???
If the guy is using his kids as political props, in an environment where he knowingly puts them at risk to make his political points, that is inexusable and disgusting.
If the guy staged the whole thing to make his political point, then he was using his children in order to manipulate public opinion by deception. That is also inexusable and disgusting.
If he was simply naive, then his motives were not malicious toward his children or the public at large. If that was the case, he'd at least have ignorance as an excuse. There is a difference, and I am not interested in blurring the lines of distinction because his political viewpoints may more closely align with my own (I couldn't care less who is who, it's the possible deception that is the issue). Also, I am not in the group berating this fellow if he merely wound up with the wrong crowd while exercising his 1st amendment rights.
If you want to make a comparision to taking children to Jerusalem, then you might as well compare driving anywhere in a car, or going into any big city.
But that's precisely your problem, here. It wasn't. Your premise is wrong. Don't go around calling a guy like this a bad father, nor his wife a bad mother, if that's what you're doing.
And we know that in Jerusalem there are people waiting to kill that daughter or people like her. And that have -- killed daughters and children -- violently and viciously, callously.
Not so on a highway. Danger yes, but motivated killers or thugs -- no.
What if he wanted to show his daughter what Democrats were like?