It’s not just Bowling Green and it’s not just Kellyanne Conway. Just days after Conway went on national TV and referenced a nonexistent terrorist attack she dubbed “the Bowling Green massacre,” the Daily Beast points out that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has been showcasing his own fictitious Islamist terrorist attack. Spicer’s padded terrorism stats to justify his boss’ Muslim ban take us to the city of Atlanta.
Spicer on ABC’s This Week on Jan. 29:
“What do we say to the family that loses somebody over a terroristic (sic), to whether it’s Atlanta or San Bernardino or the Boston bomber?”
Perhaps it was a slip of the tongue?
On MSNBC’s Morning Joe the following morning, Spicer had this to say in response to questioning about whether an imminent threat spurred Trump to sign the executive order.
“What happened if we didn’t act and somebody was killed? … Too many of these cases that have happened, whether you’re talking about San Bernardino, Atlanta, they’ve happened, Boston… what—do you wait until you do? The answer is we act now to protect the future.”
Later that day, Jan. 30, during a White House press briefing Spicer referred to the families of an Atlanta “attack” as a justification for the president to act.
“Right, and we’re reviewing the entire process over this period of time to make sure that we do this right. But I don’t think you have to look any further than the families of the Boston Marathon, in Atlanta, in San Bernardino to ask if we can go further… “There’s obviously steps that we can and should be taking, and I think the president is going to continue do to what he can to make sure that this country is as safe as possible.”
“CNN tried to reach Spicer all day Wednesday, asking what he meant by his Atlanta comments and whether he misspoke and was actually referring to the Orlando terror attack,” the network reports. An Atlanta police spokeswoman told CNN: “We have no record of an Islamic attack in the City of Atlanta.” The two most recent terrorist attacks—the 1996 Olympic bombing and the 1997 bombing of a lesbian nightclub—were both committed by serial bomber and domestic terrorist Eric Robert Rudolph.
Spicer’s use of a nonexistent terrorist attack is either sloppy or sneaky. After a week where his colleague Kellyanne Conway was pushing a similar distortion, I’ll leave it to you to decide which one it is.
