The Accidental Activist
Nearly three years after his DNC speech, Gold Star father Khizr Khan almost never declines an invitation to share his story
This story is part of The Trump 45, a special package about Trump’s impact on individual lives.
A woman in the audience stood, pulled her sleeve up past the elbow, raised her arm. “Do you see this mark, Mr. Khan?” she asked.
He didn’t really, but Khizr Khan squinted and nodded from the stage anyway. “This is for my dialysis,” she said. “And I voted for Trump because I was worried about my health care. A lot of us did,” — she swept her other arm around the room, which Khan guessed was half-full of Republicans, veterans, or both — “because we were worried about our wages and our health care. And now they’re going to take away my health care. I don’t sleep. I’m worried to death. We’re all worried to death.”
This was in the spring of 2017, and probably in Iowa, as best he can remember among the hundreds of small towns and big cities in which he’s spoken. And Khan does remember, because that woman’s existential dread was, from the right perspective, a small and early glimmer of hope. “At the time, repeal-and-replace was the slogan of this huckster,” he says, meaning President Trump. “Republicans are just as patriotic as…
