President Trump is under fire from Fact Checker, Inc. over this tweet where he said Miami Cubans gave him the “highly honored Bay of Pigs Award for all I have done for our great Cuban population”:
Sleepy Joe Biden has spent 47 years in politics being terrible to Hispanics. Now he is relying on Castro lover Bernie Sanders to help him out. That won’t work! Remember, Miami Cubans gave me the highly honored Bay of Pigs Award for all I have done for our great Cuban Population!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 13, 2020
He repeated the claim later in the day while campaigning in Nevada:
Trump: As you know, a little while ago I received the bay of pigs award… that’s a big honor and they don’t give it out easily pic.twitter.com/CDibypvdA9
— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) September 13, 2020
You see, the award “does not exist”:
This award does not exist https://t.co/7cyblDyrCI
— Blake News (@blakehounshell) September 13, 2020
But, surprise! What actually happened makes the president look *BETTER*. From CNN’s Daniel Dale who explained that the “award” was really an endorsement in 2016 from the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association:
For those confused by Trump’s claim he got the “highly honored Bay of Pigs Award”:
He got an endorsement in 2016 from the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association. It’s not an award. He has a long history of turning endorsements and other non-awards into awards.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 13, 2020
And, according to Dale, this was “an unprecedented endorsement from” the group:
The thing is that it was, according to local news coverage, an unprecedented endorsement from the Bay of Pigs Veterans. So Trump could accurately boast about it. But he often seems to prefer wrongness to even impressive-sounding correctness – no truth too good not to embellish.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 13, 2020
In this case, Trump downplayed what happened in the tweet. From 2016:
Truly honored to receive the first ever presidential endorsement from the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association. #MAGA #ImWithYou pic.twitter.com/U7xVj1ajMs
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 25, 2016
Thanks for the clarification, CNN!
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