Amid another bizarre criticism of Democratic rival Joe Biden, President Donald Trump claimed that he himself had received a non-existent honor.
In a Sunday tweet, the president took aim at Biden’s record with Latino voters, accusing him of “relying on” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to win their support.
Trump then boasted of having received “the highly honored Bay of Pigs Award” from Miami’s Cuban community. But there is no such award.
The president’s tweet came shortly before he appeared at a Henderson, Nevada, campaign rally ― his first to be held indoors since a June 20 event in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which drew a sparse crowd and is believed to have contributed to a spike in COVID-19 cases in the state.
Later on Sunday, Trump reiterated the award claim while touting his “unwavering devotion to our nation’s incredible Latino and Hispanic American communities” at a Latinos for Trump roundtable event in Las Vegas.
“As you know, a little while ago, I received the Bay of Pigs Award from the Cuban Americans in Miami,” he said. “That’s a big honor and they don’t give it out easily.”
Both CNN and the Associated Press pointed out that Trump appeared to be confusing a 2016 endorsement from the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association with the bestowing of an award. At the time, it was the Florida-based group’s first-ever presidential endorsement.
The conservative association is composed of veterans who fought in the failed U.S. attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s government in 1961. It does not represent Miami’s Cuban community these days, much less Florida’s Latino population.
Nonetheless, the Trump campaign fired back at the criticism by tweeting a photo of him holding a “hand-painted” image of the group’s brigade shield, which the campaign insisted was the award in question.
Trump has previously claimed to have received awards and honors that he was never given or that don’t exist.
In 2017, a Washington Post report revealed that Trump’s golf courses displayed a framed copy of a fake Time cover dated March 1, 2009, featuring the then-reality TV host as the cover story.
While on the campaign trail in 2016, Trump claimed that he’d been “honored” as “Man of the Year in Michigan” five years earlier, though no evidence of such an award exists.
In a lengthy Twitter thread on Sunday, Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) blasted the president for moving forward with his rally in spite of repeated warnings about such high-risk events during the coronavirus pandemic.
“This is an insult to every Nevadan who has followed the directives, made sacrifices, and put their neighbors before themselves,” Sisolak wrote. “It’s also a direct threat to all of the recent progress we’ve made, and could potentially set us back.”
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