According to Janine di Giovanni in "The New York Review of Books", after Blumenthal's visit to Moscow in December 2015, he began to promote views supportive of Bashar al Assad and the Syrian government's position. Blumenthal, she wrote, was among a group of "Assad apologists." After the December 2015 trip, he said the White Helmets were connected to Al-Qaeda and anti-Assad Syrians were members of the group. In his opinion, the group is "driven by a pro-interventionist agenda conceived by the Western governments and public relations groups that back them" and were being used as a Trojan horse, an excuse for the United States to propose having "70,000 American servicemen" invade Syria.