President claims media is lying about small inauguration crowd

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According to President Trump, the media has been lying about the size of the crowds at his inauguration.

During a speech at CIA Headquarters, the newly minted President Trump spoke of turning on the television Saturday only to see “one of the networks” showing “an empty field.”

“I said, ‘Wait a minute, I made a speech.’ I looked out. The field was… it looked like a million, a million and a half people,” Trump stated. “They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there. They said, ‘Donald Trump did not draw well.'”

“It looked honestly like a million and a half people, whatever it was, it was, but it went all the way back to the Washington Monument and I turn on, by mistake, I get this network, and it showed an empty field. Said we drew 250,000 people. Now, that’s not bad. But it’s a lie.”

Despite these claims, images and video taken from the air show that there was a small crowd, especially if you compare the turnout to what Barack Obama saw during his inaugurations.

— Michelle Obama’s ‘side-eye’ steals the show during inauguration — 

Newsweek has said, “As of 11 a.m. ET on Friday, Metro counted 193,000 rides, less than half the 513,000 it counted in 2009 and far fewer than the 317,000 it did for Obama’s second inauguration, in 2013.”

The Women’s March On Washington, in contrast, had higher numbers than that before 11 am. Metro rides were up to 275,000, showing that there were more protesters out to march than there were people to support Trump on Inauguration Day.

Saturday was also the day that the new White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer gave his first press conference, a conference that focused on how the media was lying about the crowd sizes.

He tried to play off the lack of supporters in a number of different ways.

“This was the first time in our nation’s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the [National] Mall,” Spicer stated erroneously. “That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual. This was also the first time that fencing and magnetometers went as far back on the Mall, preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the Mall as quickly as they had in inaugurations past.”

Floor coverings were used during Obama’s last inauguration, and the Secret Service has stated that they did not use magnetometers that day.

 

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