Spicer’s Apology to Adelson Added Insult to Injury

Benjy Cannon Image
Benjy Cannon
on April 13, 2017

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Sean Spicer owes yet another apology, this time to the American Jewish community for apologizing to Sheldon Adelson.

Earlier this week, Press Secretary Sean Spicer found himself in hot water for claiming that, unlike Bashar Al-Assad, Hitler did not use poison gas “on his own people.”

He was rightfully panned.

After making his ignorant statements about Hitler and the Holocaust (on Passover, no less), Spicer managed to dig himself an even deeper hole by apologizing to far-right mega donor Sheldon Adelson for the comments.

As Simon Spungin noted in Ha’aretz:

Adelson is the hawkish, conservative incarnation of a worldview that is rapidly dying out. To see him as anything else is a distortion of reality that says more about Spicer (and the rest of the Trump administration) than his mangling of Holocaust history.

Spicer committed a grievous crime by claiming that “even Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons.” He sinned by thinking that Sheldon Adelson has the power to absolve him in the name of Jews everywhere.

Sheldon Adelson, in addition to holding repugnant views out of step with the overwhelming majority of American Jews, has endorsed using nuclear weapons against Iran. From his opposition to a two-state solution to his unabashed Islamophobia, Adelson’s views could not differ more from those of American Jews. He is in no position to grant forgiveness to the Press Secretary for making obscene comments about chemical weapons, the Holocaust or anything that offends American Jews.