White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer drew fire on social media on Tuesday for saying during his daily press briefing to reporters that not even Hitler used chemical weapons during the Second World War, when discussing last week’s alleged chemical attack by Syrian forces and Russia’s support for the Syrian regime.

“We didn’t use chemical weapons in World War II … You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons. So you have to, if you’re Russia, ask yourself is this a country and a regime that you want to align yourself with,” he said.

Spicer was responding to a question on what makes the White House think Russia would consider stepping back its support for the regime of Bashar Assad in the wake of the attack on civilians in rebel-held territory in which over 80 people were killed, many of them children.

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According to US assessments, sarin gas was used in the assault on Khan Sheikhoun, a town in the province of Idlib, on April 4.

Spicer later clarified that he knows millions of Jews and other victims of the Nazis were killed in “Holocaust centers” in Nazi-occupied Europe, many in gas chambers, but that “when it comes to sarin gas, [Hitler] was not using the gas on his people the same way that Ashad [sic] is doing.”

As journalists shouted “what about the Holocaust?” Spicer continued, “I think there is clearly… I understand the point, thank you, thank you I appreciate that.”

He went on: Hitler “brought them into the Holocaust centers, I understand that. 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, it was brought… so the use of it, I appreciate the clarification, that was not the intent.”

"We didn't use chemical weapons in World War II … Hitler didn't even sink to using chemical weapons," Spicer claims when discussing Syria pic.twitter.com/MjfNgyN0ew — CBS News (@CBSNews) April 11, 2017