Steppin' in it

Radio host extraordinaire Dennis Prager has said often that the political right believes the political left is wrong, whereas the left believes the right is evil.

As such, it should come as no surprise the invective thrown towards White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer regarding his latest verbal misstep.

“We did not use chemical weapons in World War II. You had someone as despicable as Hitler who did not even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said during his daily press briefing. “If you are Russia, ask yourself, is this a country and regime that you want to align yourself with?”

While Hitler is believed not to have used chemical weapons on the battlefield, the Nazis used Zyklon B and other types of poison to kill Jews in gas chambers in concentration camps.

The comments immediately reverberated online and Spicer was given an opportunity to clarify them later during the briefing. But he bungled it by again making a comparison between Assad and Hitler, whom he said did not “gas his own people.”

Look, I'm not going to defend what are obviously buffoonish statements. Someone in Spicer's position should know that invoking Hitler in any context is to be avoided at all costs. Just don't do it.

Spicer later issued an apology.

“Frankly, I mistakenly used an inappropriate and insensitive reference to the Holocaust, for which frankly there is no comparison,” Spicer said during an interview on CNN. “For that I apologize, it was a mistake to do that.”

Naturally there were calls for Spicer to resign or be fired, with many implying or flat-out saying that he's a "Holocaust denier." But Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist isn't buying it.

Come on, people. Don’t match stupid with stupid. Sean Spicer was not pushing Holocaust denial and anyone with the most meager intelligence and sense of fairness would be able to say that. As his statement after the briefing shows, he was for some reason drawing a distinction between combat genocide and other genocide; he was not denying that Hitler killed millions of people during the Holocaust using gas chambers and other means.

I don't want to come across as diminishing anyone's feelings regarding this issue. I'm certain there are Holocaust survivors or relatives of those killed in that horrific event who were genuinely disturbed by Spicer's statements. It's downright sad that those awful memories were conjured up or the Holocaust itself appearing to be trivialized.

But for those leftists who often invoked Hitler analogies when referring to the policies of President George W. Bush or President Donald Trump? I think you know what you can do with your faux outrage.

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