Sean Spicer sparks outrage with Hitler comment

White House press secretary Sean Spicer is in hot water again after making an inappropriate comparison between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons and Hitler.

In an attempt to highlight the seriousness of last week’s chemical weapon attack in Syria which Sarin gas was used to kill almost 90 people and injure hundreds more, Spicer told reporters that even “someone as despicable as Hitler … didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”

While his intention was to demonstrate the horror of the Syrian attack, his statement ignored the fact that the Nazi’s used gas to exterminate millions of Jews in concentration camps in World War II. 

“We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II,” Spicer said.

He attempted to clarify his statement to reporters throughout the press briefing, insisting that he was referring only to the way Assad was using chemical weapons and dropping them onto towns being different to the way Hitler used gas. 

After the briefing, Spicer emailed a statement to reporters.

“In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust,” the statement said.

“I was trying to draw a distinction of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on population centres. Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable.”

In an interview with CNN later, Spicer apologised  for the “inappropriate and insensitive reference to the Holocaust, for which there is no comparison,” and added that his comments did not reflect the views of President Donald Trump.

Do you think Sean Spicer’s comments were out of line, or simply clumsy wording?