Why Did the News Media Cover Up the Bowling Green Massacre? Why???

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Tonight, Kellyanne Conway told Chris Matthews:

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.

Here was Matthews’ response: “Let’s talk about the major strategic goal of this administration.” A better response would have been: “WTF? There was never a massacre in Bowling Green. Are you out of your goddamn mind?”

In case you’re wondering, your memory hasn’t short-circuited. There was no massacre in Bowling Green that the media inexplicably failed to cover. A couple of Iraqi refugees were arrested for trying to send money and weapons back home to Iraq. The Obama administration subsequently tightened up the vetting for the refugee program. That’s all.

And this was five years ago.

Honest to God, these people will say anything. Soon we’re going to be hearing about the poisoning of the town reservoir in Terre Haute that killed thousands but was covered up by the Clinton Foundation. And how Obama responded by rounding up every refugee in the country and shipping them off to camps in Alaska. And then Iran nuked the camps, but it was all hushed up because Obama was afraid of antagonizing the ayatollah.

And Chris Matthews will respond by asking about Trump’s plans for bringing back good jobs to hardworking Americans in the heartland.

Right now, if you Google “Bowling Green massacre,” all the hits are for pieces calling it out as fiction. But just wait a year. It will soon become an article of faith on the conservative email network that hundreds died in the Bowling Green massacre, complete with before-and-after pictures from Google Earth of the Baptist church that was left a smoking crater in the aftermath.

POSTSCRIPT: However, you’ll only have to wait until tomorrow for Kellyanne Conway to make an aggrieved statement about how she meant to say Bowling Green mask affair, and it was just a slip of the tongue and the media knows it perfectly well, and they should be ashamed of themselves for always thinking the worst of Trump etc. etc. Just watch.

POSTSCRIPT 2: Do not for a second think that this wasn’t deliberate. Conway knows that millions will hear about the Bowling Green massacre, but only thousands are likely to hear that it was just made up. And those thousands will all be liberals who read the New York Times and are never going to vote for Trump anyway.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do things differently in the aftermath of a political crisis: Watergate. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after, and go deep on, stories others don’t. And we’re a nonprofit newsroom because we knew corporations and billionaires would never fund the journalism we do. Our reporting makes a difference in policies and people’s lives changed.

And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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