Maine’s Gov. LePage Calls Khizr Khan, Father of Dead Soldier, a ‘Con Artist’
Photo via AP
In a radio interview Thursday, Maine Gov. Paul LePage called Khizr Khan, father of a fallen Muslim-American soldier, a “con artist.”
One day after he told a crowd in South Berwick he possessed a “three-ring binder of black and Hispanic drug dealers from Waterbury, the Bronx, Brooklyn,” LePage shared his thoughts on Khan with Herald columnist Howie Carr.
“Then there’s the all mighty powerful ones like Mr. Khan, which is a con artist himself, and he uses the death of his son, who’s an American soldier, which we respect and honor, and he uses that to go after Trump, which I found very distasteful,” LePage said.
Khan, a Harvard-educated lawyer and father of slain Army Capt. Humayun Khan, rose to national prominence after he and his wife appeared at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last month. Holding aloft a pocket U.S. Constitution, Khan excoriated Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, asking if he’s ever read the founding document. (Trump had previously vowed to protect more articles of the Constitution than in actually contains.)
“Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending America—you will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities,” Khan said. “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
Trump repeatedly attacked the Khans in response, while his surrogates tried and failed to tie Khan to both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Clinton Foundation. Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, cited the episode as one of the reasons behind her refusal to back the GOP nominee.
Both LePage and Carr, on the other hand, have proudly endorsed Trump, who has moved away from his Khan line of attack since replacing embattled campaign manager Paul Manafort with former Ted Cruz booster Kellyanne Conway.
