At one point during his absurdly self-promotional rally on Saturday, Glenn Beck claimed, “I have been going to Mount Vernon. I went to the National Archives and I held the first inaugural address written in his own hand by George Washington.” But according to the National Archives, Beck's claim that he held Washington's original inaugural address just isn't true.

Mother Jones reports:

Beck did receive a special VIP tour of the archives, arranged by an as-yet unidentified member of Congress. During that tour, he did get a peek inside the “legislative vault,” which isn't open to ordinary visitors. But Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper insists that Beck didn't lay a finger on any precious documents, much less George Washington's inaugural address. That would be a major violation of policy. “Those kinds of treasures are only handled by specially trained archival staff,” she explains. Cooper acknowledges that someone at the archives did show the document to Beck, but that was the extent of it. Regarding Beck's claim that he held the document, Cooper says that seeing such documents for the first time can be a very emotional experience. “I'm certain it was a figure of speech,” she says.

As Mother Jones points out, during the same speech, Beck urged his audience, “Tell the truth. America is crying out for truth.”