During an interview on Thursday with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Kellyanne Conway attempted to defend Trump’s Muslim ban by citing the “Bowling Green Massacre,” a historical event that did not happen. She later claimed that by “massacre,” she actually meant “terrorists,” which is a mistake I personally make all the time.
“I bet it’s brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre,” Conway said to Matthews, who did not correct her. “It didn’t get covered.”
In defending her attempt to dramatically rewrite history, the president’s senior advisor pointed for the 900th time to the “MLKJr bust fake story,” in which, again, a Time journalist mistakenly reported that Trump removed the bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Oval Office, quickly and aggressively corrected his mistake, and apologized.
CNN reports that Obama ordered the revetting of 57,000-58,000 Iraqi refugees in 2011 after two Iraqi citizens living in Bowling Green, Kentucky were arrested on terrorism charges for attempting to send weapons and money to Al Qaeda in Iraq. (The 2013 ABC News story Conway tweeted did report that the State Department stopped processing refugees for six months; Obama administration officials denied to the Washington Post that Iraqi resettlement was stopped or banned.) Instead of politicizing that actual incident as, for example, Sen. Rand Paul did in 2015, Kellyanne could not help but make up an entirely new and even more exciting one.