Supporters of the Republican nominee either unoffended by his feud with parents of Muslim soldier or didn’t know about it in the first place

As Donald Trump battles through almost a full week of controversy and bipartisan condemnation for his attacks on Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the parents of a Muslim American soldier who died in combat, his supporters seem unperturbed.

In more than a dozen interviews at two Trump rallies this week, many voters were not even aware of the controversy. And among those that were that it was simply another reason to rally around the bombastic Republican nominee.

Khizr Khan first came to national attention last Thursday when he gave an impassioned speech at Democratic national convention and, brandishing a copy of the constitution, criticized Trump for “consistently smear[ing] the character of Muslims”.

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Trump has repeatedly fired back at Khan for “viciously attacking” him and suggested that Khan didn’t allow his wife to speak because of their Muslim faith. The Republican nominee also said in a statement: “Mr Khan 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.” In an interview on Tuesday night with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly, Trump reiterated that Khan viciously attacked him and claimed he had been hired by the Clinton campaign to do so.



Many of his supporters share Trump’s attitude. At a rally in Ashburn, Virginia, on Tuesday afternoon, Bill McKee, a Trump supporter from New Jersey who worked in northern Virginia, thought it “was just a side track from real issues that are out there”.

McKee, who regularly watched Trump rallies in full on the One America News Network, a niche rightwing competitor to Fox News, added: “[Khan] shouldn’t have been attacking Trump. Trump didn’t vote for the war. Hillary did.”

Mike Rutledge from Chantilly, Virginia, echoed these thoughts. “I really didn’t find any offensive thing about what he said.” The Trump supporter also scoffed at the idea that some considered the Republican nominee’s comments about Ghazala Khan to be cruel.

“I think we are too soft on the word cruel,” said Rutledge. “Michael Vick’s dogfighting was animal cruelty. He didn’t just go up to dogs and say I’d like to hear what your mom had to say. There’s a huge difference between cruelty and what Donald Trump did.”

Others simply brushed it off as Trump’s plain speaking. To Valerie Mansberger of New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania who was attending Trump’s rally Monday night outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in the suburb of Mechanicsburg, the Republican nominee just “said what he believes and I know he didn’t mean anything by it”. She thought he was “a straight shooter” and that “all Trump supporters and all people who truly know him know his heart is for us”.

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The only voter to be hesitant about Trump’s comments was Connie Althouse of Shermans Dale, Pennsylvania. Speaking before the Mechanicsburg rally on Monday night, she said she found Trump’s comments on the Khans and John McCain to be “very disrespectful”. However, Althouse, a devout opponent of Hillary Clinton was still pretty sure that she would vote for Trump “unless he says something that really is a turnoff”. She continued: “I can’t tell you what it is and I’ll know when I hear it.”

Many though hadn’t even followed the news, shrugging it off with comments such as: “I hadn’t heard that.” One, Ridge Heiges of Shermans Dale, asked: “Did he say some bad stuff or what?” On hearing about the controversy, Heiges said “That’s pretty terrible” but then shrugged it off. “In politics there is always going to be the wrong thing said by everybody. Everybody’s said terrible things.”