Add this to the lists of reasons why Susana Martinez hasn’t endorsed Donald Trump.
According to the Associated Press, Martinez criticized Trump Monday for his attacks on the parents of a soldier killed in Iraq.
Khizr Khan, the father of Army Capt. Humayun Khan, spoke at the Democratic National Convention last week and criticized Trump. In one of the most memorable portions of the four-day convention where Democrats nominated Hillary Clinton, Khizr Khan held up a pocket constitution and asked if Trump had ever read it.
Humayun Khan was killed by a car bomb in 2004. He was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star posthumously.
Trump and his campaign’s attacks on the Khan family took up much of the news cycle over the weekend and into Monday.
The AP asked Martinez about it Monday.
The Republican governor says Khan’s grieving parents “have every right to voice their opinions in the political process,” and that disparaging them is “absolutely wrong.”
Trump accused Ghazala Khan, Humayun Khan’s mother, of not speaking at the DNC because of her religion. She later said she did not speak because of the pain of losing her son.
Martinez, the chair of the Republican Governors Association, has yet to endorse Trump. She has criticized some of Trump’s rhetoric in the past. A Washington Post report said Martinez criticized Trump at an event at the “mansion of billionaire David Koch.”
Trump himself fired shots at Martinez during a campaign rally in Albuquerque in May. He criticized her and joked that maybe he would run for governor of New Mexico.
Trump entered the race for President with eyebrow-raising comments about Mexicans.
“They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us,” Trump said last summer. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Still, Martinez attended the Republican National Convention and helped introduce the state delegation before another Republican delegate cast all of New Mexico’s votes for Trump.
The Republican Party of New Mexico has backed Trump since he clinched the nomination.
