Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said on Tuesday that “Hitler didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” in justifying the Trump administration’s response to a sarin gas attack carried out by the Syrian regime last week. Spicer was likely referring to the tactics used on the World War II battlefield, as Zyklon B pesticides were used by the Nazi regime in its concentration camps. Though he did himself no favors when asked about the remark later in the same briefing, clarifying that Hitler “was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing... the way Assad dropped the bombs into the middle of towns—so the use of it. I appreciate the clarification. That was not the intent.” The press secretary also referred to Nazi concentration camps as “Holocaust centers.” Following the press briefing, Spicer released an additional statement: “In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust, however, I was trying to draw a contrast of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on innocent people.” An additional statement added that “Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable.”