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 isa 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

56.36%

"Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care."— Raul Labrador - Pants on Fire

14.47%

"That wasthe 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 -- meaningit 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 groupdidn’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 notcalled for impeachment" of President Donald Trump.— Maxine Waters - Pants on Fire

1.30%

"We’ve got dozens of counties around America that havezero insurers left."— Paul Ryan - Pants on Fire

0.83%

Says Barack Obama "didn’t doexecutive 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

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  Donald Trump

  stated on February 2, 2026 in an interview with Dan Bongino:
  Among Somalis in Minnesota, “92% of them don’t work.”

  
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  X posts

  stated on January 31, 2026 in an X post:
  Images show New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a child with his mother, Mira Nair, and Jeffrey Epstein.

  
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  Donald Trump

  stated on January 21, 2026 in remarks:
  In artificial intelligence, “We're leading China by a lot.”

  
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  Jared Moskowitz

  stated on January 22, 2026 in an X post:
  The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s “backlog of unanswered disaster assistance applications has exploded to the largest in its history.”

  
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  JD Vance

  stated on January 22, 2026 in a press conference:
  "Right now we're focused on Minneapolis because that's where we have the highest concentration of people who have violated our immigration laws."

  
• 

  X posts

  stated on January 25, 2026 in an X post:
  An image shows Alex Pretti holding a gun, not a phone, while pinned by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis.

  
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  Kash Patel

  stated on January 25, 2026 in an interview on Fox News "Sunday Morning Futures":
  “You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”

  
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  Donald Trump

  stated on January 21, 2026 in a speech in Davos:
  Protesters against the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota are conducting “fake protests done by agitators and professional insurrectionists. …They're professional troublemakers.”

  
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  Social Media

  stated on January 20, 2026 in posts on social media:
  Trees can explode if temperatures drop to 20 degrees below zero.

  
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  Social Media

  stated on January 25, 2026 in posts:
  Evan Kilgore is one of the Border Patrol agents who shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.