Let’s say you want to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep people from coming across the 2,000-mile expanse. It’s largely never been done before because most people on either side of the wall-to-be have always found it neither cost-effective nor practically effective. But you really want it. Bad. How would you go about convincing Americans that are pretty meh about the whole idea to get on board with building your wall? Perhaps you’d come up with a story. A scary story. A real humdinger. One like this, perhaps?

“I know from my friends in the Border Patrol in CBP that there are countries – radical Islamist countries, state-sponsored – that are cutting deals with Mexican drug cartels for some of what they call the ‘lanes of entry’ into our country… “And I have personally seen the photos of the signage along those paths that are in Arabic. They’re like way points along that path as you come in. Primarily, in this case the one that I saw was in Texas and it’s literally, it’s like signs, that say, in Arabic, ‘this way, move to this point.’ It’s unbelievable.”

That yarn, uncovered by CNN, comes courtesy of future National Security Advisor retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn* during a SiriusXM radio interview in August with, wait for it, Breitbart News. In case you were wondering, CNN asked the border patrol agent labor union if they were worried about these clearly marked terror superhighways and the group said they were unaware of any Arabic signs. Lt. Gen. Flynn is also, unsurprisingly, a conspiracy theorist, which makes him a -phobe writ large of everything that’s not crewcut, lily white, and American AF.

*Correction, Dec. 16, 2016: This post originally misstated Michael Flynn’s rank as general; he is a retired lieutenant general.

