It was a vintage Rachel Maddow stemwinder. A deft, 25-minute weaving of carefully curated sound bites, screenshots of news reports, slick maps and graphics, all strung together to make the case that something fishy is afoot. It’s a style Maddow has perfected, and it has propelled her to the top of the ratings heap. 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. Janet Malcolm of The New Yorker recently described Maddow’s show as “a piece of sleight of hand presented as a cable news show. It is TV entertainment at its finest. It permits liberals to enjoy themselves during what may be the most thoroughly unenjoyable time of their political lives.” Thursday night’s entertainment came as an attempt to pin the ambush that killed four Green Berets in Niger earlier this month on President Donald Trump’s newest proposed travel ban, which was scheduled to go into effect this week but was struck down in federal court. Maddow seized on the revised ban’s inclusion of Chad, one of Niger’s neighbors and a U.S. partner in counterterrorism efforts in Africa.

Handout . / Reuters A U.S. Army carry team transfers the remains of Army Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright of Lyons, Georgia, at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, U.S. on Oct. 5, 2017.

An expert, Maddow noted, warned that the decision “could put Americans in harm’s way.” Last week, when the Chadian government announced that it had completed the two-week process of pulling out all of its troops from Niger, the move was viewed as related to the travel ban, she claimed. An uptick in extremist attacks has ensued, Maddow added, which “might explain why we have just had these four absolutely unbelievable gut-wrenching emotional days in American politics and in D.C. in particular.” Maddow’s segment was designed to strongly suggest, without outright stating, that Trump’s addition of Chad in his latest travel ban prompted the country to remove its troops from Niger, leading to an increase in extremist attacks and ultimately claiming the lives of four U.S. soldiers. 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).

Isabella Carapella/HuffPost The pullout of Chadian troops happened on the opposite side of the country from where ISIS-affiliated militants attacked U.S. and Nigerien soldiers.