Take a wild guess who won PolitiFact fact-checkers' 'Lie of the Year' award

and

17 December 2020

The fact-checkers at Politifact this year have handed their annual "Lie of the Year" award to President Donald Trump and his supporters' coronavirus denialism, including any "claims that deny, downplay or disinform about COVID-19."

"President Donald J. Trump fueled confusion and conspiracies from the earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic," Politifact managing editor Katie Sanders writes. "He embraced theories that COVID-19 accounted for only a small fraction of the thousands upon thousands of deaths. He undermined public health guidance for wearing masks and cast Dr. Anthony Fauci as an unreliable flip-flopper."

Here's Trump on February 26, telling Americans the 15 U.S. cases "are going to go down to zero."

"Three weeks later, March 19, he acknowledged to Woodward: 'To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down. Because I don't want to create a panic.'"

This is not President Trump's first "win." In 2019 Politifact awarded Trump the "Lie of the Year" for his false claim that the whistleblower got his Ukraine call "almost completely wrong."

In 2017 Trump also won the award for his lie that Russian election interference is a "made-up story."

Trump wasn't the direct "winner" of the 2016 "Lie of the Year" award, "fake news" was.

"Fake news found a willing enabler in then- candidate Trump," Politifact writes, "who at times repeated and legitimized made-up reports."

And in 2015, when Trump hit the political stage, the "campaign misstatements of Donald Trump" were awarded "Lie of the Year."

From Your Site Articles