US President Barack Obama has come in for condemnation after not attending a march of world leaders against terrorism in Paris this Sunday, following the bloody Islamist attacks last week that left 17 dead - on Monday night a Republican Congressman took the cake with a particularly pointed jab at Obama.
Congressman Randy Weber (R-TX) wrote tongue-in-cheek on Twitter "Even Adolph (sic) Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn't do it for right reasons."
The Twitter post, which makes an ironic reference to the Nazi conquest of France, has since been removed.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the post has already garnered an angry response from the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), whose board of directors chair Greg Rosenbaum called it "unacceptable."
"For any public official to compare our nation’s president to the perpetrator of the Holocaust is simply unacceptable," said Rosenbaum. "As a member of Congress and especially as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, one would hope that Rep. Weber would know better than to make such an outrageous remark."
Rosenbaum added "any comparisons to Hitler are absolutely out of line and just the latest example of the sort of damaging and vitriolic language Republicans routinely use to describe our president. We demand that Rep. Weber apologize for his comments immediately."
The White House has itself admitted to the huge misstep in Obama's lack of attendance, with Press Secretary Josh Earnest saying Monday "we should have sent someone with a higher profile to be there." Ambassador Jane Hartley was the only US official of note on hand at the important counter-terror rally.
Weber's criticism of Obama joins that of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which said by not showing up at "the most important international protest in history against the expanding scourge of Islamic terrorism, Pres. Obama has humiliated and embarrassed all Americans in front of the whole world, while sending the wrong message to Islamic murderers."
ZOA added that Obama's decision to pass on the event was unfortunately not a surprise, saying "Obama has refused during his entire presidency to even use the term Islamic terrorism. Instead he uses terms such as 'violent extremism' or 'workplace violence.' By refusing to name the enemy at war with the West, it makes it more difficult to focus on actions that need to be taken."