Congress sends president bill to name post office after soldier whose parents Trump disparaged
A bill that would name a Virginia post office after a fallen U.S. Army captain whose father gained national prominence in 2016 for speaking out against then-candidate Donald Trump is headed to the White House for the president’s signature.
The measure would rename a post office in Charlottesville after the late Army Capt. Humayun Khan, who graduated from the University of Virginia and was the only alumnus from the university to be killed in action during the Iraq war, according to The Daily Progress.
{mosads}Rep. Tom Garrett (R-Va.) introduced the measure more than a year ago and is planning to hold an official renaming ceremony for the post office before he leaves office in several weeks, the newspaper reported.
Khan died in Iraq in 2004 at the age of 27 and was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
His father, Khizr Khan, made headlines in 2016 after he delivered a speech at the Democratic National Convention that was critical of Trump. He hammered the president’s remarks on Muslims entering the country and asked then-candidate Trump what he sacrificed for his country.
The president hit back by saying he had made “a lot of sacrifices” and then questioned whether Khan’s wife didn’t speak at the convention because of her religion.
“If you look at his wife, she was standing there,” Trump said at the time. “She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say.”
Khizr Khan and his wife are Muslim.
Since that appearance, Khan has publicly sparred with the president.
Last year, Khan said that fellow Gold Star parent and White House chief of staff John Kelly needed to stop “mopping up” after Trump.
“[Kelly is] a good soldier, but he should know that he works for the American people … this mopping, enough of mopping after these not-so-dignified expressions of condolence,” Khan told Newsweek at the time. “This is what history will write: That, after serving so honorably, he came to the White House to serve with the most racist and bigoted president.”
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