Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer reprimanded the media on Thursday for pushing the "ugly" and "ridiculous" story of her incorrectly claiming her father died in combat.

Brewer was caught Wednesday claiming that her father had "died fighting the Nazi regime in Germany" by the Arizona Guardian, which correctly pointed out her father died in 1955 in California.

Brewer issued a statement Thursday correcting the record but did not apologize for the misstatement. And later that night, Brewer trashed the paper for reporting the story during an interview with Fox News's Greta Van Susteren.

"It's pathetic that they want to spin something to the fact that I have said this or I have said that in respect to what he did for his country, a very patriotic man," Brewer said. "For them to embellish and pathetically try to twist that into something ugly is ridiculous."

Brewer then incorrectly asserted that she "never" said her father died fighting, despite having been quoted by both the Guardian and the Arizona Republic as saying so, and strung her statement to mean that her father died from the exposure to chemicals while working in a munitions factory during the Second World War.

"My father died fighting the German regiments of Hitler," she said. "And he did. He was building the bombs."

"I never said he was overseas," she contended, though her initial statement seemed to indicate otherwise. "I never once said he was in the military."

"He was working on a military base in Hawthorne, Nev., making bombs and ammunition to send, as were many people," the governor added. "They were all fighting the Nazi regiments in Germany to keep America free. And it's as simple as that."

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