In what may have been the worst day in Sean Spicer‘s life, the White House press secretary first drew a storm of criticism and ridicule Tuesday after butchering Godwin’s law, when trying to compare Syria president Bashar al-Assad to Adolf Hitler by saying that even the Nazi leader didn’t “sink to using chemical weapons.”
“We didn’t use chemical weapons in WWII. We had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said. Later when given the chance to elaborate he only made it worse: “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. When reporters interrupted to note the millions of deaths in concentration camps, the response made even less sense: “there was not in the – he brought them into the Holocaust centers and I understand that,” he said.
Spicer’s bizarre attempt to make Assad appear worse than Hitler promptly drew demands for Spicer’s resignation from the likes of Nancy Pelosi, the Anne Frank center and various Jewish groups.
That in turn prompted Spicer to appear on CNN to apologize for his earlier comments, when in yet another stunning implosion, he only made things worse by saying, or rather admitting, that President Trump is trying to “destabilize” the Middle East. Specifically, when speaking to Wolf Blitzer, Spicer said that he did not want his comments on Hitler to distract from Trump’s attempts “to destabilize the region.”
“I came out to make sure we stay focused on what the president is doing and his decisive action. I needed to make sure that I clarified, and not was in any shape or form any more of a distraction from the president’s decisive action in Syria and the attempts that he is making to destabilize the region and root out ISIS out of Syria,” Spicer said.
While Spicer later corrected himself for this dramatic Freudian slip, according to The Hill others reported that this was the second time Spicer has said “destabilize” in recent remarks on the region. During Monday’s press briefing, he said one of the goals of U.S. policy there is “to make sure we destabilize Syria — destabilize the conflict there, reduce the threat of ISIS.”
We eagerly await Spicer’s explanation for the upcoming mushroom clouds over Pyongyang.
