Thigh-High Politics is an Op-Ed column by Teen Vogue writer Lauren Duca that breaks down the news, provides resources for the resistance, and just generally refuses to accept toxic nonsense.
During a briefing on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer unleashed his most shocking verbal debacle to date. “We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II,” Spicer told reporters. “You know, you had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.” Asked to clarify the remark, Spicer said Hitler took Jewish people “into the Holocaust centers,” but “was not using the gas on his own people in the same way that [Assad] is doing.” He later appeared on CNN to apologize, and released three written clarifications over the course of 19 minutes. All of the above would have amounted to an astounding political taboo even if it had not taken place on Passover.
Condemnations of the incident range from discussions of Spicer’s incompetence to earnest decrying of Holocaust denialism. A contextualized reading requires both. Spicer’s comments cannot be reduced to a toss-up between blithering idiot and malicious revisionist. What happened on Tuesday was mortifying ineptitude born out of hypocrisy, and consider that this isn’t even the first time something in this vein has happened since Trump has assumed the presidency—Spicer’s comments come out of an administration whose Holocaust Remembrance Day statement managed to omit any mention of Jewish people.
There are several layers of confusion to unpack here. Let’s begin by zooming in on the surrounding moment. Spicer’s already-infamous quote came as an explanation for Trump’s decision to order a missile strike on a Syrian airbase—a move that he publicly opposed via Twitter in the wake of a chemical attack committed in 2013. It was in the attempt to reconcile this irreconcilability that the press secretary began his precipitous linguistic fall. As The New York Times explains it, Spicer “was defending President Trump’s decision to order a missile strike on Syria by trying to lend gravity to the actions of Mr. Assad.”
While we’re lending gravity, you’ll recall that this eternally bumbling man is the highest-ranking communications professional in the country, and the foremost public face of the United States after the President. From distributing misinformation regarding inauguration crowd size to gargling marbles while pronouncing the names of world leaders, he has repeatedly proven that he cannot handle the demands of his role. This is not a position that should be occupied by a person who plays fast and loose with the truth, never mind basic sentence structure.
Still, Tuesday’s disaster did not occur in a vacuum. The White House’s troubled relationship with the truth and bigotry are so rich with related examples, I think it’s safe to say an outright rejection of the Holocaust is not outside the realm of public imagination. Trump is often reluctant to condemn his ties to hateful ideologies, as we saw in his significantly delayed response to both rising hate crimes and his endorsement from former KKK leader David Duke. And his empowerment of racism extends beyond conspicuous silence to the dissemination of well-known dog whistles, such as the supposed sheriff’s star tweeted atop piles of cash back in July. All of this is to say nothing of Trump’s support from the informal collection of nationalist trolls and white supremacists that is the alt-right, or their self-appointed messiah and his chief strategist, Steve Bannon.
As a candidate and as President, Trump has avoided concrete accusations of anti-Semitism with the sneaky precision of a Bond villain in a laser maze. Spicer wasn’t graceful enough to avoid getting burned. It’s unproductive to debate his motivation in terms of some oversimplified moron-villain binary. The sum total is far more nuanced than either accusation, neither of which absolves him of his unforgivable status as the foremost representative of a wildly inconsistent and hypocritical administration that appears to be doing everything in its power to avoid alienating the Nazi demographic.
On Facebook, Dan Rather perhaps put it best: “In the end, this is less about him and more about an Administration that is inserting itself in a civil war and now is plunging into a drastic reformulation of American foreign policy without any clear sense that they have a plan. When you try to explain such a situation, it is understandable that your words don't make sense. A bar, already set low, continues to drop.”
Things to Read:
The White House is now accusing Russia of spreading misinformation about last week’s chemical attack in Syria. Check out The New York Times’s full report.
Writing for CNN, Chris Cillizza unpacks the most recent addition to the Russia scandal: surveillance of former Trump foreign-policy adviser Carter Page. Read his analysis here.
Head over to The New Yorker for Benjamin Wallace-Wells’s analysis of the special election in Kansas, and the ways it clicks into a sense of national division.
Things to Do:
Call your representatives and insist on accountability and transparency within the Trump administration, perhaps beginning with Spicer’s termination.
If you can, make a donation to Anti-Defamation League, as they continue their work advocating for the Jewish community.
Consider participating in the Tax March on April 15 in Washington, D.C., or see if there are any local protests around the issues that matter most to you.
Related: Nancy Pelosi Calls for Sean Spicer's Resignation After Holocaust Comments
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