Kellyanne Conway Has Referenced 'Bowling Green Massacre' Before

Kellyanne Conway, one of President Trump's top advisers, invoked an attack in Bowling Green, Kentucky, that never occurred twice before Thursday night's MSNBC interview that resulted in widespread ridicule for her.

Cosmopolitan magazine said Monday that Conway referenced the nonexistent disaster in an on-the-record interview with the magazine on Jan. 29, though Cosmo declined to print that specific quote at the time.

As in the MSNBC interview, Conway was reportedly comparing Trump's sweeping ban on refugees to President Obama's temporary institution of stricter vetting for Iraqi refugees.

"He did, it’s a fact," Conway told Cosmo. "Why did he do that? He did that for exactly the same reasons. He did that because 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."

Read the full Cosmopolitan story here.

And in a video interview with TMZ on Jan. 29 — the same day as the Cosmo interview — she references "the Bowling Green attack."

“President Obama suspended the Iraq refugee program for six months in 2011 and no one certainly covered—I think nobody noticed," she told TMZ.

“He did that because, I assume, there were two Iraqis who came here, got radicalized, joined ISIS and then were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green attack on our brave soldiers."

Here's video of that exchange:

Conway — who also coined the term "alternative facts" — was interviewed by Matthews last week and defended Trump's executive order that halted all immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries and halted the immediate entry of refugees.

"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 were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre," Conway told Matthews. "Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered."

There's a reason that it didn't get covered.

Two Iraqi citizens were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky, for trying to send weapons and money back to Al-Qaeda. The men, though, did not carry out any sort of attack on U.S. soil. They pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges.

Conway's comments last week quickly spread across the internet and became the butt of many a Twitter joke.

She brushed it off, though, calling her comments an "honest mistake" and citing instances of reporters incorrectly saying things in the heat of the moment.

Monday, though, Cosmopolitan revealed that she's used the line before. Conway didn't deny the report in a text exchange with Cosmo.

"It was a plot to massacre and they were Bowling Green terrorists. That's what I should have said. I clarified," Conway told Cosmo. "Those were evil men who bragged about attacking American soldiers."

Read Cosmo's full story here.

Image via MSNBC