President Donald Trump spent the early-morning hours digging up years-old dirt on his newest political enemy and bashing him on social media.
Wes Moore of Maryland has become the latest Democratic governor to take on Trump over his partisan gerrymandering and threats to deploy National Guard troops to blue states, inviting the president last week to walk the streets of Baltimore with him.
Trump responded over the weekend with a social media rant in which he threatened to pull federal funding from Baltimore, leading the governor to mock the president’s physical ability and lack of military service. In response, Trump made the bizarre claim on Monday that the governor had called him the “greatest president of my lifetime” when they met in 2024.
On Wednesday, Moore slammed Trump’s “absolutely comical memory”—a comment that apparently left the 79-year-old president still smarting hours later.
Just after 2 a.m. Washington time on Thursday, Trump reposted a year-old article from The Hill about Moore apologizing for mistakenly claiming on a 2006 White House Fellowship application that he had received a Bronze Star.
“But is that the end of his political career. He was very disrespectful to the Office of the President!” Trump complained in a Truth Social post.
The New York Times reported in August 2024 that Moore, a U.S. Army veteran who deployed to Afghanistan from August 2005 to March 2006, had listed the Bronze Star on his application, despite never having received the award.
Moore—who received several other honors, including the National Defense Service Medal—said it was an “honest mistake” and claimed he had included the honor at the encouragement of a senior officer who recommended him for the Bronze Star.
“My deputy brigade commander felt comfortable with instructing me to include the award on my application for the Fellowship because he received confirmation with the approval authority that the Bronze Star was signed and approved by his senior leadership,” Moore wrote in a statement posted to social media. “In the military, there is an understanding that if a senior officer tells you that an action is approved, you can trust that as a fact.”
Later he was “saddened” to learn that he had not received the Bronze Star, he wrote. The commander in question confirmed that version of events to the Times.
But for years, Moore failed to correct journalists and interviewers who incorrectly stated he had received the Bronze Star, including during a 2006 Newshour interview with Gwen Ifill and a 2010 appearance on The Colbert Report.
“I should have corrected the interviewers,” Moore told the Times.
Trump has already been swapping insults over the past few weeks with two other Democratic governors, Gavin Newsom of California and JB Pritzker of Illinois.
During his war of words with Trump this week, Moore called out the president for avoiding military service during the Vietnam War. A Queens doctor who was a Trump family friend diagnosed him with bone spurs to help him get a medical exemption.
“President Bone Spurs will do anything to get out of walking—even if that means spouting off more lies about the progress we’re making on public safety in Maryland,” he wrote on social media. “Hey Donald, we can get you a golf cart if that makes things easier. Just let my team know.”
