Trump started telling versions of the Man of the Year story two days before Election Day in 2016, when he was making a successful effort to win a state no Republican presidential candidate had carried since 1988.
Journalists tried and failed to figure out what he was talking about. (For one, the state does not have an official Man of the Year award. For two, Trump had never lived in Michigan.) …
Then a former Republican congressman from Michigan, Dave Trott, contacted CNN and other news outlets to solve the mystery.
Trott offered a convincing explanation: Trump was talking about his speech at an event Trott had organized, a Lincoln Day dinner for Republicans in Oakland County, Michigan, in 2013.
There, Trott said, Trump gave a ‘rambling’ address resembling the one he says he did — and Trott gave him a framed copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and other gifts. But Trott did not give him any Man of the Year award, and nor did anyone else.
