Apology No 2 for gaffe over Holocaust

WASHINGTON // White House press secretary Sean Spicer apologised again yesterday for “inexcusable and reprehensible” comments linking Hitler and Syrian president Bashar Al Assad’s use of chemical weapons. “You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” Mr Spicer had said on Tuesday, apparently forgetting the Holocaust gas chambers.

Yesterday he said: “It really is painful to myself to know that I did something like that.

“That obviously was not my intention. To know when you screw up that you possibly offended a lot of people … I would ask obviously for folks’ forgiveness to understand that I should not have tried to make a comparison.”

It was Mr Spicer’s second apology in as many days, following one on Tuesday in an interview with CNN.

Mr Spicer has been a frequent target of ire and satirists for his sometimes loose grasp of the facts.

He was pilloried for his first appearance in the press briefing room in January, when he falsely insisted president Donald Trump had the biggest inaugural audience ever. The Anne Frank Centre for Mutual Respect, in New York, said Mr Trump should dismiss his press secretary for Holocaust denial.

Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said references to Hitler and the Holocaust were problematic, but he believed Mr Spicer had “genuinely and sincerely apologised”.