Culture

Yes, Sean Spicer Really Claimed That Hitler Didn’t ‘Sink To Using Chemical Weapons’ And Referred To Concentration Camps As ‘Holocaust Centers’

Press Secretary Sean Spicer has enjoyed a blissfully uneventful few days with relatively quiet and/or closed press briefings, but you knew it wouldn’t last.

On Tuesday, Old Spicey came back in a major way while discussing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical attack on his own people. The main comparison (plus the below “clarification”) he made was an awkward one at best because — yes — Spicer referenced Adolf Hitler. Not only that, but Spicer attempted to explain that Assad was worse than Hitler while erroneously claiming, “You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”

At that point, the MSNBC chyron went into swift fact-checking mode to state, “HITLER GASSED MILLIONS.” Kyle Griffin quickly tweeted the goods:

Naturally, this led to questions from reporters because seriously what the hell, and Spicer tried to “clarify” but only made matters worse by referring to Nazi concentration camps as “Holocaust Centers” (and he did so during Passover). Here’s the video where he actually says this: “He was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing … [Hitler] brought them into the Holocaust Center, I understand.”

Well, SNL just received its material for the weekend. Here are a few choice reactions from Twitter (United Airlines must be breathing a sigh of relief)…

UPDATE: Spicer — after the Anne Frank Center called for his firing — issued a few more walk-backs on this kerfuffle and seemed to finish with this version, as tweeted by NBC News’ Bradd Jaffy. He was drawing a “distinction,” he says, and this doesn’t fix anything.