CNN
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For the third consecutive presidential election, former President Donald Trump is lying that he was named “Man of the 12 months” in Michigan earlier than he ran for president.
Trump said it again on Saturday throughout a speech in Detroit: “You understand, I bought the ‘Man of the 12 months’ in Michigan. Years in the past, lengthy earlier than politics, like 12, 13 years in the past.”
Information First: Trump’s declare stays false. No one has ever been capable of finding any proof that he was ever named “Man of the 12 months” in Michigan earlier than he ran for president. The state itself doesn’t give out a “Man of the 12 months” award; Trump has by no means lived in Michigan; and he has by no means specified who supposedly gave him this award and when.
After nearly seven years of media reality checks of Trump’s many declarations that he had as soon as been named Man of the 12 months in Michigan, a Republican group within the state, the Oakland County Republican Social gathering, gave him its first-ever “Man of the Decade” award at an occasion in 2023.
However Trump made clear Saturday that this isn’t what he was speaking about. Somewhat, he mentioned once more that he had been named “Man of the 12 months” in Michigan greater than a decade in the past.
Trump’s marketing campaign didn’t instantly reply to CNN’s Sunday request for any proof that he acquired such an award.
Trump himself has professed confusion about who supposedly gave him the award and why. In a 2022 speech in Michigan, he said, “Your Chamber of Commerce, any person, who the hell is aware of what it’s, they named me the Man of the 12 months in Michigan.” (Michigan’s Chamber of Commerce had lengthy made clear that it did not have such an award.) In a 2019 speech in New Hampshire, Trump said, “Actually, 5 or 6 years earlier than I even thought of working, for no matter cause they named me ‘Man of the 12 months’ in Michigan. I mentioned, ‘How come?’ I didn’t even perceive it myself.’”
Essentially the most believable clarification of Trump’s story — to be particular, probably the most believable clarification of what Trump has been inaccurately describing — got here from Dave Trott, a former Republican US congressman in Michigan.
After Trump made the declare in 2019, Trott contacted CNN to notice that at a roundtable occasion with automotive executives in 2017, Trump had suggested he acquired the “Man of the 12 months” award at a 2013 occasion in Michigan the place Trott had invited him to offer a speech, a Lincoln Day dinner Trott had chaired in Oakland County. At that occasion, Trott gave Trump a framed copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Tackle and different items. However Trott emphatically famous that he didn’t give Trump any “Man of the 12 months” award, nor did anybody else there.
Trott had turn out to be a fierce Trump critic by 2019. He told CNN then that, as a sitting congressman through the 2017 roundtable, “I wasn’t going to appropriate the president in entrance of the automotive executives.” He added: “However now that I’m out of Congress, I really feel snug correcting the story.”