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White House press secretary Sean Spicer has apologized for making the absurd claim that Hitler never used chemical weapons.
“We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II. We had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” Spicer said during a press briefing while speaking about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons attack last week.
The press secretary was immediately blasted for apparently forgetting about gas chambers that were used at concentration camps to kill millions of Jewish people.
Spicer later apologized in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: “Frankly, I mistakenly used an inappropriate and insensitive comment about the Holocaust and there is no comparison.”
Did Spicer get his Hitler line from a Fox Business interview?
Sean Spicer should be fired for saying Hitler did not use chemical weapons on "his own people.” You mean 6 million Jews don’t count?
And a little extra.
US officials on Tuesday said the evidence that Assad used the nerve agent sarin in the attack last week is overwhelming and accused the Russian government of waging a “disinformation” campaign to shield the Syrian government from criticism.
Officials said a wealth of evidence supported their claim, citing open-source videos, satellite imagery, intercepted communications, and physiological evidence from the attack site.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is visiting Moscow with the aim of getting the Kremlin to distance itself from Iran and the Assad regime in Syria. But Putin is not about to walk away from his allies without exacting a heavy price.
WE’RE KEEPING AN EYE ON
Three explosions hit a bus carrying a German soccer team in a targeted attack.
The attack injured one of the Borussia Dortmund players, police said. The team was on its way to a Champions League quarterfinal match against Monaco when the explosions occurred as the players were departing from a hotel.
Police in the German city of Dortmund called the blasts “serious explosions” but wouldn’t speculate on the motive. A German prosecutor said a letter found near the site “takes responsibility for the act,” but wouldn’t elaborate.
The match against Monaco has been postponed until Wednesday evening.
DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THIS?
Republicans breathed a huge sigh of relief Tuesday night when they narrowly won the first post-Trump congressional election.
Ron Estes was elected as the next representative of the 4th District of Kansas. But the victory was both a relief and an embarrassment for Republicans.
In November, Donald Trump won the district by 27%. On Tuesday, Estes beat Democrat James Thompson by single digits. And that was after a last-minute infusion of cash from national Republicans, robo-calls from both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence encouraging Republicans to vote, and a Monday in-town rally with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
QUICK THINGS TO KNOW
In media: Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly said he’s going on vacation just days after 21st Century Fox said it's investigating sexual harassment claims against him. And Rolling Stone has settled a defamation lawsuit brought by the University of Virginia administrator who was featured in the magazine’s since-retracted article about campus rape.
In tech: Uber’s top PR executive Rachel Whetstone is leaving the ride-hail company after a series of crises. And Twitter is testing a new bot that listens to users’ suggestions and complaints and handles basic customer inquiries.
Airline woes: Delta’s computer systems failed during its canceled flights fiasco last week, stranding pilots and crew members and deepening a crisis that grounded thousands of flights. Almost $1 billion was voluntarily removed from the market value of United Airlines Tuesday morning as the airline was hit with a barrage of criticism from customers in the US and around the world. And sorry, that United app “drag and drop feature” update is definitely fake.
Sipping tea: Here are 21 things about Helen Mirren, by Helen Mirren. The queen of movies spills the tea to BuzzFeed.
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