Sean Spicer Called Concentration Camps "Holocaust Centers"

Ever since Inauguration Day, Americans have learned to expect pretty much anything from President Donald Trump' administration. His advisers have said some weird, contradictory, or even incorrect things countless times, and on Tuesday it was once again White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's turn to do so. While attempting to clear up a remark about Hitler at a press briefing, Spicer called concentration camps "Holocaust centers."

Spicer's initial remark involved him attempting to explain exactly how horrible the Syrian regime's chemical attack on civilians was. In comparison, he stated that not even Hitler used chemical weapons.

The very weird problem with this is that Hitler did use chemical weapons, i.e. gas chambers, to kill people during the Holocaust. It's pretty disturbing that the press secretary of the president of the United States completely disregarded this piece of history while trying to get a point across about Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Then he attempted to clarify what he meant, but unfortunately, he only made another awful gaffe.

"[Hitler] was not using the gas on his own people the same way that Assad is doing ... he brought them into the Holocaust center," Spicer said. "But I'm saying in the way that Assad used them, where he went into towns, dropped them down to innocent... into the middle of towns."

Not only is it crazy that Spicer seemed to forget the words "concentration camps," so he used "Holocaust centers" instead, but his entire rationale for bringing this up is questionable at best. Specifically looking at the way he phrased things, he seems to be making a distinction between where each leader used the chemical weapons, implying that Assad's was worse. He said that Assad used chemical weapons on citizens in their homes and Hitler used chemical weapons on people forced into camps.

According to The Hill, Spicer released an apology after the press briefing to once and for all smooth over the confusion about his remarks:

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 centers. Any attack on innocent people is reprehensible and inexcusable.

It's both embarrassing and horrifying to have a U.S. government employee making this type of very basic mistake when talking about such a serious issue. Hopefully this is a lesson for Spicer to take a second to think about what he's saying before making a point about chemical weapons.