She also spoke to Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC:

Those who watched the clip can see that Khizr Khan had more to say too: he pleaded with House Majority Leader Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who he called decent, patriotic men, to repudiate Donald Trump because it is the right thing to do. “There is so much at stake, and I appeal to both of these leaders: This is the time,” he said. “There comes a time in the history of a nation where an ethical, moral stand has to be taken regardless of the political costs. The only reason they're not repudiating his behavior, his threat to our democracy, our decency, our foundation, is just because of political consequences.”

He took the same message to CNN:

History will not forgive them. This election will pass, but history will be written. The lack of moral courage with remain a burden on their souls.

He concluded that they have a “moral, ethical obligation to not worry about the votes but repudiate him; withdraw the support. If they do not, I will continue to speak.”

* * *

Paul Ryan is not a bigot. And he has always tried to counter the image of the Republican Party as a coalition driven in large part by racial and ethnic prejudice. Before this cycle, I doubt he could’ve imagined backing an unapologetically prejudiced candidate.

Enter Donald Trump. His transgressions are many. Ryan himself declared Trump’s comments about a Mexican American judge “the textbook definition of racism.”

Now let’s return to Trump’s latest egregious affront against an ethnic minority: trying to discredit the parents of a fallen soldier by prejudging them as a chauvinist husband and a cowed wife who wasn’t allowed to speak; ignorantly spreading that stereotype; and offering no retraction even after knowing it to be false.

If that were the end of the story, it would be bad enough for Paul Ryan. He would be relearning this about himself: that electing a Republican is more important to him than opposing naked racism and prejudice. Few partisans want to think that about themselves.

Yet there’s more than the personal cost of knowing it about himself.

The father of a fallen soldier intends to keep reminding Paul Ryan about this, to keep insisting that it is a moral failure, until Ryan changes his mind. As Josh Barro put it, the Mexican American jurist, Gonzalo Curiel, “is a sitting judge presiding over a Trump case, so he couldn't camp out on TV and keep the story alive. Khizr Khan can.”

That will have consequences.

Before, Republicans could always maintain, with at least some veneer of plausibility, that they would of course repudiate a politician who crossed a certain line.

With Donald Trump as their standard-bearer, that line has been shown to encompass a candidate who, feeling attacked by the father of a fallen soldier, finds that his first instinct is to lash out at the man’s grieving wife, the fallen soldier’s mother, impugning both with ignorant, derogatory speculation rooted in prejudice.

In this way, Trump brings shame to everyone and everything his campaign touches. For Ryan and other informed Republicans who back him, the inescapable conclusion is that neither naked racism nor prejudice are deal-breakers for them in the head of their party or their country. It’s an accusation that they would’ve assailed in the recent past. Today, the proposition’s truth is self-evident. And a man with a knack for TV will keep reminding them of their shame.