Tag Archives: MSNBC

Trump adviser cites non-existent ‘massacre’

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During an interview on MSNBC, Kellyanne Conway spoke about the Bowling Green massacre, but there is no such thing.
CNN Staff
Senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway made a statement during a TV interview Thursday that pricked the ears of fact-checkers everywhere.
She told MSNBC’s 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. It didn’t get covered.”
First of all, Obama didn’t ban the Iraqi refugee program.
Second, there’s no such thing as the Bowling Green massacre.
Conway later clarified that she was referencing the case of two Iraqis — Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi — who lived in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Both were granted refugee status and entered the United States in 2009.
“On @hardball@NBCNews@MSNBC I meant to say ‘Bowling Green terrorists’ as reported here,” she said, before linking to an ABC news story on the case.
They were arrested in May 2011 on a series of terrorism charges and were sentenced two years later after pleading guilty.
The two men were never planning on committing an act of terrorism on US soil. Instead, they were trying to help get weapons to al Qaeda in Iraq. They were terrorists who should not have been allowed in the country, but they weren’t planning an attack in the United States. And they didn’t kill anyone in Bowling Green (or anywhere else in the US).
CNN has reached out to the White House seeking comment of Conway’s statement and have not yet received a response.
Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of Trump’s general election Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, referenced Conway’s comments in a tweet Friday morning, saying “don’t make up fake attacks.”
“Very grateful no one seriously hurt in the Louvre attack …or the (completely fake) Bowling Green Massacre. Please don’t make up attacks.”
Some background on that case:
After arriving in the United States, the men were monitored by federal authorities. They told an FBI confidential informant that they wanted to provide weapons and explosives to al Qaeda in Iraq, court documents said.
An extensive undercover sting operation was launched, authorities said, and Alwan — who a Justice Department official once called “a really bad guy” — told an undercover agent he had been involved with “hundreds” of IEDs.
An indictment released at the time said the United States was able to locate Alwan’s fingerprints on an IED and on the base of a cordless phone used in an attack near Bayji, Iraq in the early 2000s. That the vetting process didn’t work and that these men were allowed into the country highlighted serious flaws in the refugee resettlement system and led to reforms of the vetting process.
As a result, Obama ordered that 57,000-58,000 Iraqi refugees recently allowed into the country be revetted, causing a massive backlog. So, while there was no specific ‘ban’ on Iraqi refugees coming into the country, there was a delay in allowing anymore in.
So to recap: There was no massacre in Bowling Green, and Obama didn’t ban Iraqi refugees from the country for six months. Major outlets, including CNN, did cover Alwan and Hammadi’s case. We did not, however, cover the Bowling Green massacre because it never happened.

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2017 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

Gary Johnson struggles to name a world leader he respects

By Eli Watkins, CNN
Gary Johnson is trying to be a major figure on the world stage, and it doesn’t sound like he’s doing it for the company.
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The Libertarian presidential nominee was asked by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews during a town hall forum to name his “favorite foreign leader.”
Johnson began to restate the question, and Matthews interrupted: “Any one of the continents, any country. Name one foreign leader that you respect and look up to, anybody.”
The former New Mexico governor sighed, and his running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld, said his would be Shimon Peres, the recently deceased Israeli statesman.
“I’m talking about living. You gotta do this. Anywhere, any continent. Canada, Mexico, Europe, over there, Asia, South America, Africa. Name a foreign leader that you respect,” Matthews said.
Johnson, still struggling to answer the question, offered: “I guess I’m having an Aleppo moment … the former president of Mexico.”
The third party candidate was referencing his now infamous on-air appearance from the beginning of September when he responded to a question about Aleppo — a city at the center of Syria’s civil war and the heart of a refugee crisis as a result — asking: “What is Aleppo?”
His failure to identify a city that has become a focal point of the war in Syria, its human toll and resulting refugee crisis, signaled to many he was lacking in basic foreign policy knowledge.
On Wednesday, as Johnson continued to struggle with the “favorite world leader” question, calling it a “brain freeze,” Weld offered up “Vicente Fox,” the former president of Mexico who has become among the most outspoken critics of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
Johnson confirmed Fox was the leader he was thinking of, and Weld went on to say his favorite living world leader was German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The-CNN-Wire ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.