The Left– Yes, The Left– Slams Rachel Maddow For Promoting A Completely Ridiculous Anti-Trump Conspiracy Theory

You KNOW it’s bad when the left is calling Rachel Maddow out.

Yep. That happened.

On Thursday night, Rachel Maddow floated a ridiculous conspiracy theory on her show. It was so bad that the left-wing Huffington Post called her out. The title’s actually “What The Hell Was This Rachel Maddow Segment?”

Maddow opened up her show with a long rant and basically tried to connect the deaths of four American soldiers in Niger to President Trump’s travel ban. As Fox News notes, “Maddow essentially claimed that the inclusion of Chad, which recently pulled its troops out of Niger, in the revised travel ban resulted in extremist attacks such as the one that left four Americans dead.”

Disgusting, right? Even HuffPo agrees.

[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/5FHvKySo-yQ”]

Check out this rebuke.

There was just one problem. Maddow’s theory was so flimsy that it could be debunked by a quick glance at a map, let alone a phone call with an expert.

Maddow didn’t straight up say Trump’s travel ban was responsible, but it was certainly implied.

Chad’s pullout from Niger “had an immediate effect in emboldening ISIS attacks,” Maddow said.

That appears to be false. According to the Council on Foreign Relations and accounts from local residents, the attacks that have increased can be traced back to militant group Boko Haram, which is based just across the border in Nigeria. A group of Boko Haram militants broke away and formed the Islamic State West Africa, Laura Seay, an assistant professor in Colby College’s Department of Government, told HuffPost. But they are separate from the so-called Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, the group that reportedly carried out the ambush (although no group has claimed responsibility for the attack).

 

Chadian troops were present in Niger specifically to ward off the Boko Haram threat ― they had nothing to do with Islamic State in the Greater Sahara. They were also based almost 800 miles away, in an area called Diffa that’s long been battling the group, Seay said.

 

Any expert asked about Chadian troops battling ISIS in Niger would have said “No, that’s crazy,” Seay added. ”Everybody that I know is appalled by this. I would like to think that Maddow’s researchers are more responsible.”

 

Plus, the pullout of Chadian troops isn’t necessarily related to the travel ban, as Maddow implied. “It may have already been planned and [the travel ban] was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Seay said. “Chadians didn’t want to keep their forces there forever and were at least looking to scale down. If we do see the travel ban lifted I’m not sure you’d see the Chadians go back in.”

 

Maddow referred to the ambush as “absolutely baffling.” But an attack of this nature was “almost inevitable,” Seay added, seeing as American special forces teams are operating in remote areas in an “advise-and-assist” capacity, training military personnel across the region. Army Green Berets, for example, have gone to the Mali-Niger border 29 times in the last six months.

Yiiiiiikes. Unsurprisingly, Maddow’s show didn’t respond to the HuffPo’s request for comment.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to checking for flying pigs.