With a series of eyebrow-raises, furtive glances around the room, and what looks like a very dejected sigh, Washington Post reporter Ashley Parker went through what looked like all five stages of depression during White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer‘s press briefing Tuesday.
https://twitter.com/thecultureofme/status/851877801145896961
Honestly, same. While speaking with reporters at the White House, Spicer attempted to contextualize last week’s U.S. airstrike on Syrian government facilities with the most inflammatory comparison he could muster in a room full of attentive reporters on the second night of Passover: the Holocaust.
“We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II,” Spicer said. “We had someone as despicable as Hitler, who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.”
“He was not using the gas on his own people” pic.twitter.com/fWfyWDBDYt
— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) April 11, 2017
“He brought them into the holocaust centers” pic.twitter.com/lbkJe59qMO
— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) April 11, 2017
In which @AshleyRParker conveys every emotion being expressed on Twitter using only facial expressions https://t.co/QwOqMN9fp3
— Matt Zapotosky (@mattzap) April 11, 2017
Spicer was referring to President Trump‘s decision to drop 59 bombs on a Syrian airbase after Bashar al-Assad, the country’s dictator, launched a chemical weapons attack killing 80 of his own people, including young children.
Parker’s reaction captured the moments after his comment, as Spicer fumbled to respond to another reporter’s follow-up question asking what exactly he meant when he said that Hitler did not use chemical weapons.
“I think when you come to sarin gas, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Ashad [sic] is doing, there was not in the—he brought them into the Holocaust center… but I’m saying in that the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down, to innocent—into the middle of towns, it was brought, the use of it,” Spicer said.
For the record, Adolf Hitler used chemical weapons by murdering millions of Jews in poison gas chambers. At concentration camps, not “Holocaust centers.”
https://twitter.com/ryan_the_ladd/status/851896342188363784
Parker’s telling “WTF” reaction GIF is even more fitting accompanied by White House correspondent April Ryan shaking her head dramatically in the background.
@AprilDRyan not only shaking her head but biting her lip. Seriously incredulous.
— Anneliese Bruner (@AnnelieseMaria) April 11, 2017
Spicer eventually backtracked on his earlier commentary, saying he wasn’t “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 population centers,” Spicer said. “Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable.”
There’s a reason there’s a good rule of thumb that Hitler / the Holocaust should only ever be compared to Hitler / the Holocaust.
— Ashley Parker (@AshleyRParker) April 11, 2017
H/T thecultureofme
