Fox News Retracts Heartwarming Story of Decorated Navy SEAL After Learning He Is Not a Decorated Navy SEAL

Earlier this month, Fox News ran a heartwarming story profiling a decorated Vietnam veteran and former Navy SEAL who had crafted an intricate glass presidential seal that he hoped to present to Donald Trump. "The man woke something up in me," said 72-year-old John Garofalo from his warmly-lit workshop as B-roll showed him carefully carving stars into the giant sheet of glass. "He's for the people." It is vintage Fox News fodder: a crusty, salt-of-the-earth patriot undertaking a labor of love in order to honor our esteemed commander-in-chief. It is also a giant bucket of horseshit.

Yes, according to the Navy Times, Garofalo did not serve in Vietnam. He did not receive, as Fox News' Bryan Llenas breathlessly recounted, two Purple Hearts for his service. In fact, he was not even a Navy SEAL. He spent his four-year tour in the military "overseeing various ground-based functions involving aircraft," and the closest point to Vietnam to which his service took him was... a naval base in Spain. From the Navy Times report:

Garofalo said he had falsely portrayed himself as a Vietnam vet and a SEAL for years.

“It got bigger and bigger,” Garofalo told Navy Times in a telephone interview. “What I did I‘m ashamed of, and I didn’t mean to cause so much disgrace to the SEALs.”

Unfortunately, people fabricating stories of their military heroism—which, under certain circumstances, can actually be illegal—isn't new or particularly noteworthy. What is noteworthy and hilarious, though, is Fox News eagerly lapping up this story without doing an ounce of competent fact-checking, gleefully running with it on national television, and then ignoring eagle-eyed viewers who offered prompt evidence that Garofalo was lying. Don Shipley, an actual retired SEAL, said he questioned the story's authenticity to Fox News the day after it ran, and that he went to the Navy Times after the network, much to his frustration, elected not to issue a retraction.

Even for an organization that famously takes a very broad view of concepts like "facts" and "intellectual honesty," this is pretty humiliating. Apparently, Llenas told Shipley that he was working on confirming Garofalo's claims and had submitted a request for his military records—which, while I didn't go to journalism school, is something that I'm reasonably sure you're supposed to do before putting something on the air, not afterwards.

“You can turn this story around,” Shipley wrote to Llenas, according to a screenshot of his Facebook correspondence with the Fox reporter that Shipley provided to Navy Times. “I‘ll help you but avoiding it won’t help.”

Today, nearly two weeks after its initial report, Fox News officially posted a retraction, which Llenas also sheepishly read on-air this morning in what the on-air host gamely called a "quick correction."

Unfortunately, all of Garofalo's claims turned out to be untrue. The fact is that he did not serve in Vietnam. He was never a U.S. Navy SEAL. 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.

If Fox News wants to use its time and energy to push out inane puff pieces on a veteran's transformation from decorated servicemember to MAGA-philic glass carving enthusiast, that's their prerogative. In the future, though, they should consider checking first to see whether the subject of said puff piece is who he says he is, or is, in fact, an embarrassing fraud.

The network stands by some of its reporting, though.

It is true that Garafalo is a glass artist and a veteran. He served in Spain and he gifted two presidential seals to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Good to know.