Without naming him, President Donald Trump ripped Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) Thursday for lying about his military record, saying the Connecticut senator “defrauded the whole world with his Vietnam status.”
The president made his comments while responding to John Frey, state representative and Connecticut National Committeeman to the Republican National Committee (RNC), during a Q&A session at the Winter RNC meeting in Washington, DC.
Earlier in the event, the White House press pool was escorted out, cutting the broadcast coverage of Trump’s speech short, but Breitbart News obtained a copy of the event’s audio.
“How about your senator who defrauded the whole world with his Vietnam status?” Trump said after Frey mentioned the state’s governor.
“When I was in [unclear Vietnam] province…” Trump continued — pretending to be Blumenthal, who for years, misrepresented his military service until exposed in 2010 by the New York Times.
“Guy never went to Vietnam!” Trump said. “And then he won the race. He’s a fr– And then I watch him on television.”
“I do not like what I see on [unclear],” Trump said in a proper voice, again impersonating the senator.
“It is the single greatest fraud that I’ve seen of anybody that ran for office, really. It’s incredible that he would be allowed to run and now he sits on committees having to do with honor. But he lied and he cheated, for how many years was that that he cheated?”
“Eight years,” Frey responded.
“He used to talk about how, when he was in battle taking his comrades out — and everybody thought he was like a war hero, and then one day somebody calls up and they say, ‘You know, I was in that area and I don’t remember him. That was my group.'”
This was not the first time Trump attacked Blumenthal over his record. In August, the president called the senator, “a phony Vietnam con artist,” tweeting:
As reported by NBC News, Blumenthal “repeatedly conflat[ed] his time in the Marine Reserves in Washington, DC, with those who served overseas in Vietnam. The idea that he was a Vietnam veteran became an accepted part of his biography”:
“When we returned, we saw nothing like this,” the senator said at a Connecticut rally in support of troops in 2003.
“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” he said at another event in 2008.
In reality, the senator obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970, according to The New York Times’ 2010 expose that found Blumenthal had sometimes falsely claimed to have served in Vietnam; when he eventually enlisted in 1970, Blumenthal got a spot in the Marine Reserves, engaging in Washington drills and local projects like campground repairs.
Once outed, Blumenthal apologized.
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