Spicer: I ‘clearly meant Orlando’ when I talked about Atlanta attack

by Rebecca Savransky - 02/09/17 9:09 AM ET

President Trump’s spokesman keeps referring to a terrorist attack on Atlanta that didn’t happen https://t.co/PhgZZWkK5X pic.twitter.com/rd2ED1zMdK

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) February 9, 2017

White House press secretary Sean Spicer says he misspoke when he talked about a terrorist attack in Atlanta during interviews defending the president’s travel ban.

In an email to ABC News, Spicer said he “clearly meant Orlando” when he said Atlanta.

Spicer over a period of two days pointed to Atlanta several times in defending the president’s order temporarily barring refugees and people from seven predominately Muslim countries from entering the U.S.

On Jan. 29, Spicer first mentioned Atlanta during an interview on ABC’s “The View” as a city that had been attacked by terrorists, The Daily Beast first reported.

{mosads}”What do we say to the family who loses somebody over a terroristic [sic] — to whether it’s Atlanta or San Bernardino or the Boston bomber?” Spicer said during the appearance.

“Those people, each of whom had gone out to a country and then come back.”

In an appearance the next day on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Spicer again invoked Atlanta, saying there have been too many terrorist attacks, “whether you’re talking about San Bernardino, Atlanta.”

He mentioned Atlanta a third time during a press briefing later that day to defend the president’s travel ban.

“We’re reviewing the entire process over this period of time to make sure that we do this right,” Spicer said. “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.”

Spicer in his clarification to ABC News said he was referring to the Orlando terrorist attack in June, when nearly 50 people were killed after a gunman stormed a nightclub.

Omar Mateen, the gunman in the Orlando attack, was a U.S. citizen born in New York to Afghan parents.

Spicer’s reference comes after the president’s top aide Kellyanne Conway mistakenly referred to the “Bowling Green massacre,” a terrorist attack that never happened. Conway later said she had misspoken.

Atlanta was the site of three bombings in 1996 and 1997 perpetrated by Eric Rudolph, a domestic terrorist motivated by anti-LGBT and anti-abortion views, including the July 27, 1996, bombing at Centennial Olympic Park.

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