Donald Trump advised members of the media on Tuesday to “ask the family” of the late Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the 2012 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, about Hillary Clinton’s judgment.
“If you want to know about Hillary Clinton’s honesty and judgment, ask the family of Ambassador Stevens,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee tweeted shortly after Clinton finished delivering an economic policy speech Tuesday afternoon.
Both of Stevens’ parents have previously urged presidential candidates not to politicize their son’s death.
“It would really be abhorrent to make this into a campaign issue,” Jan Stevens, 77, told the Daily Mail shortly before his son’s memorial service in October 2012, adding that the matter “does not belong in the campaign arena.”
“I don’t think it’s productive to lay blame on people,” Stevens’ mother, Mary Commanday, told CBS around the same time.
Numerous developments have taken place in investigations into the Benghazi attacks since Stevens’ parents encouraged 2012 White House hopefuls to avoid citing their son’s death, though a Democratic strategist recently suggested they are “disgusted” with those who’ve used his death to make a political point.
Trump has previously accused Clinton of killing “hundreds of thousands of people with her stupidity” as secretary of state. He has routinely used Instagram videos to depict her as unsympathetic to the victims of the Benghazi attacks.
Stevens’ former fiance, Lydie Denier, told a radio program last month that Clinton “no doubt” distorted the truth about what caused the Sept. 11 attacks in Libya.
“Why are you coming out and saying it’s a video — sending someone to say it’s a video, when she was texting her daughter like, ‘Oh, we’re being — we’re under attack,'” Denier said of Clinton during an interview in May with “The Mike Gallagher show.”
