Khan Family Gold Star Controversy at DNC

The Speech

On July 28, 2016, Khizr Khan took the stage at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with his wife, Ghazala, standing silently beside him. Their son, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, had been killed in Iraq in 2004 when he walked toward a car rigged with explosives, sacrificing his life to protect his unit.

Khan delivered one of the most memorable convention speeches in modern American history. Directly addressing Trump, he said: “You have sacrificed nothing and no one.” He pulled a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution from his coat and asked whether Trump had ever read it. “I will gladly lend you my copy,” Khan offered. The speech was a direct challenge to Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration, made by a Muslim family that had given what Abraham Lincoln called “the last full measure of devotion” to the United States.

Trump’s Response

Rather than expressing sympathy or pivoting away from the confrontation, Trump escalated. In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Trump implied that Ghazala Khan had been forbidden from speaking because of her Islamic faith, asking: “If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably — maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say.”

Ghazala Khan subsequently explained, in a Washington Post op-ed and in media interviews, that she had remained silent because she was overcome with grief at the sight of her son’s photograph on the screen behind her. “Walking onto the convention stage, with a huge picture of my son behind me, I could hardly control myself,” she wrote.

The Backlash

The response from military families, veterans’ organizations, and Trump’s own party was fierce. Senator John McCain, himself a former prisoner of war whom Trump had earlier disparaged, said Trump did not have “unfettered license to defame those who are the combatants.” Several Republican members of Congress publicly broke with Trump over the remarks. Veterans of Foreign Wars issued a statement saying the Gold Star family deserved respect.

The controversy persisted for more than a week during a critical stretch of the general election campaign, dominating coverage at a time when Trump might otherwise have gained momentum from the conclusion of the convention season. Polls conducted during and after the episode showed one of the sharpest negative shifts in public opinion Trump experienced during the campaign. The episode demonstrated that while Trump’s base remained loyal, attacks on military families carried political costs even in the unconventional landscape of 2016.