Fact Check: Did Donald Trump Win ‘Michigan Man of the Year’?

President Trump has claimed he was presented with a prestigious award by the state of Michigan long before he ran for office. We check in with Snopes to see if it is true.

As we approach Election Day 2020, Michigan is again a battleground state. Although the popular vote in 2016 was won by the narrow margin of 47.5% to 47.27%, all 16 of Michigan's Electoral College votes went to Donald Trump. But did he ever win "Man of the Year"? If you think this sounds a little familiar, yes, you may have heard it before. It was a 2019 story that merits another look as we close in on the 2020 election.

Trump has had a long and distinguished business career encompassing many different fields, so we can't expect him to remember everything. Any certificate of accomplishment or trophy of some sort could be in a box in any one of his six residences, or have been discarded, but Google knows everything, right?

The top results of a search for "Michigan Man of the Year" are all about Trump making up the award. There is no annual accolade bestowed upon a man or woman of or from Michigan. Not in 2016, when then candidate Trump started talking about it, not in any of the five or six years before he "thought about running for President" when he says he won.

Michigan is a great state. I’ve gotten tremendous business to go to Michigan. Michigan is one of the reasons I ran. I was honored in Michigan long before I thought about — I was honored as the Man of the Year in Michigan at a big event.

-President Trump in a meeting with Governor Hutchinson of Arkansas and Governor Kelly of Kansas

At times we all embellish our own stories and perhaps bend the truth a little, but Snopes has done the digging and verifies that it is false: Donald Trump has never won "Michigan Man of the Year."