Dem: GOP should condemn Hitler tweet

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday that Republican congressional leaders should condemn a “vile” tweet from Rep. Randy Weber (R-Texas) that compared President Obama to Hitler.

Israel, most recently the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, tweeted that while he believed Obama should have attended the Paris anti-terror rally with other world leaders, Weber’s Hitler comparison “desecrates Holocaust victims.”

I disagree w Potus absence in Paris but Rep Randy Weber tweet is vile, desecrates holocaust victims. Cong leaders must condemn!

— Steve Israel (@RepSteveIsrael) January 13, 2015

{mosads}Weber, who has criticized Obama in the past, even calling him the “Kommandant-in-Chief” at last year’s State of the Union speech, tweeted late Monday night that “even Adolph Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn’t do it for the right reasons.”

The criticism came after Obama failed to join French President François Hollande and at least 40 world leaders who marched on Sunday in solidarity against terrorism. Vice President Biden was at home in Delaware, Secretary of State John Kerry was in India and Attorney General Eric Holder had already left counterterrorism talks in Paris.

The march was held after gunmen attacked a satirical newspaper in France, leaving a dozen dead, and a later standoff at a kosher supermarket left four people dead.

Several Republican lawmakers and members of American media on Monday blasted the Obama administration for not sending a higher-level official to the rally.The U.S. ambassador to France was there.

Press secretary Josh Earnest admitted the White House erred in not sending someone with a “higher profile” to the event.

Asked Tuesday whether the White House had a response to the controversial tweet, Earnest didn’t bite.

“I don’t,” Earnest said.

This story was updated at 12:21 p.m.