Is it possible that “they” faked a back up mission so that if the first actual Apollo 11 mission failed we had something to fall back to politically to make a fake political point and win?

Yes that is possible. However, we made it to the Moon.

Evidences that are empirical:
*millions of eye witnesses seeing the Saturn 5 rockets take off.
*All the thousands of NASA employees involved wouldn’t be able to keep their mouths shut.
*We could follow the NASA space ships all the way to the moon via radio and telescope.
*Amateur HAM radio operators could listen in to the Apollo astronauts pointing their antennas to the Moon.
*We left all kinds of hardware and prints in the lunar regolith all over the the near side of the Moon.
*We brought back 382.0kg of lunar rocks and regolith. The geochemistry of lunar rocks and regolith can not be faked. Certain minerals have certain elements with specific isotopes and as a result we can tell Earth rocks, from Lunar rocks, from Mars rocks etc.

*We brought back 382.0kg of lunar rocks and regolith. The geochemistry of lunar rocks and regolith can not be faked. Certain minerals have certain elements with specific isotopes and as a result we can tell Earth rocks, from Lunar rocks, from Mars rocks etc.
*with HD LRO satellite images we can zoom into all of the Apollo landing sites and see the hardware and prints in the lunar regolith.
*12 NASA Moon walkers who personally were on the Moon. Hero’s. You’re not gonna take that away from them ever.

*Now what they saw on the Moon and who was observing our Apollo astronauts is a whole other matter.

*We are not the first to the Moon. Another race of beings made it first …

The empirical evidence we went to the moon is overwhelming and goes on and on.