Taking a rare, brief detour back into the terrifying world of objective reality, Fox News was forced to issue a correction today, admitting that a “retired Navy SEAL” and Trump supporter featured on a recent broadcast was only actually one of those things. The man in question, John Garofalo, a glass artist, was hoping to present a glass seal he’d created to Donald Trump, as he previously had to presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. All well and good, as far as presidential kitsch is concerned, except that Garofalo also presented himself as both a Navy SEAL and a Vietnam veteran, and military records show that he was neither.
Garofalo’s deception was uncovered by Don Shipley, an actual retired SEAL who makes a hobby out of debunking false military service claims. Shipley did some digging and found that, while Garofalo did serve four years in the Navy, from 1963 to 1967, he never served as a SEAL, or in Vietnam. Shipley says he brought the information to Fox’s attention last week, a day after the segment aired, but noted that the network didn’t run the correction until today.
Garofalo admitted to the falsehoods, telling Navy Times, “It got bigger and bigger. What I did I‘m ashamed of, and I didn’t mean to cause so much disgrace to the SEALs.” Meanwhile, we can’t help but note that Garofalo’s real mistake here was in not following the example of his beloved president even further; after all, if someone had confronted Trump on a lie with something as trivial as official military records as proof, he’d be halfway through denouncing this whole story as a fake news witch hunt by the time the paint on his latest “original Renoir” had already started to dry.