RUTHFULLY YOURS

Donald J. Trump really knows how to stick his foot in his mouth. And then his calf. And then his thigh. If he keeps going, he will be in real trouble.

The Republican presidential nominee’s protracted fight with Ghazala and Khizr Khan has been a wholly unnecessary and incredibly unhelpful distraction from the fight he needs to wage against Hillary Clinton and her collectivist dream: to preserve Obamaism and protect the policies that have enfeebled America overseas and slowed GDP growth to a near-standstill — 1 percent, on average, for the first half of 2016.

Trump’s battle with the mother and father of the late U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan — who was killed in action in Iraq in June 2004 — is cold, foolish, and self-destructive. When the Pakistani-born parents of this American military hero condemned Trump’s proposed limits on Muslim immigration, he should have let their words roll away, like raindrops on an umbrella. Instead, Trump grabbed that umbrella and smacked the Khans with it — even as Republicans recoiled, and Democrats danced jigs of joy.

Trump should know what any candidate for fifth-grade class president already understands: Don’t attack the mother of a dead soldier. Trump must make it easier to keep the support of conservatives and Republicans who need him to demolish Crooked Hillary.

All of that said, Trump’s long-distance jousting with the Khans is nowhere as egregious as Clinton’s in-your-face lies to Patricia Smith — mother of Sean Smith, an American diplomat whom al-Qaeda-affiliated radical Islamic terrorists murdered in the September 11, 2012, Benghazi massacre.

Hillary stared right at this mourning mother as her son lay in a casket just feet away, at Andrews Air Force Base that September 14.

As Smith told the Republican National Convention, “When I saw Hillary Clinton at Sean’s coffin ceremony, just days later, she looked me squarely in the eye and told me a video was responsible.”

Hillary Clinton denies this. In fact, she questioned Smith’s mental capacity. The Democrat standard bearer told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, “I don’t hold any ill feeling for someone who in that moment may not fully recall everything that was or wasn’t said.”

However, strong evidence arose yesterday to corroborate Smith’s account and underscore the question with which she closed her emotional convention speech: “If Hillary Clinton can’t give us the truth, why should we give her the presidency?”

Charles Woods, the father of former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods — who was slaughtered by al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists at Benghazi — appeared on Fox News Channel with the calendar that he carried on the day he met Clinton.

“I keep this little book, and I’ve shown this to the public many times,” Woods told anchor Bill Hemmer.

I jokingly say I keep my brains in my pocket, and I write down the important things that happen each day. And I’ve been doing this for many years. What I have written down here, this is verbatim what was written down soon after she spoke it. Here it is: “I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand, and she said we are going to have the film maker arrested who was responsible for the death of my son.”

Clinton’s prophecy came true — the First Amendment be damned. The next day, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies hauled Nakoula Basseley Nakoula from his home in Cerritos, Calif. The Egyptian-born Coptic Christian director of the video Innocence of Muslims, subsequently was sentenced to a year in federal prison for using the pseudonym Sam Bacile and otherwise violating his probation after an unrelated 2010 federal bank-fraud conviction.

While Clinton can accuse Mrs. Smith and Mr. Woods of being too dimwitted to remember accurately what she told them up close, Hillary’s public lies at that ceremony are very much on the record. As the Washington Post’s transcript of Clinton’s remarks indicates, she tied the murders of Smith, Woods, Navy SEAL Glen Doherty, and U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens to “an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.”

Charles Woods said that Clinton “also lied to the American public” during the televised memorial.

“She said basically the same thing in private to the families that were grieving,” Woods said. “And then a half an hour later, she said basically the same thing, as far as causation, to the American public.”

Woods added: “She stood in front of my son’s casket and blamed the rage directed at American embassies upon the video that she said we had no part of.”

The old-guard media cannot get enough of the Trump-Khan feud. However, they also should focus their cameras and keyboards on Clinton’s flat-out lies to at least two bereaved parents while their valiant sons came home in flag-draped coffins. Clinton knew damn well that these men were butchered in a pre-meditated, militant-Islamic terrorist attack — not a spontaneous demonstration triggered by a spectacularly amateurish YouTube video.

Clinton privately shared the real reasons behind these men’s deaths with her daughter, even as the terror assault roared on, and while Woods and Doherty still were alive.

“Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an al Qaeda-like group,” Hillary e-mailed Chelsea at 11:12 p.m. Eastern time on September 11, 2012.

Hillary gave the truth to Libyan president Mohamed Magariaf at 11:49 p.m. “There is a gun battle ongoing, which I understand Ansar [al] Sharia is claiming responsibility for,” Hillary said. This group is al-Qaeda’s Libyan branch.

Hillary blamed associates of al-Qaeda for this mayhem during a phone call at 3:04 p.m. the next day with Hisham Qandil, then prime minister of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood–led government. “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film,” she told him. “It was a planned attack — not a protest. Based on the information we saw today, we believe that the group that claimed responsibility for this was affiliated with al-Qaeda.”

But, just two days later, Hillary Clinton looked into the sorrow-soaked faces of a mother and father and spat lies at them like a venom-spewing serpent. She then peered into TV cameras and duped the American people.

This tungsten-hearted liar lacks the temperament to be president of the United States and should be kept several time zones away from the White House.

— Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a contributing editor with National Review Online.