President Donald Trump on Tuesday reportedly celebrated Attorney General Pam Bondi’s sharp exchange with Senator Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat long shadowed by questions about his military record.
The former president seized on the moment to renew his attacks on what he called “one of the biggest phonies in the history of the United States Senate.”
Trump’s comments came after Bondi clashed with Blumenthal during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, where he pressed her about whether the president had improperly influenced the Justice Department’s indictment of former FBI Director James Comey.
Blumenthal presented a photo of a cabinet dinner held the night before the indictment was made public, suggesting coordination between Trump and his top law enforcement officials.
Bondi fired back, invoking the senator’s decades-old false claims about serving in Vietnam. “I’m not going to be lectured about integrity by someone who lied about being in the military just to be elected as senator,” she said pointedly.
Within hours, Trump took to Truth Social to applaud Bondi’s rebuttal, launching into one of his most blistering critiques of Blumenthal to date. “Sanctimonious Richard ‘Da Nang Dick’ Blumenthal, perhaps the biggest ‘joke’ in the United States Senate, is at it again!” Trump wrote. “’Dick’ lied until the midpoint of his political career, convincing everyone, in particular the Fake News Media, that he was a great ‘War Hero’ who lived on the precipice of death in the jungles of Vietnam.”
Trump recounted how Blumenthal’s embellishments had unraveled in 2010 when fellow servicemen came forward to deny any knowledge of him. “He was revealed, broke down and admitted, tears flowing from his eyes, that he LIED, a Whopper, one that lasted 20 years,” Trump continued. “This guy shouldn’t even be in the U.S. Senate. It should be investigated, and justice should be sought.”
The president then drew a comparison to other public officials punished for dishonesty, writing, “There is a Congressman sitting in prison for lying about his past during a campaign. Well, those lies were nothing compared to those of Richard ‘Da Nang Dick’ Blumenthal.”
Trump has used Blumenthal’s misrepresentations for years to highlight what he sees as media hypocrisy—reporters, he argues, were quick to cover for a Democrat caught fabricating his Vietnam service.
The New York Times first broke the story in 2010, reporting that Blumenthal had received five deferments between 1965 and 1970 before joining the Marine Corps Reserve, and had “sometimes falsely claimed” to have served in Vietnam.
Blumenthal’s comments over the years—references to “returning” from Vietnam and participating in “combat”—had helped him craft the image of a veteran politician who fought for his country before entering public life. After the Times report, he conceded he had “misspoken” and said he regretted using the word “in” instead of “during” when describing his service.
For Trump and his allies, the episode remains emblematic of what they view as a double standard in Washington—a Democratic senator forgiven for a fabrication that would have ended most political careers.
As Bondi and Blumenthal’s exchange reignited the controversy, Trump’s response made clear he has no intention of letting voters forget it.
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