First there were ‘alternative facts,’ from Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway, and then there was ‘alternative history.’
During a sitdown on MSNBC on Thursday night, Conway muddled up a few facts and ended up creating a whole new mass shooting in the United States that never even happened. Conway was attempting to defend her president’s ban on refugees from 7 Muslim-majority nations when she evoked a past action from President Obama to defend the act.
Conway appeared to be headed in the right direction for her right-wing misdirection, but then she took an off-road into crazytown when she made up the “bowling green massacre,” a ‘massacre’ that never took place.
“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. Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.”
Conway later corrected herself and said that she meant to say “Bowling Green Terrorists,” in reference to the arrest of two Iraqi nationals who were residing in Bowling Green, Kentucky as refugees in 2011 when it was discovered that they had been involved with IED attacks on U.S. Soldiers in Iraq. They were arrested, and President Obama slowed the processing of visas from the nation for the next six months so that the system could be refined.
Those who support the President’s ban have been using this incident as evidence that what Trump has done with his own ban is nothing new and nothing worth worry about. The truth is, though, that the two are vastly different.
Conway is right that the event was not heavily covered, particularly because the White House took rational, immediate action to remedy the situation. No ‘massacre’ was perpetuated, and only immigrants from one particular nation were delayed in their entrance to the U.S. Unlike Trump’s ban, the slow-down by Obama could not and would not be construed as a religiously-based ban.
The system Trump is dealing with now is entirely more sophisticated and advanced than it was in 2011, and most who are trying to come to the U.S. as refugees must wait as long as two years before gaining entrance to our nation.
As usual, Conway has muddied the waters of truth with her own stupidity and purposeful misdirection. Many who saw her interview will only remember her lie, and will never hear the correction.
Watch.
.@KellyannePolls says that 2 Iraqi refugees “were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre.”
(There was no such massacre.) pic.twitter.com/sD3Nnb5xfE— Joe Sonka (@joesonka) February 3, 2017
