POOR BABY!
Trump White House: Media fact-checking is ‘demoralizing’ us
WASHINGTON — The Trump presidency is only four days old, and already a wounded White House is whining about the media’s “demoralizing” coverage.
Press secretary Sean Spicer, at his first official White House press conference Monday, insisted that the “alternative facts” being spouted by administration officials weren’t intended to mislead the public into believing Trump’s inauguration was witnessed by “the largest audience ever.”
Spicer acknowledged he didn’t have all of his facts straight when he scolded the media over the weekend for its accurate reporting that fewer people turned out to watch the inauguration for Trump than former President Barack Obama — but complained that reporters should be nicer.
“The default narrative is always negative,” Spicer complained. “And that’s demoralizing.”
“There is this constant theme to undercut the enormous support that he has, and I think it’s just unbelievably frustrating when you’re continually told it’s not big enough, that it’s not good enough, you can’t win,” Spicer said.
Hours later, President Trump, at a bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders, continued to put out “alternative facts,” reiterating a thoroughly debunked claim that 3 to 5 million illegal votes cheated him out of a popular vote victory, according to media reports.
This was after Trump used a Saturday speech at CIA headquarters, standing in front of a hallowed wall memorializing fallen spies, to berate the media over reports that fewer people attended his inauguration. “I have a running war with the media,” Trump told the CIA crowd. “They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.” Spicer said that the President and those around him were thoroughly frustrated with the press for not giving Trump his due. He said attempts to delegitimize Trump fueled his furious, and inaccurate, Saturday press statement claiming Trump had drawn the largest crowd in history.
So obsessed was Trump with hyping up his big day that on Monday he filed paperwork officially declaring Jan. 20, 2017, a “National Day of Patriotic Devotion,” The Washington Post reported.
Spicer said the designation was one of Trump’s first executive actions in his early hours as President.
Spicer, on Monday, said the narrative on Trump needs to move in a different direction.
He argued that Trump’s latest fit went beyond commentary on how he’d drawn a much smaller in-person audience than Obama.
“It’s not about one tweet. It’s not about one picture. It’s about a constant theme,” he said.
Spicer claimed he’d been given inaccurate information about the Washington Metro’s ridership on Inauguration Day, which he had used to support his bogus turnout story.
He said any mistakes he’d made were no worse than those regularly made by reporters.
“Our intention is not to lie to you,” Spicer said before blasting reporters for their own mistakes. “There are times when you guys tweet something out or write a story and you publish a correction . . . . That doesn’t mean that you were intentionally trying to mislead,” he said. “We should be afforded the same opportunity.”
On Saturday, Spicer made several remarks that were questionable in their accuracy, including the claim that Trump’s inauguration drew “the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period.”
The nonpartisan fact-checker Politifact rated Spicer’s claim “Pants on Fire.”
Washington transit officials said on Friday, the day of the inauguration, just over 570,000 trips were taken on the rail system, compared with 1 million for the next-day Women’s March protesting Trump’s presidency, and 1.2 million for Obama’s 2009 inauguration.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, meanwhile, helped set the tone when she told “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Spicer had merely been offering “alternative facts.”
But Spicer argued that he’d been talking about the overall international audience, not just those in Washington, after admitting that he’d been wrong about a fact on how many people rode the train in to watch the inauguration in person.
“It was the most watched inaugural . . . . It’s unquestionable, and I don’t see any numbers that dispute that,” he said, pointing to the overall tally of people who’d watched it online and on TV.
Spicer seemed far more jovial and relaxed during Monday’s briefing compared with his performance on Saturday.
He even took a question from CNN reporter Jim Acosta, whom Trump yelled at during a press conference earlier this month.
Spicer said “sometimes we may disagree” about facts, but the administration wants to have a “healthy relationship” with the White House press corps.
He also said that “if we make a mistake, we’ll do our best to correct” it.