NIKKI HALEY, TIM SCOTT, MICK MULVANEY TARGETED …
Democrats in South Carolina are demanding that establishment “Republican” elected officials rescind their endorsements of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Party leaders singled out governor Nikki Haley, U.S. Senator Tim Scott and U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney – three politicians who have never been supportive of Trump’s candidacy.
“Donald Trump continues to show that there is no line he will not cross in his vile attacks and wanton bigotry,” S.C. Democratic party chairman Jamie Harrison said. “Yet the vast majority of South Carolina Republican so-called leaders – including Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Mick Mulvaney – still think he should be president. South Carolinians are tired of enablers who make excuses for hate. Enough is enough.”
Harrison and other Democrats are upset at Trump over comments he made about Khizr Khan and Ghazala Khan, parents of captain Humayun Khan – who was killed in Iraq in 2004.
Khizr Khan – with his wife standing silently beside him – assailed Trump during last week’s Democratic national convention, accusing him of advancing policies that would discriminate against Muslims looking to serve in the U.S. military.
“Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery?” Khan asked Trump during his speech. “Go look at the graves of the brave patriots who died defending America – you will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
Trump responded by saying that Khan was “very emotional and probably looked like a nice guy to me.”
“While I feel deeply for the loss of his son, Mr. Khan who has never met me, has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution (which is false) and say many other inaccurate things,” Trump said in a statement.
Trump also hinted that Khan’s wife was silent on the stage because “maybe she wasn’t allowed to speak.”
Democrats were livid.
“I was horrified and deeply offended over the weekend when I saw the disparaging remarks made by Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump about a courageous Gold Star family from Virginia,” S.C. Democratic leader Todd Rutherford said. “During this campaign, Donald Trump has insisted that John McCain was no war hero because he was captured, called our military a ‘disaster,’ claimed he knew more about ISIS than the generals after admitting he received his military advice from watching ‘the shows,’ and now he is publicly attacking the parents of our fallen soldiers. The time has come for Republican leaders in South Carolina to put country over party and disavow Donald Trump once and for all.”
Will Haley, Scott and Mulvaney take the bait? We fail to see that it matters …
None of these three “Republicans” backed Trump during the 2016 primary election – in fact Haley served as one of the GOP establishment’s most aggressive anti-Trump voices. For her – or the others – to “disavow” or “repudiate” him at this point would be a non-event.
Hell … none of them have lifted a finger to support Trump up to this point, and we don’t see any of them lifting a finger to support him as the campaign moves forward.