At a Tuesday press conference alongside visiting Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, President Barack Obama called Trump “unfit to serve as president.” | Getty Democrats pile on, urge GOP to dump Trump

With Donald Trump mired in yet another round of controversy, Democrats are turning up the heat on their GOP colleagues, urging them to turn their backs on the Republican presidential nominee once and for all.

Calls from Democrats for Republicans to abandon Trump are nothing new, but the candidate’s recent spat with the parents of a Muslim-American soldier killed in Iraq in 2004 has increased the volume. After Khizr Khan delivered a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention honoring his fallen son and criticizing Trump, the Manhattan billionaire responded by insinuating that the deceased captain’s mother had been forbidden to speak and accusing the father of “viciously” attacking him.


The fallout was swift, severe and bipartisan — Trump’s comments were quickly disavowed by an array of Republican leaders, and none more strongly than Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who released a scathing statement in which the former Navy pilot and POW said, “I hope Americans understand that the remarks do not represent the views of our Republican Party, its officers, or candidates.”

But for Democrats eager to seize the political moment, even statements like McCain’s are no longer enough.

At a Tuesday news conference alongside visiting Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, President Barack Obama called Trump “unfit to serve as president” and “woefully unprepared to do this job.” The president highlighted Trump’s feud with the Khan family as only the most recent evidence supporting those assertions, but also took time to mention the Manhattan billionaire’s lack of “basic knowledge around critical issues” on foreign policy.

Obama then challenged top Republicans like McCain, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to go further than the occasional one-off criticism of Trump.

“The question I think that they have to ask themselves is: If you are repeatedly having to say, in very strong terms, that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him?” Obama said. “What does this say about your party, that this is your standard-bearer?”

“There has to be a point in which you say this is not somebody I can support for president of the United States. Even if he purports to be a member of my party,” he continued. “And, you know, the fact that that has not yet happened makes some of these denunciations ring hollow.”

A handful of Republicans have already begun to walk away. Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), who plans to retire at the end of his term, published an op-ed on Syracuse.com Tuesday announcing his intention to vote for Hillary Clinton in November. As for Trump, Hanna wrote, “it is not enough to simply denounce his comments: He is unfit to serve out party and cannot lead this country.”

Aides to former Republican presidential candidates have also weighed in with their own plans to support Clinton. Maria Comella, a longtime adviser to Trump supporter and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, told CNN Tuesday that she will break from her longtime boss and vote for the former secretary of state this fall. Sally Bradshaw, who was campaign manager for Jeb Bush’s Florida gubernatorial runs in 1994 and 1998, has left the Republican Party over Trump’s nomination and says she will vote for Clinton if the race in her home state of Florida “is close.”

Democrats and liberals have eagerly piled on. On Tuesday, the reliably left-leaning editorial page of The New York Times called on Republicans to abandon Trump. “Even as he creates a political whirlwind with each utterance, leading members of his own party haven’t the spine to rescind their support,” the board wrote. “Sure, some have come out with strong criticisms, but none have gone far enough. Repudiation of his candidacy is the only principled response.”

In Congress, three former active-duty military lawmakers penned a letter to Ryan urging the Wisconsin Republican to pull back his endorsement of Trump. Freshmen Reps. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) jointly wrote to Ryan that his “continued endorsement of Mr. Trump’s hateful, bigoted and sexist vision threatens the integrity of the House of Representatives in which we serve.”

“As veterans who previously served on active duty, we are horrified by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s slander of parents whose son died serving our country,” the trio wrote in their letter to Ryan, delivered Monday. “Mr. Trump has already made a series of racist and sexist statements. But the profound disrespect Mr. Trump has shown toward Gold Star parents is a new low.”

Recalling Ryan’s initial hesitance to embrace Trump, Lieu and Moulton wrote, “We respectfully request that you follow what we believe your heart is telling you and withdraw your endorsement of him now.”

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), one of two Muslims serving in the House of Representatives, seized on Trump’s feud with the Khan family to cast the GOP nominee as a religious bigot. “This is just Donald Trump being Donald Trump, and I guess my question is not for Donald Trump, it's for the people who support him,” he said on MSNBC Monday morning. “At what point do you step away from this guy? He's outrageous. He doesn't respect anything the rest of us respect.”

Calls for prominent Republicans to abandon Trump trickled down to the state level too on Monday, with Todd Rutherford, the Democratic minority leader of South Carolina’s House of Representatives, calling on Gov. Nikki Haley and Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster to disavow Trump. Rutherford said he was “horrified and deeply offended” by the Republican nominee’s comments and said Haley and McMaster would show “true leadership” if they were to abandon Trump.

“Gov. Haley and Lt. Gov. McMaster should show true leadership and immediately withdraw their support for a man who clearly doesn't understand or appreciate the great sacrifices our military families show every day. If they choose to remain supportive of Mr. Trump's candidacy after these unacceptable attacks, military families in South Carolina deserve to know why."