The 2024 FactCheck Awards

The wait is over. We reveal the ads that won our special prizes.

Summary

We’ll know soon enough who won the 2024 general elections for president, Congress and other important positions. But we don’t have to wait a second longer to find out this year’s FactCheck Award winners.

On Election Day, we take a (short) break from the serious work of fact-checking to highlight unusual political ads from the campaign cycle. The prizes, which are just for much needed kicks, are traditionally presented to ads that stood out for various reasons.

For instance, one of the recognized ads was about Bigfoot looking for a man who didn’t want to be found. And another honoree featured people who badly needed more to wear than hospital gowns.

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Analysis

Cheekiest Ad About Health Care Reform

Winner: Nadia Milleron, candidate for U.S. House in Massachusetts

Milleron, an independent, wants to make sure U.S. residents, particularly those in Massachusetts’ 1st Congressional District, can obtain, or obtain better, health insurance. This ad from her campaign helps voters visualize how bad it is for the uninsured or underinsured.

“It’s embarrassing. People all over western Massachusetts suffering from poor coverage,” the narrator says. “Poor coverage for prescription drugs and medical visits, if you can even get in to see a doctor. Some of us have no coverage at all.”

As the narrator goes on about the dire situation, people are shown going about their day, wearing those unflattering hospital gowns that leave them exposed. There are blurred buttocks everywhere you turn.

Things “will never change as long as we keep electing the same old Democrats and Republicans,” Milleron says in the ad, which could be on to something. Maybe politicians would be more motivated to expand access to quality health care if they had to look at people’s bare backsides all day.

Steamiest Ad About Contraception

Winner: Progress Action Fund

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace said this ad about birth control – and voyeurism? – is “an instant finalist for the political ad hall of fame.” We don’t disagree. It’s also a little spicy, and NSFW (not safe for work), so we’ve taken precautions and did not embed it in this story.

It starts with a man and woman kissing in bed, about to do the deed, and they decide to use protection before they go any further. But as the man reaches for a condom from the bedside table, it’s intercepted by a disapproving “Republican congressman,” who somehow has been in the room and observing the whole time. The frightened pair tell the unwelcome onlooker to mind his business and leave, but he doesn’t.

“I won the last election. I’m not going anywhere,” the pretend politician says. “I’m just going to watch and make sure you don’t do anything illegal.” Kinky!

The liberal Progress Action Fund released the ad in July 2023, urging Ohioans to “keep Republicans out of your bedroom” by voting against a ballot measure that critics said aimed to roll back reproductive rights. The group has since created several spinoffs accusing conservative lawmakers of going after abortion, the morning-after pill, Medicare and pornography. Some of those ads are racier, so we won’t be embedding those either.

Achievement in Ad Upcycling

Winner: Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota

If this ad looks familiar, that’s probably because it features some of the same footage from a popular ad that Phillips ran during his 2018 campaign for Congress. The original starred Bigfoot, “an expert on elusive creatures,” searching for Republican incumbent Erik Paulsen, who the ad suggested may not exist. In the reworked version, the mythical icon is on the hunt for President Joe Biden in New Hampshire, where Biden skipped the state’s Democratic primary this year to protest it being scheduled before South Carolina’s.

“I mean, how can you have tens of thousands of people looking for you all the time and not one person finds you?” a not-self-aware Bigfoot asks. It looked all over for Biden, but never found him, which was not surprising. But Bigfoot did see Phillips, who made New Hampshire the focus of his longshot campaign to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

The 2018 ad, which went viral, may have played a role in Phillips defeating Paulsen. The 2024 ad, which was just as good if not better, couldn’t do the same for Phillips against the sitting president. But, in the end, the congressman got what he wanted anyway: someone other than Biden as the Democratic nominee.

Most Dramatic Solar Eclipse

Winner: Former President Donald Trump

Way back in 2017, from the White House balcony, then-President Donald Trump memorably flouted safety guidance and stared directly at a solar eclipse without the recommended eyewear. He took his rebel status further with this ad, getting an even closer look at the sun.

As Ric Flair’s wrestling entrance music plays, and after the words “The most important moment in human history is taking place in 2024” appear on screen, a large figure begins to slowly move into the path of a beaming sun. It soon becomes apparent to those watching the ad, and the excited people in the ad wearing solar viewers, that it’s a silhouette of Trump’s head, not the moon, causing the temporary darkness.

“We will save America and make it great again,” the on-screen text later says. The ad ends with repeated chants of “USA” and the words “Trump 2024” on a black background.

This could have been a cool way to announce his third presidential campaign, rather than a fact-challenged speech from Mar-a-Lago. Instead, the ad, which was posted on Truth Social, capitalized on the public’s obsession with the actual total solar eclipse that took place in April. Coincidentally, the next visible eclipse of that kind in the U.S. is not until 2044, a year that will feature another presidential election.

The Mike Gundy Award for Being a Man

Winner: Creatives for Harris

Gundy, the coach of Oklahoma State University’s football team, got heated defending his players in a press conference years ago and told reporters, “Come after me. I’m a man. I’m 40.” The opening of this pro-Kamala Harris ad reminded us of that famous rant about manhood.

The six guys in this ad all make it known that they are men, too, and then explain some of the reasons they are “man enough” to support a female candidate for president, including an ability to braid hair; admit when they’re lost; and not be afraid of bears, women or showing emotion. One of the manly men is so fearless that he says not only can he fix carburetors, but eats them for breakfast, which sounds unhealthy and dangerous.

Not everyone was a fan of the video, with at least one person on social media calling it “the cringiest political ad ever created.” Whatever you think of the ad, let us be clear about one thing: It wasn’t produced by the Harris-Walz campaign, as some have wrongly claimed. It was created by Jacob Reed, a comedy producer, director and writer, for an unaffiliated group called Creatives for Harris.

“I think we’re overdue for a redefinition of what it means to be a man in America and I hope this campaign can start to shape that conversation,” Reed wrote in a Substack post about the video. “Because even though it’s more sketch comedy than political ad, what these men are saying is true — except being afraid of bears.

“A bear will straight-up kill you,” he warned.

The Ad Keeping It 100% Weird

Winner: Won’t PAC Down

If the men in the last ad were cringy, those in this one could be called creepy. That was by design, as the ad, from another group supporting Harris, is titled “These Guys Are Just Weird,” which is what Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz has been saying about Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, for months. Let’s just say that the actors in the ad – playing “MAGA Republicans” overly concerned with Americans’ sex lives – understood the assignment.

For example, the way the first guy turns around to the camera is hardly normal, and don’t get us started on what’s happening with his lips. It gets stranger from there. Another guy, a heavy sweater with strong opinions about in vitro fertilization, says he’s “definitely not a serial killer,” but we’re definitely not convinced. The men also bring up an unfortunate case of oversharing by House Speaker Mike Johnson, but the less said about that the better.

The liberal super PAC behind the ad, Won’t PAC Down, was originally created to help Biden, who was then on his way to wrapping up the Democratic nomination, reach a younger demographic of voters. We don’t know if the ad helped the group reach its intended audience, but it definitely got our attention.

The B-roll Blues Award

Winner: Derrick Anderson, candidate

for U.S. House in Virginia

No one has said a word about the first five minutes and 27 seconds of this nearly six-minute video of b-roll that Anderson’s campaign posted online to legally provide footage of the Republican candidate that political action committees could use in their own ads supporting him. It’s the last 24 seconds that have caused all the “family” drama.

At that point, Anderson is seen talking and/or posing with a woman and three young girls. If you thought they were his wife and kids, they’re not. Anderson is engaged. But his fiancee is not in the video, and he has no children. Now, Democrats won’t let Anderson or Virginia’s 7th District voters forget it.

“Anderson got caught lying again, faking a family,” says an ad that the campaign of Anderson’s opponent, Eugene Vindman, began running last month. House Majority PAC, a super PAC supporting Democratic House candidates, released its own ad that says “Anderson was caught using a fake wife and kids for his campaign.” It features scenes of an Anderson stand-in interacting with cardboard versions of the woman and children from the campaign video.

The criticism has frustrated Anderson so much that his campaign sent cease and desist letters to TV stations airing such ads. “It’s absolutely unbelievable that this is what my opponent is focusing on,” he said in an interview last month, noting that he’s friends with the family in the video. “Look, it’s b-roll footage. Every campaign in the nation, including my opponent, takes pictures and videos with people throughout the district.”

Honestly, we also can’t remember this much attention being paid to b-roll – at least, not since 2014, when Sen. Mitch McConnell’s campaign posted a roughly two-minute video that began with about 12 seconds too many of him smiling awkwardly. Anderson probably could have saved himself a lot of grief if he had just done the same.

Saddest Donald Trump Impression

Winner: Rep. Eric Swalwell of California

Swalwell doesn’t portray Trump in this ad, but he’s still responsible. The congressman’s campaign paid for this ad mocking the former president for some of his outrageous statements. The ad suggests that Trump’s outbursts, such as his false claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs” and “eating the cats,” make him more qualified to live in a retirement community than reoccupy the White House.

But of all the Trump impressions that we’ve seen, this one may be our least favorite. The actor channeling Trump has his signature blue suit, red tie, blonde hair and orangish face. He also has some of his mannerisms, his impressive memory and even his intense dislike of Taylor Swift. However, he doesn’t really sound like him, which is kind of important.

Think of it. If you’re going to do a Trump impression, you have to get his voice, or at least something close to it. This version is a yuge miss the likes of which we’ve never seen in the history of our country.

Grossest Attack Ad

Winner: MAGA Inc.

New York magazine predicted in March 2023 that “Ron DeSantis Eating Pudding With His Fingers Will End His 2024 Bid” to become the Republican nominee for president. Not quite, but this ad, from the pro-Trump group MAGA Inc., didn’t do him any favors.

“Ron DeSantis loves sticking his fingers where they don’t belong. And we’re not just talking about pudding,” the ad’s narrator says, referring to a March 2023 Daily Beast story about what purportedly happened when DeSantis got hungry on a private jet in 2019. While the ad goes on to say that DeSantis put his “dirty fingers all over senior entitlements,” a claim that we wrote about, the most damning – and disgusting – part may be the images of, and the sounds made by, a man devouring a cup of pudding with his fingers.

Interestingly, when given the opportunity, DeSantis didn’t deny enjoying the dessert snack sans spoon. “I don’t remember ever doing that,” he said in a “Piers Morgan Uncensored” interview, suggesting that it may have happened when he was just a child.

Regrettably, we remember the images from the ad very well.

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