The last book Khizr Khan sent his son Humayun, an Army captain who was killed in a 2004 car bombing in Iraq, was Sen. John McCain’s “Why Courage Matters.”

Khan said he has long respected the Arizona Republican, and that one of his last conversations with his son had been about the book and McCain’s “sacrifice and (the) sacrifice of others to strengthen and care for others.”

McCain had been “my and my family’s hero,” whom Khan said they admired as someone who “gave so much in care of others” both as a veteran and as an elected official.

It’s that admiration that led Khan to call on McCain and other GOP leaders this week to withdraw their support of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.

“I implore Sen. McCain … I continue to implore all of the good Republicans who either support or are going to vote for their party’s candidate, this will be a historic moment in the Republican Party,” Khan said Tuesday during an interview with Cronkite News.

“If you publicly rebuked him, you will look back and you will stand tall in front of the nation and you will say you were not for this, we were for (a) better America,” he said.

McCain issued a blistering denunciation last week of Trump’s attacks on Khan and his family, but he has refused to back away from his statement that—without naming Trump—he will support “the party’s nominee.”

McCain’s office did not return calls and emails requesting comment on Khan’s statements.

Khan came into the public eye two weeks ago after his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where he assailed Trump for what he calls the nominee’s anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric.

In that nationally televised convention speech, Khan held up one of the pocket-sized Constitutions he hands out to guests to his home and asked Trump whether or not he had read it. Khan, a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan, then went on to say that Trump had “sacrificed nothing and no one” for the country.

Trump fired back, saying that he had made many sacrifices for the country by working hard and creating jobs. He went on to say that Khan seemed like a “nice guy,” but suggested his speech was written by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign and wondered if Khan’s wife Ghazala, who stood quietly next to him during his DNC speech, was not “allowed to have anything to say.”

Trump’s campaign did not return an email asking for comment Tuesday.

But his sniping at a Gold Star family was jumped on by Democrats and almost as quickly criticized by veterans’ groups and by Republican leaders, including McCain, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In a statement from his campaign, McCain blasted Trump’s attacks on the Khans, saying the comments “do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.”

“In recent days, Donald Trump disparaged a fallen soldier’s parents,” McCain said in his Aug. 1 statement. “He has suggested that the likes of their son should not be allowed in the United States – to say nothing of entering its service. I cannot emphasize enough how deeply I disagree with Mr. Trump’s statement.”

McCain went on to thank the Khans for immigrating to the U.S. when Humayun was 2, and to say that their son “was the best of America.”

While he has never endorsed Trump by name, McCain has said repeatedly that he will support the Republican nominee – which, as of three weeks ago, is Trump.

Trump made waves in the party last week when he said he was “not ready” to endorse McCain, House Speaker Paul Ryan and other leading Republicans who have not embraced his candidacy, although he relented and endorsed them over the weekend.

Khan said McCain and other GOP leaders need to take their repudiation of Trump and his remarks one step further.

“They don’t want to have that burden on their conscience,” Khan said. “That was the time to speak. This is the time to stand for whatever they want to stand.”

Trump supporters, including some Muslim supporters, have criticized Khan, who they said has disrespected his son’s memory by politicizing his death.

But Khan disagrees, saying that his wife and he have paid tribute to Humayun by speaking out for the values their son fought for.

“He would be standing right here, with his left hand on my left shoulder, because that is the connection of my heart with him,” Khan said Tuesday, pointing to the spot next to his chair. “He would be standing there and smiling, ‘Thank you.’”

Despite his opposition to Trump and his displeasure with GOP leaders’ reluctance to take back their support of the nominee, Khan said that this election season has not affected his view of the U.S.

“This is not the perfect place, this is the best place,” Khan said. “And we can make it better.”

Cronkite News reporter Wafa Shahid contributed to this report.

This article appears in Aug 11-17, 2016.

32 replies on “Khizr Khan Calls On McCain To Rebuke Trump”

  1. I am begging you to vote McCain out of office.

    Be very wary of Mr Khan. I encourage all women to understand what his support of Sharia Law would mean for them

  3. Deep breaths, Debbi. The threat of Sharia law happening here is as real as the Easter bunny and the “war” on Christmas. You’re sipping a big bowl of paranoid soup. How about a more legitimate threat to the women of America – Republican lawmakers?

  4. OK. Just vote McCain out and let me try on that burka. 100% of the unborn are more scared of Democrats.

  6. Well I never heard Mr Kahn say a thing when McCain teamed up with Sarah Palin against Muslims and the President. Did you?

  10. Hang in there Debbie L! And the rest of you people research completely K. Kahn before you condemn McCain and yes McCain needs to leave! Establish term limit laws for all of AZ political positions including appointed ones. When I was at DM AFB there was talk of making the McCain family the Kennedys of AZ don’t let that happen.

  13. Don’t let McCain take your daughter home from the party. God bless Mary Jo. And air up the scuba tanks.

  15. He is not a natural born citizen. Or is that another part of the USC that leftists want to change?

  17. Sorry, I must’ve dozed off. So where were we? McCain’s making himself a burka out of the Constitution? 100% of the unborn are pro-Trump? And some lawyer named Omar Sharif is making threats? Sounds like one tough hombre to me. Better build a wall for the wall.

  18. Why are we even paying any attention to Hillary’s Khan man? Seriously, just when I think people couldn’t be any more gullible, they prove me wrong.

  19. You’ve had your 15 minutes of fame, funded by the Clinton crowd, and now that you have been outed, you need to go crawl back into whatever hole you crawled out of.

  20. For starters, I recommend to Khan that he learn how to pronounce “The United States of America”. After that, he might read the constitution too. He definitely doesn’t agree with freedom of religion. Well he does – as long as the religion is Islam. (BTW, Khan makes a obtuse distinction between Islam and Muslim. I couldn’t follow it. This is a minor point, but it shows he is given to contortions of thought.)
    Khizr Khan’s kid was the one who was killed in Iraq. Khan senior only “made” the involuntary sacrifice of losing someone else. Father and son are never the same, and it’s incorrect to give the senior credit for his son’s sacrifice. It’s likely they didn’t have the same political/religious views. A cursory review of Khan senior’s previous writings https://goo.gl/OriI30 (difficult to understand, but try if you want the truth on this opinionated person) show he was in favor of sharia law and lauded early Taliban founders.
    Now, he says (in the Anderson Cooper interview) there is no such thing as sharia law.
    Here’s Paul Sperry’s analysis of Khan http://goo.gl/z28OKF

  21. Well said Nehmo. Contrast that to the Orlando killers father attending HRC rally. Their excuse was the father had nothing to do with the son’s activities. (He did kill 49 at the Orlando nightclub) But when it fits the left’s narrative they will swap the rules to fit their needs.

  22. Oh, wait. I get it. You guys are using sarcasm. Just like your Orange Crush. Silly me. It should’ve been obvious. No one can be that scared and ignorant. Can they?

  24. Mr Kahn just passed the bar at age 60.

    Like others applying to the program, Khan submitted a law degree from another country — Pakistan. He received his basic training at the University Law College of Punjab University in Lahore, Pakistan. The LL.B., or “bachelor of laws,” which Khan earned there is a two-year program no longer offered in the United States.

    Furthermore, University Law College is a small college where courses are taught by professors trained in British as well as Sharia law, the brutally oppressive Islamic legal code that Khan, a devout Muslim, has said supersedes “all other juridical works.” In fact, Khan is a world-renowned expert on Sharia, not the Constitution.

    Khan’s alma mater is run by vice chancellor Mujahid Kamran, an anti-Semitic 9/11 denier who in 2013 published a book that blames the Saudi-sponsored 9/11 attacks by al-Qaida on “Zionists,” and trashes the U.S. as a complete dictatorship. His book, 9/11 and the New World Order, was published by the University of Punjab. biggov.com

  25. The only thing worse than McCain is the wacko bird wanting to replace him on the Repub. ticket.
    AZ, home of the wacko bird.

  29. I make a little joke and get 4 dislikes. Al Fonso makes a similar joke and doesn’t get any. I’m gonna end up with a complex!

  30. You’ve got to admit the Al’s was funny. I think they don’t like the Broncos because theirvfan base is smoking dope.

  31. I’ve been a die hard Steeler fan since 1969. I just remember the Orange Crush as one of the many defenses that couldn’t hold a candle to the Steel Curtain.

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