A Mind-Spinning White House Press Briefing

Rick Klein and Shushannah Walshe: “The Hitler comparison offered up by White House press secretary Sean Spicer was a terrible analogy, phrased terribly, at a terribly inconvenient time. It’s made worse by the casual relationship the Trump White House has had with facts, and with findings of U.S. intelligence agencies. Remember the context here: The comment stemmed from a Trump administration effort to put pressure on the Russians to accept Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s involvement in last week’s chemical attack. Assad has done awful, horrible things, and he did those things whether Hitler did anything similar. The Russians, of all people, do not need lessons about Nazi atrocities; one can imagine President Vladimir Putin’s amusement regarding this particular lecture.”

“Back to the broader case, the Trump administration is saying that intelligence conclusions about Assad’s involvement, and, possibly, Russian knowledge of the regime’s weapon capabilities, must be respected. This comes from the administration of the same president who questioned the findings and motivations of intelligence agencies when it came to revelations about Russian election interference. This case was mind-spinning in its complexities even without a Nazi history lesson.”