Spencer Platt-Getty Images North America—AFP
Kellyanne Conway tweets clarification, claiming she meant to say ‘terrorists’ and not ‘massacre.’
A top adviser to President Donald Trump found herself embroiled in a new “alternative facts” controversy on Friday over her claim that two radicalized Iraqis had masterminded a U.S. massacre that never took place.
Kellyanne Conway, a White House counselor who managed Trump’s presidential campaign, made the remark on Thursday in an interview with MSNBC while defending Trump’s ban on refugees as similar to steps taken by former president Barack Obama.
“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. It didn’t get covered.”
There was no massacre at Bowling Green.
Conway later tweeted that she “meant to say ‘Bowling Green’ terrorists.”
Two Iraqi men from Bowling Green, Kentucky were indeed indicted in 2011—but for trying to send money and weapons to Al Qaeda, and using improvised explosive devices against U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Both are now serving long prison sentences. After that incident, Obama did order more extensive background checks on Iraqi refugees, but never stopped or banned the refugee resettlement program, The Washington Post reported.
Conway introduced the term “alternative facts” to the U.S. political lexicon last month while defending White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s specious claim that Trump’s inauguration drew “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration—period—both in person and around the globe.”
When Spicer’s claim was called out in an interview on MSNBC’s Meet the Press, Conway retorted: “You’re saying it’s a falsehood… Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that.”