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President Donald Trump calling "the Russia thing" a "made-up story" has overwhelmingly won the reader competition for most significant falsehood of 2017. It is the same falsehood selected by PolitiFact for Lie of the Year.
The first runner-up was a claim about health care from Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who said, "Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care." Third place went to a statement from Sean Spicer, who as Trump’s press secretary claimed that Trump had "the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period."
We offered readers 10 finalists for 2017 and an option to write in a misstatement. It’s the ninth year in a row we’ve asked readers to weigh in via an online poll. We received 5,080 responses.
Here are the results:
"This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should've won." — Donald Trump - Pants on Fire
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56.36%
"Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care."— Raul Labrador - Pants on Fire
14.47%
"That was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period."— Sean Spicer - Pants on Fire
14.25%
"Every single year that there's an increase (in temperature) it's within the margin of error -- meaning it isn't increasing."— Greg Gutfeld - Pants on Fire
3.70%
Other (please specify)
3.52%
White nationalist protesters in Charlottesville "had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit."— Donald Trump - Pants on Fire
2.50%
"The United States ended slavery around the world, and maybe we should get some credit for that, too."— Tucker Carlson - Pants on Fire
2.46%
"I have not called for impeachment" of President Donald Trump.— Maxine Waters - Pants on Fire
1.30%
"We’ve got dozens of counties around America that have zero insurers left."— Paul Ryan - Pants on Fire
0.83%
Says Barack Obama "didn’t do executive orders in the beginning." — Whoopi Goldberg - Pants on Fire
0.57%
Says Rex Tillerson "won't divest from Exxon."— Charles Schumer - Pants on Fire
0.04%
Read the 'Lie of the Year': Russian election interference is a 'made-up story'
Notable misstatements about Donald Trump from 2017
The Trump team's falsehoods in 2017
A look back at Lie of the Year, 2009 to 2016
The original fact-check: Donald Trump's Pants on Fire claim Russia story 'made-up' by Democrats
Our Sources
Reader votes.
