Earlier this month, FOX News ran a glowing profile of John Garofalo, a 72-year-old veteran who claimed to have served as a decorated Navy SEAL in Vietnam and wanted to gift a giant glass presidential seal he made to President Trump. But the day after the story ran, an actual Navy SEAL reached out to the station to let it know that except for maybe his massive glass creation, everything about Garofalo's story was fake.
The segment, which aired on October 8, stayed up for 11 days and went viral on Facebook, where it racked up more than 1.5 million views. Despite receiving at least two complaints from people who disputed Garofalo's record on October 9 and 10, FOX didn't take the piece down until Thursday, October 19, when it ran a retraction that stated "all of Garofalo's claims turned out to be untrue."
During the segment, anchor Bryan Llenas lauded Garofalo for earning 22 medals in the Vietnam War as a Navy SEAL, including two purple hearts, the Washington Post reports. Garofalo also told FOX that Trump "woke something up in me," praising the president as someone who was "for the people."