White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that not even Adolf Hitler used chemical weapons. The remark was striking given the German ruler’s infamous legacy of killing millions of Jews, many in gas chambers.
During his daily press briefing Tuesday, Spicer was asked why he thought Russia would drop its support for Syrian President Bashar Assad after an alleged poison gas attack last week, despite the decades-long relationship between the two nations.
“I think a couple things. You look — we didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II,” Spicer began. “You had a — someone as despicable as Hitler, who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons. So you have to, if you’re Russia, ask yourself, is this a country that you — and a regime that you want to align yourself with?”
Spicer on Syria: “You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons…” pic.twitter.com/UN3JfRRg0w
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) April 11, 2017
In fact, Hitler killed millions of innocent civilians, including German Jews, during World War II using poisons like Zyklon-B and carbon monoxide in concentration camps.
Asked to clarify his comment later in the briefing, Spicer said, “I think when you come to sarin gas, there was no — he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing.”
“There was not — he brought them into the Holocaust centers, I understand that,” he added. “But I’m saying that in the way Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent — into the middle of towns. It was brought — the use of it. And I appreciate the clarification there, that was not the intent.”
Spicer later said in a statement: “In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust, however, I was trying to draw a contrast of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on innocent people.”
Press Sec. Spicer issues another clarification to comments about chemical weapons, the Holocaust and Hitler – @PeterAlexander pic.twitter.com/zViZjqscgM
— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) April 11, 2017
He later amended the statement:
WH just sent out an updated clarification from Spicer, changing “innocent people” to “population centers” at the end.
via @HallieJackson pic.twitter.com/A3k9W75ztt
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) April 11, 2017
And again:
.@HallieJackson From the print pool, what appears to be a 4th Hitler clarification from Spicer, which adds a sentence at the end not there previously pic.twitter.com/lxZDJb2rwt
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) April 11, 2017
Watch below via MSNBC:
Sean Spicer offers clarification on his earlier comparison of Assad’s use of chemical weapons and Hitler https://t.co/UUbMGXKtE4
— NBC News (@NBCNews) April 11, 2017
This post has been updated.
