We can't trust the fact-checkers to give us an honest accounting of the worst lies of the year. They hate Trump and are proud of it. So I'll do it for them.
Here are my runner-up choices in generally chronological order:
The Impeachment.
This is a hold-over from 2019. There was no quid pro quo. Trump suggested that the President of Ukraine bring back the prosecutor that Joe Biden bragged about having fired and that they look into Burisma which employed Hunter Biden. It was buried in the middle of some suggestions. The top one was asking for cooperation with Trump's lawyer, Rudy Guliani.
Calling COVID a hoax.
Trump said that the next hoax would be the Democrats saying that he did not take COVID seriously. He was right.
Drinking bleach.
During a daily briefing on COVID, a doctor from DHS talked about the disinfecting properties of sunlight. After he finished, Trump commented on how powerful a disinfectant light is and asked if it could be injected into the lungs where the virus is strongest. An ABC News VP was only half-listening, picked up on the words "disinfectant" and "bleach" and sent out a tweet accusing Trump of suggesting that people inject themselves with a disinfectant like bleach. That is not what Trump said but since it came from a high-ranking news chief, the networks ran with it and spent the next two weeks warning people against drinking bleach.
Gassing protestors so that Trump could cross the street
Protestors were ordered cleared from the streets surrounding the White House. Shortly after that, Trump walked across the street to talk about the damage to the historic church there. Everyone in charge said that the order to clear the streets came separately from the White House. It was reported that tear gas was used but footage showed that the police were not wearing gas masks therefore no tear gas was used.
Destroying the Postal Service to affect the election.
This was an out-and-out conspiracy theory. Several postal boxes were removed and a number of high-speed sorters were taken out of service. It was covered as a plot to slow the mail in order to prevent absentee voting. Actually, the postal boxes were removed as part of a long-standing policy of removing seldom-used boxes. The sorters had been slated to be decommissioned well before Trump's appointee took office. Both of these happened because mail volume is falling.
Disrespecting war dead
The Atlantic published a hit-piece claiming that Trump missed the commemoration of D-Day because it was raining and he didn't want to get his hair wet and that he called the war dead "losers". Everyone present denied that. The Atlantic refused to name their sources which suggests that none of them had first hand knowledge and that they were just repeating rumors.
Downplaying COVID.
In early February Trump told Bob Woodward that he knew that the virus was transmittable and deadly before the WHO announced it but he downplayed the threat to keep from panicking the nation. Trump-haters insisted that meant Trump did not take proper action. Actually, anyone who paid any attention to the news from China knew that the virus was transmittable and deadly. This was no secret. The real scandal here was the WHO continuing to downplay the virus through January.
And the winner is:
Trump called neo-Nazis "good people".
This is a call-back from 2017. Trump made it very clear that the "good people" he was talking about were the people protesting the removal of statues. He went further, predicting, correctly, that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson would be next. Despite this not being true, Joe Biden repeated the lie multiple times. It was in his 2019 speech announcing his candidacy, his 2020 DNC acceptance speech and one of the debates. That's what makes it the lie of the year.
One final note: Politifact chickened out on several of these lies. Rather than coming out and saying they are lies, Politifact has "in context" sections with the quotes. These are very long and the operative phrase is buried several paragraphs down making it unlikely that casual readers will dig down so far. That's how the "fact-checkers" avoid taking Trump's side.
