President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a missile attack against Syria last week rallied Republicans to his side, but has left the administration struggling to explain its volte-face. Trump campaigned against mission creep in Syria, and in 2013 criticized President Barack Obama for considering missile strikes under nearly identical circumstances. Just last week, the Trump administration balked at the notion of regime change in Syria, and his advisers have been struggling to articulate a coherent position ever since.

Spicer on Syria: “You had someone as despicable as Hitler who didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons...” pic.twitter.com/UN3JfRRg0w — Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) April 11, 2017

That confusion bled into the daily White House briefing on Tuesday, when press secretary Sean Spicer suggested that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad was worse than Adolf Hitler. “[Hitler] didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons,” he said, blundering over the millions of Jews murdered with poison gas. Spicer attempted no fewer than four clarifications, starting with the conceit that the Jews killed in “Holocaust centers” weren’t citizens (italics below are mine).

First: “He was not using gas on his own people in the same way that Assad is doing.”

Second: “In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust, however, I was trying to draw a contrast of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on innocent people.”

Third: “In no way was I trying to lessen the horrendous nature of the Holocaust, however, I was trying to draw a contrast of the tactic of using airplanes to drop chemical weapons on population centers.”