Trump vs Khan is not the first...

[Archae]

Not the first person to be smeared by right-wingers.

Trump vs. Khan: How Smearing Everyday Americans Became A Right-Wing Media Tradition

Who picks a campaign fight with Gold Star parents who have paid the ultimate sacrifice?

That’s the dominant campaign question being asked from so many different quarters as Donald Trump continues his jaw-dropping public feud with Khizr Khan and his wife Ghazala. The Khans have been the subject of a series of attacks from Trump following Khizr Khan’s speech at the Democratic National Convention last week with his wife by his side. During that speech, Khan recounted how their son Capt. Humayun Khan had died in 2004 in Iraq as he tried to save fellow American troops, and then forcefully admonished Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering America.

The Republican nominee has received some right-wing media support in his misguided campaign to discredit the sympathetic mother and father, but not much political support. Indeed, Trump’s strategy appears to have been a political blunder, with the nominee being denounced on many sides.

Regardless of the outcome, the sad spectacle exemplifies a right-wing tradition where players don’t hesitate to smear their opponents, including everyday Americans who happen to stand up to or question the GOP orthodoxy, whether it’s parents like the Khans, or injured schoolboys, caring husbands, gunshot victims, health advocates, or the father of a U.S. prisoner of war. They’re people often suffering from loss or trauma in their own lives. People who deserve to be treated with respect, instead of being battered around politically.

But nobody has been immune from the intimidation tactics.

Here’s a look at previous, disturbing examples of when conservatives adopted Trump’s Khan strategy and unleashed coordinated, and unjustified, personal attacks against vulnerable Americans who stood in the way of GOP messaging.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/08/02/trump-vs-khan-how-smearing-everyday-americans-became-right-wing-media-tradition/212094

[tonyt53]

1. A play from the swiftboaters playbook. Politicians said nothing, but the media played it up.

Kerry mistakenly thought people would know better and didn't fight back hard enough and expose who was funding that campaign against him. I don't think the Clinton campaign will make that same mistake. We haven't seen, or heard, the last of the Khan's.