Jane Fonda’s historic Vietnam War protests, which earned her the moniker “Hanoi Jane,” have now come back to haunt her. Former top Trump White House adviser Stephen Miller stated during a Fox News broadcast on Wednesday that the two-time Academy Award winner turned climate campaigner committed treason in 1972.

Miller said of Fonda, “What she did in the Vietnam War… people may have forgotten this. She volunteered herself as a tool of North Vietnamese Communist propaganda. She did North Vietnamese propaganda broadcasts on their radio station.”

“She sat on their anti-aircraft battery that’s used to shoot down American planes and American airmen,” he added. “This is by any definition, and I am going to use the word, what she did is treason. And she was held up as a hero?”

Jane Fonda is shown in 1972 posing with a Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun that was used to shoot down US planes. She flew to Hanoi to try to convince US pilots to stop bombing Vietnamese fields because she didn’t think it was fair
Credit: AP

She went on a well-publicized two-week visit of North Vietnam in 1972, when the US was at war with the country. The actor toured towns that had been ravaged by US armed forces, posed for photographs with a Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun, and pleaded with US pilots to cease bombings.

She has recently stated that she regrets the image but not the anti-war action.

“I was trying to help end the killing and the war, but there were times when I was thoughtless and careless about it and I’m very sorry that I hurt them,” she told Barbara Walters back in 1988.

Fonda in Hanoi in 1972. She later said she regretted posing on the anti-aircraft gun because it sent a ‘horrible’ message to US troops
Credit: AP

Mr Miller’s “treason” words attracted charges of hypocrisy on Twitter.

One user, who shared a photo of Trump supporters scaling a wall during the January rioting on the US Capitol Building, questioned Miller’s definition of “treason.”

Another person wrote, “I don’t see Jane Fonda scaling that wall!”

Others pointed out that the controversy is nearly five decades old.

One person tweeted, “Yawn. Miller has to dig back half a century to find someone to trash. No dice.”

Fonda has also demonstrated against various political causes with which she dislikes.

She recently chastised Joe Biden for not doing enough to prevent pipelines from being built in regions where she believes they should not be.

One of them is the Keystone XL pipeline, which Biden halted this week by cancelling the project’s permit.