Trump again attempts to prove he was named 'Man of the Year' in Michigan

DETROIT — Former President Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to settle Thursday his long-running claim that he was once named "Man of the Year" in Michigan.

During a campaign appearance at a Detroit Economic Club gathering, Trump held up a printout of a 2023 article from the Oakland Press that cited Amber Harris, a Republican political operative, who said Trump had been named "Man of the Year" at an Oakland County GOP dinner 10 years earlier, in 2013.

Trump said he had told his staff to find proof he got the award, which has been a subject of numerous media fact checks over the years.

"Guess what. They found it," Trump said on Thursday, referring to a May 18, 2023, Oakland Press story.

"The county party gave Trump the man of the year award at the dinner," Trump said, reading the article.

However, former U.S. Rep. David Trott, who organized the Oakland County Republican Party's Lincoln Day dinner in Novi in 2013, has previously said there was no "Man of the Year" award handed out at the event. And the reporter who authored the story Trump held up on Thursday, Peg McNichol, tweeted that she hadn't double checked the claim made by the political operative Harris in the article.

"You did not get that in 2013," McNichol wrote to Trump in a post on social media.

In 2019, The Detroit News reported about Trump's claimed "Man of the Year" award, that "no one in Michigan seems to know what he is talking about." That same year, the website FactCheck.org reported there was no evidence of the award.

"We scoured news archives and searched the internet, and came up empty," FactCheck,org wrote. "Other media outlets have looked into it too, with a similar lack of results. And Trump’s campaign isn’t commenting."

Trott has said the Oakland GOP had Trump come to Novi for the Lincoln Day Dinner in 2013, gave him a framed copy of the Gettysburg Address and, thereafter, Trump started claiming he was named "Michigan Man of the Year."

"And no matter how many times it's in the press that that didn't happen, he can't seem to get it straight," said Trott, who has endorsed Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. "He's just fundamentally unfit to be president, really, that's, that's the takeaway from, from that lie."

However, Republican political consultant Stu Sandler tweeted on Thursday he was present at the dinner when the Oakland County GOP gave Trump the "Man of the Year" award.

"This keeps coming up for some crazy reason as untrue," Sandler added. "But it's true."

In 2023, the Oakland County Republican Party gave Trump a "Man of the Decade" award, in reference to the back-and-forth over the "Man of the Year" award.

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(Staff Writer Melissa Nann Burke contributed.)

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