Blumenthal was skeptical of accounts of President Trump and his administration colluding with Russia in the 2016 presidential election in an interview with Tucker Carlson. He said that establishment Republicans and progressive Democrats were using the Russia story to avoid "do anything progressive". Petra Marquardt-Bigman wrote that, in a December 2017 interview with "Sputnik", Blumenthal had said "the Trump transition team colluded with a foreign power to subvert America’s political system". She said he was referring to collusion with Israel, not Russia.