Gold Star families to Trump: Apologize for comments to Khans

FILE - In this Thursday, July 28, 2016 file photo, Khizr Khan, father of fallen US Army Capt. Humayun S. M. Khan and his wife Ghazala speak during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump broke a major American political and societal taboo over the weekend when he engaged in an emotionally-charged feud with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the bereaved parents of a decorated Muslim Army captain killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq. He further stoked outrage by implying Ghazala Khan did not speak while standing alongside her husband at last week's Democratic convention because they are Muslim. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) FILE - In this Thursday, July 28, 2016 file photo, Khizr Khan, father of fallen US Army Capt. Humayun S. M. Khan and his wife Ghazala speak during the final day of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump broke a major American political and societal taboo over the weekend when he engaged in an emotionally-charged feud with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the bereaved parents of a decorated Muslim Army captain killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq. He further stoked outrage by implying Ghazala Khan did not speak while standing alongside her husband at last week's Democratic convention because they are Muslim. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

By Associated Press August 1, 2016 5 min read

Their sons were killed in Iraq about a week apart.

So when Karen Meredith heard the grieving parents of a decorated Muslim Army officer being belittled by Donald Trump, she cried.

Meredith said she hadn’t wept over her son’s death for a long time, but the Republican presidential nominee “ripped the wounds right open again.”

“You don’t attack one Gold Star family, because if you do, you’re attacking a lot of us,” Meredith, 62, of Mountain View, California, said Monday.

Trump has been engaged in an emotionally charged feud with Khizr and Ghazala Khan, whose son, Capt. Humayun Khan, was killed in Iraq by a suicide bomber on June 8, 2004. Trump stoked outrage by implying that Ghazala Khan did not speak while standing alongside her husband at last week’s Democratic convention because of their Muslim faith. And he disputed their right to question his grasp of the Constitution.