Earlier this month, Fox News ran a segment about a former Navy SEAL and two-time Purple Heart recipient (read: “war hero”) who made a custom glass presidential seal for Donald Trump.
“A lot of love went into that,” John Garofalo said of the 150-pound glass-and-bronze seal. “For the country, the people, the soldiers, the president.”
As you might expect, the Fox reporters fawned over Garofalo. The piece featured shots of the 72-year-old veteran’s 22 medals. Reporter Bryan Llenas lauded his toughness.
“God bless John Garofalo,” an anchor said. “We certainly hope maybe the president is listening.”
But here’s the gag—and because it’s 2017, there’s always a gag: According to the Navy Times, homeboy never served in Vietnam. Never won a single Purple Heart, let alone two. Garofalo did serve in the military, but his hero status is about as real as Kylie Jenner’s face.
And finally, Garofalo, a lying-ass liar, is owning up to the fact that he’s been lying about serving in Vietnam and being a SEAL for years.
“It got bigger and bigger,” Garofalo told the Military Times about his lie. “What I did I‘m ashamed of, and I didn’t mean to cause so much disgrace to the SEALs.”
Well, it ain’t the SEALs you disgraced, champ. The SEALs don’t even know you.
According to the Navy Times, Garofalo was outed by Donald Shipley, an actual retired SEAL whose apparent side hustle is exposing bogus military-service claims. Shipley was the first to get official records that exposed Garofalo’s lies.
Shipley also reached out to Fox News on Oct. 9, the day after the story ran, about the inconsistencies in Garofalo’s story. But it wasn’t until Thursday—11 days after the piece was broadcast—that the network retracted the story and apologized.
“Unfortunately, all of Garofalo’s claims turned out to be untrue,” Fox News said. “Even though he showed us medals, Garofalo was not awarded two Purple Hearts or any of the other nearly two dozen commendations he claimed to have received, except for the National Defense Service Medal.”
The network explained that it spent over two weeks working with Garofalo’s family and the National Personnel Records Center to “get to the bottom” of Garofalo’s military past. Mind you, Shipley needed only one day.
“Fox News not withdrawing that story drove me nutty,” Shipley told the Navy Times.
Huh, strange that a “news” site personally invested in bigging up the president and selling patriotic lies would not immediately retract a story about a Trump-loving liar. Color me shocked.
“We apologize to our viewers, especially veterans and servicemen and women,” Fox concluded.
Read more at the Military Times.