Hitler did not sink to that level…

Apr 11th, 2017 | By
Category: Notes and Comment Blog

Jeez, you turn your attention away for a few hours and look what happens.

Spicer happens.

In criticizing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that even Adolf Hitler did not sink to that level of warfare, despite Hitler’s use of gas chambers to kill millions of Jews.

When given the chance to clarify his comment — uttered during Passover, the most celebrated Jewish holiday in the United States — Spicer then said Hitler took Jews “into the Holocaust center” but that Hitler “was not using the gas on his own people in the same way that Assad is doing.”

So I guess he doesn’t know that Zyklon B was a chemical weapon, and that it killed by suffocation. I guess he doesn’t know that the people killed by it died choking and convulsing just as the people in Idlib died. I guess he doesn’t know anything.

Later in the briefing, a reporter read Spicer’s comments back to him and gave him the opportunity to clarify. Spicer’s answer only added more confusion.

“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,” Spicer said, mispronouncing Assad’s name. “I mean, there was clearly, I understand your point, thank you. Thank you, I appreciate that. There was not in the, he brought them into the Holocaust center, I understand that. What I am saying in the way that 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. And I appreciate the clarification there. That was not the intent.”

Ah yes the Holocaust center, right next to the town hall and across from the movie theater.

Before the briefing was even over, White House press aides had realized the magnitude of his mistake — and were working on a response to clarify it. Shortly after he stepped away from the lectern, Spicer put out a statement trying to explain what he meant.

“In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust,” Spicer said in the statement. “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.”

Dude. The fact that it comes from a plane or a missile doesn’t make it worse than if it had come from an SS man or a kapo dropping it down a slot in the roof.

In January, the White House released a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, that made no mention of Jews or the anti-Semitic views that fueled the Holocaust. At the time, White House spokeswoman Hope Hicks said the omission was intentional because the White House staff is an “incredibly inclusive group, and we took into account all of those who suffered.”

She did say that. I remember it.

 

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