A draft statement from Sean Spicer,* Press Secretary to President Donald Trump:

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time. I would like to take this opportunity to clarify statements I made earlier this week, and to apologise for those statements, and to clarify my apology for those statements, and to apologise for my clarification.

I must emphasise that it was never my intention to suggest that the crimes of Adolf Hitler were less heinous than those of Bashar al-Assad. After some investigation, I have discovered that Hitler’s actions were in fact of an extremely severe nature and deserving of condemnation in the strongest terms possible. Let me make this perfectly clear for members of the fake news industry: the Trump administration is united in its commitment to hating Hitler. We in the White House, and indeed the Winter White House, do not tolerate Hitler, do not like Hitler, and do not anticipate opening friendly relations with Hitler in the future. Although obviously nothing is set in stone.

I would specifically like to apologise for my suggestion that Hitler did not use chemical weapons on his own people. What I was trying to say was that, unlike Assad, Hitler did not drop sarin gas on cities in Syria, and I think most reputable WWII histories will back me up on that. That’s not to say that if Hitler had dropped sarin gas on cities in Syria, he would necessarily be better than Assad, or worse than Assad — we make up our minds on who is better or worse than Assad on a case-by-case basis and the White House and also the Winter White House will be releasing a full list of the current Better/Worse Than Assad Leaderboard at the conclusion of this statement.

What we can say for certain is that Hitler, who was a European of some kind, gassed very few German citizens in Syria at all. On the other hand, my researchers tell me that Hitler invaded France, and Assad has yet to do this. What effect this has on US foreign policy we have yet to determine.

Allow me to additionally take this opportunity to clarify my use of the phrase “Holocaust Centers”. This terminology should not be taken to imply that the Holocaust was carried out in any kind of customer service hubs or one-stop shops. A Holocaust Center is nothing like a call center, and I confess that I misspoke when I made this comment.

What I was referring to when I mentioned Holocaust Centers was the information booths established by the Nazis to keep their people informed of the Holocaust and to answer any queries they might have. However it is important to recognise that those people were, in fact, the victims of chemical weapons, although we shouldn’t jump to conclusion about who inflicted these chemical weapons on them — there is evidence to suggest that Hitler was the source of the chemical weapons but we cannot also discount the possibility that ISIS infiltrated Germany at this time, or that it is some kind of false flag.

The point is, there are no Holocaust Centers still operational, and if you need more information on the Holocaust please refer to the Winter White House’s information sheets.

So let’s sum up: Hitler was bad, but Assad is also bad. Who is worse? Impossible to say: the only real way to tell would be by pitting them against each other in some kind of tournament, but I would like to stress that currently the White House-slash-Winter White House has no plans to institute such a tournament. If and when we do, the format will be determined by President Trump in consultation with his Cabinet and a one-off levy will be implemented to pay for a suitable trophy.

But let’s not focus on that right now, let’s focus on policy; it is the Trump administration’s policy at the present time to send a very clear message to Syria that its actions will not be tolerated, while also sending a very clear message to Russia that Syria’s actions will be tolerated up to a certain point, and sending a secondary but equally important message to Syria again that Russia’s actions will be tolerated even more.

This is not to ignore the fact that ISIS’ actions are also not to be tolerated, and we will be not-tolerating them in between our not-tolerating Syria on a new rota system devised by President Trump himself. Each will be not tolerated for three days a week, and Sundays we will be tolerating basically everything. The actions of Hitler will be tolerated, meanwhile, even less than usual, and next week’s bombing run over Dresden will confirm this.

These are just details, however; mainly I simply wish to apologise to anyone who was offended by my previous remarks, and to anyone offended by these remarks, and anyone offended by remarks I might make in future. But then, even Hitler never made offensive remarks to his own people, so let’s keep our eyes on the ball. Thank you.

*As told to satirist Ben Pobjie