Read: But what about Hillary Clinton?

“He’s a Hillary Clinton backer and an Obama backer. Frankly, wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that?” The president complained that elements of the government in Pakistan, an ostensible U.S. ally, likely helped hide the terrorist leader within a mile of the national military academy. He used that common complaint to ask why the hunt for bin Laden took 10 years after the 9/11 attacks, seeming to question McRaven’s competence. But the most damning thing, the reason to disregard anything McRaven said, was his alleged allegiance to Democrats.

In fact, the admiral never endorsed any presidential candidate in 2016, unlike many other retired military leaders who signed letters of support for Trump or Clinton. His name was on a long list of possible vice-presidential nominees that Clinton’s campaign chairman sent in an email, which was hacked by Russia and published by WikiLeaks. While they were both top national-security officials in 2012, he had introduced Clinton, then secretary of state, to a Florida conference as “without a doubt one of the finest public servants ever to serve this great nation.” Though this praise doesn’t sound extraordinary for a top military officer introducing a Cabinet secretary, conservatives such as the Tea Party group Empower Texans have seized on it as evidence of McRaven’s partisanship.

As for the charge that the admiral was “an Obama backer,” it seems that simply working for the federal government during the time Obama was president is enough to paint someone as a die-hard Democrat. McRaven responded to Trump later on Sunday in an interview with CNN: “I did not back Hillary Clinton or anyone else. I am a fan of President Obama and President George W. Bush, both of whom I worked for. I admire all presidents, regardless of their political party, who uphold the dignity of the office and who use that office to bring the nation together in challenging times.”

Read: An admiral speaks out

McRaven said he stood by his comment that “the president’s attack on the media is the greatest threat to our democracy in my lifetime. When you undermine the people’s right to a free press and freedom of speech and expression, then you threaten the Constitution and all for which it stands.”

Another example of Trumpian denigration: the special counsel investigating possible collusion between his 2016 campaign and the Russians, whom he described in a tweet last week as “the highly conflicted Bob Mueller, who worked for Obama for 8 years.” Mueller, who was a registered Republican, served as FBI director from his 2001 appointment by President George W. Bush until 2013—which adds up to four years while Obama was president, not the eight years Trump claimed. Inherent in Trump’s argument is the idea that a top law-enforcement leader is untrustworthy if he worked in government while a Democrat was president.