Trump Senior Advisor Lies About Terrorist Attack That Never Happened to Defend ‘Muslim Ban’

The world of ‘“alternative facts” grew yet again on Thursday night when a senior White House official on camera used a made up terrorist attack to defend one of President Donald Trump’s most contentious policy decisions thus far in office.

Kellyanne Conway — who made headlines two weeks ago when she introduced “alternative facts” into the debate over the Inauguration crowd size — went on MSNBC for an interview with Chris Matthews and tried to defend Trump’s executive order to ban all Muslims from seven countries from entering the U.S. by citing a terrorist attack in Bowling Green, Kentucky in 2011. The problem? There’s never been a terrorist attack in Bowling Green.

“I bet there was very little coverage, 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 were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre,” Conway told Matthews on Hardball. “Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.”

Of course most people don’t know about the “Bowling Green massacre” and it didn’t get any coverage because it never happened.

From The Guardian:

“The two Iraqi men arrested in 2011 did live in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and are currently serving life sentences for federal terrorism offenses. But there was no massacre, nor were they accused of planning one. The U.S. department of justice, announcing their convictions in 2012, said: ‘Neither was charged with plotting attacks within the United States.'”

The two men, Iraqi refugees Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef, were arrested for allegedly plotting to send money and weapons back home to Iraqi insurgents. During the investigation, intelligence officials found that Alwan’s fingerprints were on a roadside bomb in Iraq. This led them to believe there could be a serious flaw in the vetting process for refugees coming to America from Iraq, prompting the Obama administration to launch a full review of an estimated 57,000 Iraqi refugees who had recently come into the country, according to CNBC.

From CNBC:

“This process was manpower — and time-intensive, and resulted in a significant slowdown in Iraqi refugee admissions to the United States for six months. But it was not a ban, as Conway, Trump, and many in the conservative media claimed: Refugees from Iraq entered the United States in all six months.”

Conway’s false information about the Bowling Green Massacre is a dangerous precedent for somebody who has already shown little regard for getting facts straight and acts as a voice for the White House. (It should be noted that Matthews failed to uphold his duties as a journalist by not correcting Conway.) Stoking fear of Middle Eastern refugees has already caused real violence in the U.S. and many intelligence officials worry the xenophobic rhetoric (and Trump’s Muslim ban) will only serve as propaganda tools to recruit new militants to terrorist cells.

Another point raised by Conway’s fabrication of a “massacre” in Kentucky is the ease at which a person can obtain a weapon in the state.

A 2016 study by “24/7 Wall St.” found that Kentucky is the 11th easiest state to obtain a firearm.

Also of note, on Thursday the Republican House rolled back Obama-era rules that barred mentally ill people who received disability benefits from buying a gun. Nothing could possibly go wrong with that.