Fact check: Trump is approaching 10 years of telling his Michigan ‘Man of the Year’ lie

By Daniel Dale, CNN

(CNN) — For three consecutive presidential campaigns, President Donald Trump regularly told the same lie when he spoke in the swing state of Michigan. Before he even entered politics, he claimed, he was named “Man of the Year” in the state.

The problem: CNN and other media outlets repeatedly noted that this award did not exist. But Trump revived the tale once more near the end of a falsehood-filled economic speech in Michigan on Monday — and added an additional lie claiming that an initially skeptical media had eventually discovered the award story was correct.

“I was here 25 years ago, I got Man of the Year. They — oh, by the way, the press questioned that, and then they found out it was true, actually,” Trump said with a chuckle. “And I made a speech, and all I talked about was why are you letting them steal your auto industry?”

Nope. This is yet another example of the fake history that has littered various Trump addresses this month.

Approaching 10 full years after Trump debuted the “Man of the Year” lie, nobody has ever been able to find any evidence for it. The state of Michigan does not give out a “Man of the Year” award, Trump has never lived in the state, and he and his team have never specified who or what entity supposedly gave him this award and when.

In 2023, after nearly seven years of debunkings of Trump’s “Man of the Year” tales, a Republican group in Michigan created a “Man of the Decade” award and gave it to him.

But Trump made clear Monday that this is not what he was referring to, since he said he was talking about a “Man of the Year” honor he received decades ago. (Side note: in many previous tellings of the “Man of the Year” story, like one during his 2024 campaign, he has placed the supposed honor in the 2010s rather than the 2000s as he suggested Monday.)

Dave Trott, a former Republican congressman in Michigan who became a sharp critic of Trump, has offered the most plausible theory about the possible basis for Trump’s made-up story. In 2019, Trott contacted CNN to note that Trump had suggested at an event two years prior that he had received the “Man of the Year” award at a 2013 Republican dinner in Michigan to which Trott had invited Trump to make a speech.

At that 2013 dinner, Trott gave Trump gifts that included a framed copy of the Gettysburg Address. But Trott emphatically noted that nobody gave Trump any “Man of the Year” award.

At least once, Trump has acknowledged that the idea of him receiving such an honor in Michigan before his time as a politician was bewildering.

“In fact, five or six years before I even thought about running, for whatever reason they named me Man of the Year in Michigan. I said, ‘How come?’ I didn’t even understand it myself,” he said at a 2019 rally in New Hampshire — then repeated, “But I was named Man of the Year.”

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