Sean Spicer took another hit last Tuesday for trying to compare Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's attack on his own people using Sarin gas, with Adolph Hitler's use of gas chambers to kill millions of European Jews during the holocaust. In his statement during a press briefing, the Press Secretary said that even Hitler didn't do what Assad did with chemical weapons. There was no indication while he was making the comparison that he was aware he was going down a path of no return.
Taken from a transcript of his press briefing from the official White House site, Sean Spicer said: “I think a couple things.
You look -- we didn't use chemical weapons in World War II. You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn't even sink to using chemical weapons.” Later, when senior White House correspondent Ceclia Vega asked him to clarify his statement about Hitler, he stumbled through his explanation while trying to thank Vega for allowing him the chance to defend his statement. But the condemnation of what he said weighed on him heavily enough to where in a brief interview later on with Wolf Blizter on CNN, he apologized profusely; which is rarely seen coming from Trump's aides.
Trump doesn't apologize
Last year when Donald Trump was a candidate, it was revealed in a recording that he had made lewd statements eleven years prior which created a firestorm of condemnation that threatened to end his chances of getting elected.
The outrage was so intense that Trump was forced to make a statement where he “apologized” for what the recording revealed, which Blasting News reported on. But the Trump campaign, transition team and now administration have been caught up in an endless cycle of public relations disasters similar to Spicer's Hitler gaffe. In most of these cases, Trump has reportedly gotten upset with members of his team for apologizing which has been noted as something he doesn't do.
Israeli Intelligence and Transport Minister Israel Katz took to Twitter to demand that Sean Spicer apologize or resign as speaker after making the controversial statement. After he finally made the apology, the same minister said that he was satisfied with it and that as far as he was concerned, the matter was over. The Press Secretary was obviously aware of the backlash which forced his apology but he was also defiant against his critics saying that he was being genuine because he was apologizing on national television.
On Wednesday he was asked by Greta Van Susteren at a Newseum event about his statement where he contrasted his initial feeling that he didn't have a credibility problem by saying that he felt he let the President down.
Trump's antisemitic fascination with Hitlerism
Blasting News reported on the fact that Trump's White House had left out Jewish suffering in their statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day and in another report, referred to how it was shown that the omission was intentional. Since then, the administration has made no attempts to fix the issue, only under their own narrative, doubling down that it was more about everyone suffering, similar to their "All Lives Matter" narrative as opposed to "Black Lives Matter." It's suspected that their nationalist platform and supporters would simply not allow it.
During the presidential campaign, Trump was accused of instigating violence against minorities, with a large percentage of his supporters identifying themselves with anti-Semitic views generated by internet news outlets like Breitbart, which many of Trump's White House aides worked for.
Since the campaign and into Donald Trump's presidency, the administration has been compared to the Adolph Hitler's Nazi Party which only makes Sean Spicer's "contribution" to "Hitlerism" during the press briefing seem more fitting. One opinion piece published by CNN titled: “Sean Spicer's Holocaust remark is a symptom of Trump's problem” also makes this comparison saying that “Trump has been playing a double game with all things Jewish,” saying that he is pro-Israel while still catering to the alt-right who elected him, using Twitter (his social media service of choice) to share out anti-Semitic and racist propaganda that come from white nationalist origins.
Even as recent as his address to Congress, Trump, and his aides went as far as to blame the increasing reports of vandalism of Jewish cemeteries and bomb threats on synagogues on Democrats, rather than admit that their supporters could be suspect. It wasn't until Trump toured the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. that he made a statement publicly denouncing anti-Semitism. As of this writing, many are still demanding that Sean Spicer resign as there appear to be more signs that the administration is beginning to normalize and pull away from extremism and become more pragmatic.
