WASHINGTON -- Republican Rep. Randy Weber apologized Tuesday for referring to Adolf Hitler in a Twitter post that criticized President Barack Obama for not attending a march in Paris to honor the victims of attacks last week in that city.
Congressional Democrats and Jewish groups had denounced the comment Weber sent on his official Twitter account Monday night.
"I need to first apologize to all those offended by my tweet," the Texas congressman said in a written statement, which he also tweeted Tuesday. "It was not my intention to trivialize the Holocaust nor to compare the President to Adolf Hitler."
The original Twitter post read: "Even Adolph Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn't do it for right reasons."
It refers to Hitler's tour of the vanquished city after his troops invaded during World War II, and Obama's failure to join dozens of world leaders at an anti-terror march through Paris on Sunday.
Robert Singer, chief executive officer of the World Jewish Congress, said that "putting Mr. Obama on a level with the most evil mass murderer of all times crosses a red line."
In his statement, Weber said that "the mention of Hitler was meant to represent the face of evil that still exists in the world today."
"I now realize that the use of Hitler invokes pain and emotional trauma for those affected by the atrocities of the Holocaust and victims of anti-Semitism and hate," he said.
Asked Tuesday whether he had any reaction to Weber's tweet, White House spokesman Josh Earnest replied, "I don't."
The White House has acknowledged that Obama or another high-level representative of the U.S. should have joined the march in unity with the French after attacks that left 17 people dead at a satiric newspaper and a kosher grocery in Paris. The absence was widely noted.
The Democrats' campaign organization was quick to denounce Weber's tweet and to connect the incident to Majority Whip Steve Scalise's 2002 speech to a white supremacist group. Scalise has said he regrets the speech and didn't understand the nature of the group.
"Congressional Republicans like Weber are clearly catering to the most extreme elements -- first refusing to condemn Steve Scalise's inexcusable affiliation with KKK members, and now this," said Josh Schwerin, spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "Speaker [John] Boehner and Republican leaders need to step forward and condemn Congressman Weber and his toxic brand of politics."
Weber was one of 25 Republicans who voted against Boehner last week as insufficiently conservative to be speaker. Weber was elected to Congress in 2012, taking the seat opened by Ron Paul's retirement.
A Section on 01/14/2015