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Top Republican Official Refuses To Say That Comparing Obama To Hitler Is Out-Of-Bounds

RNC Chief Strategist & Communications Director Sean Spicer on CNN on Tuesday CREDIT: CNN’S NEW DAY
RNC Chief Strategist & Communications Director Sean Spicer on CNN on Tuesday CREDIT: CNN’S NEW DAY

As former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) doubled down on Tuesday on his earlier comments that the proposed anti-nuclear deal with Iran was akin to marching Israelis to the “door of the oven” at a concentration camp, his party’s spokesman refused to criticize his remarks.

Though Jewish groups have widely panned the presidential candidate’s remarks as “completely out of line and unacceptable” and “the most inexcusable we’ve encountered in recent memory,” Republican National Committee Chief Strategist & Communications Director Sean Spicer told CNN that he would not “sit here and condemn someone for how they talk about a particular policy.”

New Day host Alisyn Camerota asked Spicer if he was comfortable with Huckabee’s Holocaust language. He responded that, “Governor Huckabee made his comments, he clearly then articulated why he made them — with the clip you just made — and they can speak for themselves.”

Watch the video:

Pressed as to whether this sort of inflammatory rhetoric “has been ratcheted up” by the earlier extreme comments by 2016 hopefuls who are trying to “keep upping the ante,” Spicer dismissed it as nothing new: “We’ve had this kind of discourse in the country for a long time.” He added that while the party believes “it is helpful to focus positively on what our policies are and contrasting ourselves with Hillary Clinton,” he would not “sit here and call balls and strikes on any of these particular candidates.”

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While not actually condemning the remarks, Spicer last month called Donald Trump’s claim that Mexican immigrants are rapists and drug dealers “probably something that is not helpful to the cause.”