It is another fresh, glistening day on the planet Earth, and accordingly the Trump administration has served the world another steaming platter of its signature brand of horseshit. As President Trump begins doing the thing we were all most scared he would do—that is, tweeting contemptuously at nuclear powers—his counselor Kellyanne Conway appeared on MSNBC to continue the administration’s aggressive brand of misinformation. It is one thing to lie or not know what you’re talking about; it is another thing entirely to deliver that non-information like you’re arguing with a Comcast sales rep.
Appearing on Hardball, Conway said, in full:
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.
That is “brand new information” indeed, because the Bowling Green massacre is not a thing that has ever occurred. To be clear, two Iraqi nationals were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky, after attempting to deliver weapons to Al-Qaeda. Conway later clarified that she meant “Bowling Green terrorists,” but it’s hard to be forgiving to a flub when it is delivered by an angry, racist corn husk rapidly undermining the American Constitution, and thus, there were jokes.
The “Bowling Green massacre” congeals neatly with the rest of the ol’ lyin’ gang’s recent batch of lies, non-truths, and bullshits, including Trump’s weird, bloviating hat tips Wednesday morning toward Frederick Douglass, and the way human canker sore Sean Spicer seemed to not know whether or not Douglass was still alive. Only two weeks in, they have established a set of alternative facts that almost create a separate cosmos, a place where all the bullshit of history has its merry day in the sun.
We are told constantly that we live in a post-truth world, and accordingly many jokes barrel on, envisioning what it would be like if the thing Kellyanne Conway is mad about actually occurred. This is useful practice for the next four years: There will be many things she is angry about, and very few of them will be real.
shame on Kellyanne Conway for attempting to politicize the Bowling Green massacre, in which I was killed
— PAPPADEMAS (@PAPPADEMAS) February 3, 2017
Even Chelsea Clinton is owning Conway on Twitter.
It is another shitty day to be awake and paying attention to literally anything, in other words, but at least we can all own Conway on Twitter each time she is paraded in front of a camera to shout at the press and lie to the American people. It will not keep anyone safe, but it might keep us sane.