McMahon Attacks Blumenthal Over Vietnam Service
The New York Times reports:
Just hours before the first formal debate in Connecticut’s United States Senate contest, the Republican candidate, Linda E. McMahon, released a new video showing her Democratic opponent, Richard Blumenthal, suggesting that he had served in the Vietnam War even though he did not. The video the McMahon campaign obtained shows Mr. Blumenthal, the state’s attorney general, delivering an address that it says occurred in Bridgeport in 2003 to express support for American troops overseas. “When we returned, we saw nothing of this gratitude,” Mr. Blumenthal said.
The video of Mr. Blumenthal, who has been under fire for exaggerating his military record, was part of a 30-second advertisement in which the narrator asks: “If he lied about Vietnam, what else is he lying about?”
It was circulated on the Internet on Monday morning and was set to be broadcast by television stations later in the day, according to the McMahon campaign. The attack was unleashed as Ms. McMahon, the former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, was preparing to debate Mr. Blumenthal on Monday night in Hartford.
Republicans close to the McMahon campaign said the goal was to personally shake up Mr. Blumenthal, a once ubiquitous presence in Connecticut who has significantly curtailed his public appearances after The New York Times published an article in May describing how he had misrepresented his military service over the years.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Blumenthal, Mindy Myers, said Ms. McMahon’s ad was “another desperate attack from a losing campaign with nothing to say. Linda McMahon’s money can’t buy Dick Blumenthal’s genuine record of standing up and fighting for the people of Connecticut."
Mr. Blumenthal received five deferments as a young man that allowed him to avoid having to serve the war and, among other things, travel abroad to study and to work in the White House.
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