The media today are reporting an extraordinary event involving a dying former U.S. senator.

Robert Bennett was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. As he lay in his hospital bed, knowing he was going to die, the former Utah Republican senator wanted to issue an apology.

To whom did he want to apologize?

He wanted to say how sorry was to any Muslim hospital staffer who was working in the facility where he was a patient. Bennett’s son, Jim, has talked today on MSNBC about how his father had asked him if there were any Muslims employed there.

Sen. Bennett — who died on May 4 — said he wanted to apologize on behalf of the Republican Party because of the hateful anti-Muslim views expressed by presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.

Bennett was among the first senators targeted by the TEA Party wing of the GOP. He was defeated in the 2010 Utah Republican Party primary by Mike Lee, who would go on to win election to the U.S. Senate.

It’s not that Sen. Bennett wasn’t a conservative politician. His record as a senator from one of the most conservative states in the nation is certifiably conservative. According to TEA Party activists, though, he wasn’t conservative enough.

So now the media are reporting that Bennett felt compelled to apologize to a group of fellow Americans who happen to worship as devoted Muslims.

It was an amazing deathbed gesture in response to an equally amazing — and disgraceful — public posture against people of a certain religious faith.