President Trump is sparring with Governor Wesley “Wes” Moore of Maryland over military records and crime. It’s typical of how the president tags opponents as “it.” Mr. Trump is elevating a potential rival to Governor Gavin Newsom of California for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
“Did,” Mr. Trump asked Sunday on Truth Social, “Wes Moore, the Governor of Maryland, lie about getting a Bronze Star?” Mr. Moore was presented a Bronze Star for “gallantry in action” at a private ceremony in December, 18 years after his tour in Afghanistan.
For years, though, journalists and interviewers described Mr. Moore as having received the citation when he’d only been nominated for it, and the former captain in the United States Army didn’t correct them. He also included the Bronze Star in his 2006 application for a White House fellowship. Last August he called the oversight “an honest mistake.”
From now on, Democrats will fault Mr. Trump whenever these charges are leveled at Mr. Moore and trumpet the explanation he’ll be required to give. Such allegations are sticky, like similar ones that dogged Senator John Kerry, the party’s 2004 presidential nominee, who had long claimed he threw away his medals at an anti-Vietnam War protest.
“I gave back,” Mr. Kerry told WRC-TV in 1971, “I can’t remember, six, seven, eight, nine medals.” Yet campaigning at the height of the War on Terrorism, he changed his story, telling the Los Angeles Times in April 2004 that he “never ever implied that” he’d thrown away his medals, only those of other veterans and the “ribbons” of the decorations he’d earned.
In last year’s campaign, the vice-presidential nominee for the Democrats, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, was hurt by similar allegations. In 2018, he said he’d “carried weapons in war,” although he’d never seen combat. He also used the title of sergeant major, although he held the lower rank of master sergeant.
In another Truth post on Sunday, Mr. Trump gave Mr. Moore more grist for partisans to view as unfair. He said the governor had invited him to “walk the streets of Maryland” together. This came in response to the president’s suggestion that he might deploy the National Guard to what he called “out-of-control, crime-ridden Baltimore.”
Mr. Trump said that Mr. Moore’s “record on crime is a very bad one, unless he fudges his figures on crime like many of the other ‘Blue States’ are doing.” It was here that the president tagged Mr. Newsom, saying “if Wes Moore needs help, like Gavin Newscum did in L.A., I will send in the ‘troops.’”
Mr. Newsom has benefited from trolling Mr. Trump on social media. This month’s Emerson College and Politico/Citrin polls put him six points ahead of his closest challenger. In last week’s Echelon Insights poll, Ms. Harris led the 2028 Democratic field with 26 percent with the governor second at 13 percent. Mr. Moore drew only one percent.
However, among Black voters, Ms. Harris had 35, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Texas 11, and Mr. Newsom just eight percent. While Mr. Moore didn’t rank, as the first black governor of his state, he’ll have a strong pitch to that voting bloc, which will prove decisive in the Democratic primaries.
On Sunday night, Mr. Moore rose to the challenge. He posted that Mr. Trump “can stay obsessed with me … but I’ll stay obsessed with working in partnership to continue our historic success of driving down crime in Baltimore.” Taking a page from Mr. Newsom, Mr. Moore turned the president’s post back on him.
“Did Donald Trump,” Mr. Moore asked Sunday on X, “the President of the United States, lie about an injury to dodge the Vietnam draft?” In a separate post he referred to “President Bone Spurs,” invoking the condition that resulted in the president’s medical exemption from service.
Mr. Trump may be ineligible to run in 2028, but don’t expect him to sit out the race. By going after Mr. Newsom’s rivals, he can rally Democrats to their defense, complicating the Californian’s path to the nomination. Mr. Moore has been tagged, and he’s making the most of his chance to show primary voters that he’s ready to be “it.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
