Sean Spicer: Hitler 'Was Not Using Gas on His Own People the Way that Ashad [sic] Is Doing'

By Ellie Shechet  |  April 11, 2017 | 7:20pm
Politics


There has possibly never been a more fascinating specimen behind the White House podium than Sean Spicer, a swiftly disintegrating man whose clenched, spray-tanned body is in a perpetual state of fight-or-flight.

At today’s press briefing, Spicer was given the opportunity to clarify a comment he’d made earlier in the briefing, arguing that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is worse than Hitler—“You had someone as despicable as Hitler, who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” he’d said, quite inaccurately. When a reporter later gave him an opportunity to clarify that actually, yes, Hitler was rather well-known to use chemical weapons, Spicer did not take it:

“I think when you come to sarin gas, there was no, [Hitler] was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Ashad [?] is doing—clearly, I understand, thank you—I appreciate that—there was not, in the, in the, he brought ‘em into, to the Holocaust centers, I understand that. But I’m saying the way that the sha—Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent—into the middle of towns, it was brought, so, the use of it, I appreciate the clarification.”

Holocaust centers? Ashad? The crowd—particularly American Urban Radio’s Washington bureau chief April Ryan—went wild:

This is not the first bizarre statement the press secretary has made about the Holocaust, and we can all safely bet that it won’t be the last. Spicer has already made a statement clarifying the statement he made to clarify the first statement:

Meanwhile, the Anne Frank Center, with whom Spicer has tangled before, has called for his firing:

 
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