Mediaboss Marketing

This story has been corrected since it was originally published.

Kellanne Conway appears to be dabbling with alternative facts again.

In an interview with MSNBCs Chris Matthews that aired on Thursday night,Donald Trumps former campaign manager and now an adviser in his administration, referenced the Bowling Green massacre when justifying the presidents controversial executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries and suspending the United States Syrian refugee resettlement program.

I bet its brand new information to people that President Obama had a 6-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. It didnt get covered.

While Matthews did not press Conway on her Bowling Green massacre claim in the interview, so much of her statement is untrue that essentially the only accurate part is that there were no media reports fitting her description.

First of all, Obama didnt stopthe Iraqi refugee program.

The Obama administration imposed additional background checks on Iraqi refugees in 2011 but did not stop or ban Iraqi refugees from resettling in the U.S.

As for Conways complaints that the Bowling Green massacre didnt get covered, it didnt get covered because it didnt happen.

Conway may havebeen referring totwo Iraqi men livingin Bowling Green, Kentuckywho were indicted in 2011forusing improvised explosive devices against U.S. soldiers in Iraq and also for attempting to send weapons and money to Al-Qaeda in Iraq for the purposeof killing U.S. soldiers. Both are serving life sentences. Neither the money nor the weapons ever reached foreign shores, the Associated Press reported, because they were intercepted by an FBI investigation into the two mens activities. As Vox notes:

During the investigation, the FBI found something worrying: fingerprints from Alwan on a roadside bomb in Iraq. This suggested there was a very specific flaw in Americas refugee screening process: Databases of fingerprints from Iraqi militants were not well-integrated into the broader State Departmentrun refugee admissions process. As a result, the Obama administration initiated a new review of all roughly 57,000 Iraqi refugees who had been recently admitted into the United States.

Neither man was linked to attacks or planned attacks within the United States.

Those incidents received a fair amount of media coverage, but public interest was limited since there was never even a plot to massacre people in Kentucky.The local newspaper the Bowling Green Daily News noted that the case received extensive coverage.

But despite the best reporting efforts of his local paper, even one of Kentuckys Republican senators echoed Conways wholly inaccurate account.In a separate interview with MSNBC, Paul referred to the attempted bombing in Bowling Green, where I live.

Contrary to what both the senator and Conway appear to be pushing by spreading the myth of a terror attack in Bowling Green, attempted or a massacre, analysis by the Cato Institute of terrorist attacks on US soil between 1975 and 2015 found that foreign nationals from the seven countries targeted by Trumps travel ban Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia have killed no Americans.

Conways conspicuous massacre comment comes less than two weeks after she defended false assertions about the size of Trumps inauguration crowd as alternative facts.

Youre saying its a falsehood. And theyre giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary gave alternative facts, Conway told NBCs Chuck Todd while discussing Spicers claim that the Jan. 20 crowd was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration.

The rest is here:
Bowling Green massacre: Kellyanne Conway, Rand Paul fabricate attack to defend Muslim ban - Salon