Germany has weighed in on the regretful Hitler analogy that Sean Spicer made on Tuesday in regards to Bashar al-Assad’s chemical attacks on his own people in Syria. Unsurprisingly, they would prefer Spicer never go there again. Speaking on the remarks on Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, made it clear that Germany would hope the United States refrains from the invoking of the Holocaust to illustrate the severity of chemical weapons in the future:
“Any comparison of current situations with the crimes of National Socialism leads to nothing good,” Seibert said.
On Tuesday, Spicer attempted to favorably compare Adolf Hitler’s use of gas chambers in “Holocaust Centers” to Assad’s dropping of chemical weapons from airplanes. “You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said at a White House press briefing.
Spicer has since repeatedly apologized for what he has called his “inexcusable” analogy. “I made a mistake. There’s no other way to say it. I got into a topic that I shouldn’t have and I screwed up,” Spicer said while speaking to MSNBC’s Greta Van Susteren at Washington D.C.’s Newseum, going on to make it clear that he realizes his gaffe’s timing — during Passover as well as the Christian Holy Week — is especially unfortunate.
(Via Talking Points Memo)