White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer issued an apology on Tuesday for his "inappropriate" comments, after comparing Adolf Hitler to Bashar al-Assad saying the former did not use chemical weapon on his people.
"It was a mistake. I shouldn't have done it and I won't do it again. It was inappropriate and insensitive," Spicer was quoted as saying to CNN in an interview.
Spicer, during a press briefing on the Syrian chemical attack last week that killed 87 people, had favourably compared Hitler to Assad saying, "You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn't even sink to using chemical weapons."
When a reporter present at the news briefing asked him if he wanted to clarify his statements, Spicer denied to do so.
"I think when you come to sarin gas, there was no, he was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing," he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
The White House spokesperson's remarks drew intense criticism for sidelining the fact that millions of Jews were killed in gas chambers by Hitler's Nazi regime.
Spicer, in a statement issued later, said that he was not trying to belittle the Holocaust.
"In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust. 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," he said.
The United States government blames Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for carrying out the Sarin gas chemical attack in Idlib's Khan Sheikhoun town. The attack on the residential part of the town killed 87 civilians, including 20 children and 13 women. Donald Trump last week ordered missile strikes on a Syrian airbase from where the chemical strike was reportedly launched.
