Former president Donald Trump asserted in Detroit on Thursday that he had new proof that he was awarded Michigan’s “man of the year” years ago, dredging up a debunked claim he’s repeatedly made over the past decade.
In an address to the Detroit Economic Club aimed at pitching policies to rescue the American auto industry, the Republican presidential nominee said he had asked his team to find proof that he received the honor.
“And guess what? They found it,” Trump claimed, before pulling a printout of an article from the Oakland Press from his suit pocket. “It says, ‘Oakland County GOP to honor Donald Trump, former president, to speak at upcoming Lincoln Day fundraising dinner.’ And it says down here, ‘The county party gave Trump the man of the year award at the dinner, too.’”
The only problem? The story has since been corrected to clarify that Trump was not honored as Michigan’s man of the year in 2013.
Trump claimed he won the Michigan award at least 20 times while he was in office, according to The Washington Post’s Fact Checker database, and he’s repeated the claim on the campaign trail this cycle. But there’s been no evidence that Trump’s assertion is true.
The Post previously noted that factcheck.org investigated the claim and it appeared that Trump was referring to a 2013 dinner hosted by a county Republican Party organization, which presented him with token gifts — including a statuette of Abraham Lincoln. But a former Republican congressman who organized the dinner said Trump did not receive an award, and the group has never given out “man of the year” awards.
The printout of the Oakland Press story that Trump held up on Thursday in Detroit had most recently been updated in 2023, a photograph from the event shows. But an editor’s note at the top of the story as it appeared online Thursday afternoon states that the publication is “setting the record straight after the former president incorrectly cited the 2013 Man of the Year award during a recent speech to the Detroit Economic Club.”
“A reference in the 2023 story, headlined ‘Oakland County GOP to honor Donald Trump,’ about the 2013 award was incorrect. Trump was the keynote speaker at the 2013 dinner in Novi, which drew a record crowd. He was not honored as Man of the Year. During the 2023 dinner, Trump was honored as the Man of the Decade which was reported in the 2023 story,” the editor’s note states.
An archived version of the story from 2023 obtained by The Post shows that the Oakland Press initially quoted Amber Harris, then the executive director of the Oakland County Republican Party, as having said the county GOP gave Trump a “Man of the Year” award in 2013. The author of the story, Peg McNichol, wrote Thursday in a since-deleted post on X that she “made an error” using that quote in the story without verifying the claim’s veracity.
The Oakland County Republican Party claimed in a Facebook post Thursday evening that it had awarded Trump the man of the year honor in 2013, citing the former county party chair, as well as unnamed attendees and event organizers. But the post offered no documentation to back up its assertion and claimed without evidence the Oakland Press was “lying.”
Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said in a statement that it was “widely reported” more than a year ago that Trump received the “2013 Man of the Decade award.” Trump did receive a “man of the decade” honor from the Michigan county’s GOP, but that honor was given last year and not in 2013.
Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.