Sean Spicer may be the dumbest person in the Trump administration. He should definitely check in with Jared Kushner for a little lesson.
But then, you don’t need to be Jewish to know that Hitler used chemical weapons to kill millions of his own citizens: Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, Roma, people with disabilities, political dissidents, etc. You don’t even need to be a historian.
I thought it was common knowledge.
Lesson: Make no assumptions about what Sean Spicer knows.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
History is not this administration’s strong suit.
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I can’t come up with anything that is the strong suit for this administration.
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Nor are math, grammar, science, the arts, ethics, religion, economics…
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True. Their obtuseness could be comparable to that of the Team Japan(PM Abe and his LDP mercenaries.)
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Spicer was given too much “credit” in one response…
““On Passover no less, Sean Spicer has engaged in Holocaust denial, the most offensive form of fake news imaginable, by denying Hitler gassed millions of Jews to death,” said Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center…”
Spicer didn’t “deny Hitler gassed millions of Jews to death… the fool honestly didn’t know because he is just that A FOOL… A COMPLETE IDIOT… But expectations should be low for this administration. Trump’s environmental staff don’t believe in global warming… Trump’s education head could not answer basic questions at her hearing because she didn’t know anything about public education. This “ship of fools” goes on and on… no need to expect more from Spicer!
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Make no assumptions about the knowledge base of any of Trumps’s people. Like many of the public school detractors, these people are not used to having to know much of anything. Middle school students in so-called low scoring public schools would know better.
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He apologized. Move on..
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We always move on.
There is no excuse for stupidity.
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“Lesson: Make no assumptions about what Sean Spicer knows.”
As a European versed in history on our continent, I have to say that if anything, I must assume everything about what Sean Spicer does NOT know.
But I bet he knows who Kim Kardashian is, however.
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Just like we moved on from Holocaust Remembrance Day, when the gassing of 6 million Jews was deliberately omitted. Just like we moved on from the toppling of Jewish tombstones, about which the Trump administration said nothing. When do we stop moving on and stand up and say NO this is not acceptable!
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We never move on because we never forget. “Never Again” is forever and for everyone.
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Absolutely NOT, Timmy.
“We who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.”
“Ignorance (of the law) is no excuse.”
And just plain ignorance (although, more like stupidity, in this case)
of a chief communicator should end in…gone.
“Spicer,” say We, the People (who do, after all, pay his salary),
“You’re fired!”
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Baghdad Bob has outdone himself this time.
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He is a moron. I would imagine Spicer is missing the simpler days when he played the White House Easter Bunny.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/03/politics/sean-spicer-easter-bunny/
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There never is a dull moment . It would be entertaining if it weren’t so serious. Syria is Kabuki theater . But I would not want to be a citizen of Soul of for that matter an American servicemen in Korea with these morons in charge. We may get an impeachment yet for violating Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 (War Powers ). But at what cost.
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Stupid is as stupid does.
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Just read a very funny an apt comment that “Spicey must have gotten his degree at Trump University”. Playing along with this made up scenario, maybe Spicer should quit his job and “sue The Donald” 🙂
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He may be stupid. Definitely comes out with some moronic comments. But I’m a bit apprehensive of this administrations’ intent regarding people of the Jewish faith and heritage.
This gaffe was preceded by the insult of the Holocaust Remembrance Day and the silence as Jewish cemeteries were being desecrated.
I’m seeing a consistent pattern, here. It bothers me.
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I agree. I think they are playing to his base to whom facts do not matter. They are counting on the fact, especially with public schools gone, that nobody will even remember the Holocaust.
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He IS stupid. His outrageous Passover gaffe, compounded by further backpedaling stumbles, completely distracted from his attempt to underline admin’s intent to persuade Russia to abandon Assad support even as Tillerson was flying to Moscow for meetings. His head should roll.
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The picture of rich dumb kids squabbling in a sand box somehow doesn’t strike me as probable. Don’t the wealthy get the best education? Could there be a big deception underway–i.e., could they be pretending to be that ignorant so their base will feel right at home with them?.
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While it’s perfectly understandable that Spicer’s ignorance and heinous public speaking skills enrage us all, I sincerely hope that he remains WH press secretary. As MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell put is so aptly last night, the iPOTUS has the press secretary that he deserves. Invite the faux pas and gaffes. Relish in them. They truly represent the audience of one that he plays to.
As for Nan’s pondering of pretending ignorance, I think it’s more the case of the Dunning-Kruger effect. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is. I don’t think Spicer could have “performed” the “responses” he gave yesterday. He is a perfect mouthpiece for Twitler.
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Be fair. The Germans did not use chemical/biological weapons on the battlefield in the Second World War. Give the man a break.
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Charles,
Your comment is a distinction without a difference. Hitler never dropped poison gas on his people; that might have killed people he liked. Instead, he rounded up certain of his people, put them in cattle cars, and sent them to camps where they were stripped naked, lined up, and marched into sealed rooms where they were gassed with chemical weapons. I have been to Auschwitz. I have seen the enormous piles of luggage, hair, shoes, taken from his people who were killed by chemical weapons.
In other words, Charles. You sound as pathetically ignorant as Spicer. I suggest you drop it.
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I have been to Dachau. I have stood in a gas chamber. I need no historical instructions about the Holocaust. I have shook hands, with people, with numbers tattooed on their arms. I have been in Anne Frank’s hiding place.
True, The Germans never dropped poison gas their own people, and the German Army never used poison gas on the battlefield (WW2).
This is a distinction and a difference. And I am not ignorant of history. The man apologized, give him a break.
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Charles,
There is something that Jewish people say, especially if they lost many relatives to Hitler: Never Forget.
I will not give Sean Spicer a break. He said the same thing twice, and you are trying to refine his words–that killing your own people on the battlefield with chemical weapons is somehow significantly different from killing them in gas chambers with chemical weapons.
He is an idiot whose apology means nothing to me. The fact that he forgot to mention six million dead Jews on Holocaust Remembrance Day has also not been forgotten.
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Agreed Diane, except that there is no actual distinction here. The world’s usual narrative has been far too generous to the Nazi’s in this regard. A chemical agent, in this case the hydrogen cyanide gas absolutely was used as a weapon of war. The fact that it was used against what we know to be imprisoned, unarmed non-combatants is irrelevant since those we know to have been murdered were considered to be enemy targets by the Nazi’s. The death camp prisoners were not treated as POW’s the way “ordinary” soldiers captured in battle and disarmed were treated. From the Nazi point of view, the Jewish faith and the other ethnic characteristics of the non-Jewish holocaust victims were considered to be defacto weapons by the Nazi’s, weapons that could only be removed from the battlefield, the imagined Aryan Homeland, by the death of those embodying them. That defines the use of gas and all other methods of extermination against all death camp victims as acts of war since elimination of the Jews and other “undesirables” was one of the primary motivations and goals of Nazi Germany for waging the war. As repugnant as it is, those less familiar with the holocaust must understand it from the Nazi point of view and take them at their word in order to then be fully able to comprehend the nature and magnitude of their evil, of what the rest of us know to have been crimes against humanity “disguised” by the Nazi’s as acts of war. All of this indicates how history would have been written had they prevailed. They would have claimed the moral high ground. This is why we must reject any notion of getting over it and of putting it behind us. “Never Again” must be forever and for everyone. Sadly, we seem to have moved little to no closer to that ideal.
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The Nazi death camps were simultaneously weapons of war and battlefields. There can be no legitimate question on this point, it is axiomatic. See my other post for an elaboration.
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The memorial at Dachau does not say “Never Forget”. It says “Never Again” (In German Nie Wieder, in French Jamais Plus, in Russian Nekogda Bolsh.
Sadly, the entire 20th century was a Holocaust. A Hundred years ago, the Turks marched the Armenians into the desert and slaughtered 1.5 million of them. Ironically, it was a German soldier, who photographed the slaughter. When Hitler was considering the holocaust, and his advisors cautioned against it, Hitler replied “Who remembers the Armenians?”
History has witnessed the slaughter of the Cambodians, and the genocide in Rwanda. It took the US Senate about 40 years, just to ratify the genocide treaty.
Today, we are seeing the wholesale deaths in South Sudan.
“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic. When one dies, it is a tragedy. When a million die, it is a statistic.” -Stalin
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Charles,
You make me shudder.
I did not cite what is said at Dachau. I said this is what I as a Jew whose family was wiped out by Hitler say. Are you now going to inform me about what I believe and what I say?
I bite my lip to avoid typing what I think right now about your astonishing presumptuousness.
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I do not mean to offend anyone, nor to tell anyone what they believe. I also believe in “Never forget”, I also try to believe in Never Again”.
Can’t we just agree, that Mr. Spicer is not the “sharpest tack in the box”?
I am a Freemason. Freemasons were killed in the holocaust too.
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A follow-up to Karen Wolfe’s CNN “Easter bunny” link above, & Tweet (purportedly from Sean Spicer, 3/28/16, “the good ole days–what I would give to hide in a bunny costume again.”
We would like that, too, Sean, we would like that, too.
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It is just getting worse.
And worse.
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The world’s usual narrative has been far too generous to the Nazi’s in this regard. A chemical agent, in this case the hydrogen cyanide gas absolutely was used as a weapon of war. The fact that it was used against what we know to be imprisoned, unarmed non-combatants is irrelevant since those we know to have been murdered were considered to be enemy targets by the Nazi’s. The death camp prisoners were not treated as POW’s the way “ordinary” soldiers captured in battle and disarmed were treated. From the Nazi point of view, the Jewish faith and the other ethnic characteristics of the non-Jewish holocaust victims were considered to be defacto weapons by the Nazi’s, weapons that could only be removed from the battlefield, the imagined Aryan Homeland, by the death of those embodying them. That defines the use of gas and all other methods of extermination against all death camp victims as acts of war since elimination of the Jews and other “undesirables” was one of the primary motivations and goals of Nazi Germany for waging the war. As repugnant as it is, those less familiar with the holocaust must understand it from the Nazi point of view and take them at their word in order to then be fully able to comprehend the nature and magnitude of their evil, of what the rest of us know to have been crimes against humanity “disguised” by the Nazi’s as acts of war. All of this indicates how history would have been written had they prevailed. They would have claimed the moral high ground. This is why we must reject any notion of getting over it and of putting it behind us. “Never Again” must be forever and for everyone. Sadly, we seem to have moved little to no closer to that ideal.
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It also just occurred to me that it’s very possible that Sean Spicer doesn’t know it’s Passover.
In fact, he might not even know what Passover IS or that the holiday exists.
I truly hope that he is gone way before Rosh Hashanah & Yom Kippur.
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That’s religious BS, who cares? Killing people with chemical weapons is something everybody walking the planet should know.
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Another example of the entire administration in power now, BRAIN DEAD. Since when is gassed in showers in the Nazi camps not chemical? An 6 grader in our public school system knows that. #45 also said they used nerve gas, they did not, it was chemical. I’d rather get hit with nerve agents because you’re dead in 45 seconds.
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