Sean Spicer Causes Uproar With Hitler Gaffe
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer came under fire Tuesday after saying that Adolf Hitler “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons” against his own people like Syrian strong man Bashar Al-Assad.
He later sought to clarify his remarks in three separate statements.
Spicer, speaking from the White House podium at the daily press briefing, said that Hitler, whom he called “despicable,” did not use “the gas on his own people the same way Assad used them.”
The outrage on social media was swift, with reporters and public figures blasting Spicer’s comments — and saying they were particularly offensive coming during the Jewish holiday of Passover.
The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect called on President Donald Trump to can Spicer.
“Sean Spicer now lacks the integrity to serve as White House press secretary, and President Trump must fire him at once,” Steven Goldstein, the organization’s executive director, said in a statement.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum used Spicer’s gaffe as a moment to remind of the horrors of the Holocaust.
At the briefing, Spicer pointed out that Assad dropped chemical weapons in the “middle of towns.”
U.S. officials said the Assad regime used Sarin in strikes on the Syrian people in a deadly attack last week that prompted U.S. military strikes in retaliation.
Nazis murdered Jews in gas chambers during the Holocaust by the millions with the use of chemical gas agents like Zyklon B.
Spicer acknowledged that Hitler did bring gas “into the Holocaust centers…I understand that.”
He later sought to clarify his remarks in multiple statements and said he was not trying to diminish the Holocaust.
“In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust,” Spicer said in his third attempt at clarification. “I was trying to draw a distinction of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on population centers. Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable.”
(h/t NBC News)
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