Washington, August 2

Veterans groups and Republicans yesterday savaged Donald Trump’s war of words with the parents of a slain Muslim American soldier, the latest example of the presidential nominee making statements considered beyond the pale.

The feud has shaken the US presidential campaign and become a flash point 99 days before the November election that pits Republican Trump against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Criticism has poured in from outraged veterans groups, relatives of soldiers killed in action and even President Barack Obama.

Obama issued his own thinly veiled attack on Trump, telling a group of disabled veterans he was tired of some people “trash-talking” America’s military and troops. “No one has given more for our freedom and our security than our Gold Star families,” the president said.

Ghazala Khan, whom Trump questioned for standing quietly as her husband talked about their son, spoke out in Monday’s Washington Post. “Without saying a thing, all the world, all America, felt my pain,” she wrote.

Trump scrambled to pivot away from taking on military families, tweeting Monday that the issue was “not about Mr. Khan, who is all over the place doing interviews, but rather RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM and the US Get smart!”