Kellyanne Conway received significant blowback for referring to the non-existent “Bowling Green Massacre” last week, but it wasn’t the first time the White House counselor used the poor choice of words, according to Cosmopolitan.
The magazine on Monday reported that Conway made similar claims during an interview that did not appear in its initial story.
“In an earlier interview with Cosmopolitan.com, she not only used this same phrase but also went a step further in describing the actions of the two Iraqi men involved in the case to which she was referring,” the magazine’s Kristen Mascia wrote on Monday before describing what Conway told the publication on Jan. 29, prior to the MSNBC interview.
“Conway used the same phrasing, claiming that President Barack Obama called for a temporary ‘ban on Iraqi refugees’ after the “Bowling Green massacre,” Mascia wrote.
After referencing the nonexistent “Bowling Green massacre” during an interview on “Hardball with Chris Matthews” Thursday on MSNBC, Conway tweeted early Friday morning that she had misspoke.
“On @hardball @NBCNews @MSNBC I meant to say “Bowling Green terrorists” as reported here,” she wrote, followed by a link to a 2013 ABC News story about two Iraqi refugees who were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky after it was discovered they had been trained by al-Qaeda and had attacked U.S. troops in their home country.
Conway was roundly mocked on Thursday for her reference to the “massacre,” with TV writer Aaron Fullerton (Graceland) joking online, “Who taught Kellyanne Conway history, Betsy DeVos?”
However, Cosmopolitan reported that Conway even elaborated in the magazine version of the false statement, saying, “Two Iraqi nationals came to this country, joined ISIS, traveled back to the Middle East to get trained and refine their terrorism skills, and come back here, and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre of taking innocent soldiers’ lives away.”
Conway’s statement about Bowling Green on MSNBC came after she was grilled on President Trump’s controversial travel ban.
Meanwhile, The New York Times reported that CNN failed to booked Conway as a replacement for Mike Pence on Sunday over “serious questions about her credibility.”