Paul Vallely, a retired Army general turned conservative activist, defended Donald Trump’s attacks on the Muslim-American family of a slain service member yesterday, telling Newsmax host Ed Berliner that the late soldier’s father, Khizr Khan is “a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer” and saying that the mother, Ghazala Khan, made herself a “political pawn” when she stood silently by her husband’s side “as most Muslim women do.”
Vallely noted that he himself lost a son in the armed forces, saying that Khizr Khan “put himself out there” and became a “political pawn” when he agreed to speak against Trump at the Democratic National Convention. He accused Kahn of being “the one that initiated the attack against Trump” and claimed that Khan is “a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer,” a baseless charge that Berliner challenged.
When Berliner asked Vallely about Trump’s attacks on Ghazala Khan, who, overcome by emotion, chose not to speak onstage at the convention, Vallely repeated Trump’s charge that she had been silenced by her religion: “Well, she did stand there, as most Muslim women do and they don’t say anything, so there again, when you put yourself up into being a political pawn like that, you’ve got to take the heat.”
