Sean Spicer has issued a statement after shocking the media landscape by citing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons and then claiming that Adolf Hitler never used them.
“In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust. 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,” the White House Press Secretary said in a statement shared by the Trump administration.
Shortly after Spicer’s original comments took Twitter by storm, the Anne Frank Center demanded that President Trump fire him over the remarks. Even Chelsea Clinton trolled him, urging Spicer to visit the local Holocaust museum.
“Hitler didn’t even sink to the level of using chemical weapons,” Spicer said during Tuesday morning’s press conference.
Suffice to say, this is the exact opposite of accurate. Nazi Germany systematically killed millions of people in gas chambers at death camps during World War II, most notably at Auschwitz, where the gas of choice was Zyklon B, a form of hydrogen cyanide.
Moments later, the White House Press Secretary attempted to clarify his factually inaccurate remark but only dug the hole deeper. Hitler, Spicer claimed, was “not using the gas on his own people in the same way that Assad is doing.”
Spicer also referred to death camps as “the Holocaust center.”
Millions were murdered during the Holocaust, primarily Jewish people but also communists, homosexuals, dissidents, Roma, and other proscribed people.