thumbs down on the Senate floor during the vote, which killed Republican efforts to take down former President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law.
Trump has railed repeatedly against his late nemesis for the past week, starting off with a flurry of critical tweets over the weekend that segued into harsher language in the past few days.
But he denied to Fox Business Network he's spending a lot of time talking about the Vietnam War hero even as he went back to attacking McCain over the infamous Golden
