Trump salutes Turkish tyrant
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s first annual Easter Egg Roll wasn’t the huge eggs-travaganza it was during the Obama years, with a smaller crowd and less star power.
Trump insisted that there would be a big turnout for the biggest annual public event at the White House, making big promises about the direction of the country and the crowd size.
“We will be stronger and bigger and better as a nation than ever before and we are right on track,” he told the revelers, before guaranteeing “a lot of people — a lot of people — and they’re going to have a great time” at the event.
The President looked on at the crowd with a smile as the national anthem started to play — and appeared to get nudged by his wife as a reminder to put his hand over his heart about five seconds in.
Trump’s staff had previously announced that it was expecting around 21,000 people — an average crowd in recent decades, though smaller than the 35,000 that showed up in the final year of the Obama presidency.
Even that number seemed high as much of the South Lawn of the White House was empty throughout the morning of the roll, with no lines for activities from the egg roll itself to games of bag toss and an Easter egg hunt for most of the morning. Costumed characters milled about at times waiting for kids to take photos with, while overeager volunteers jumping at the chance to help families as bands of rain periodically doused the thin crowd.
Beyoncé and Jay Z were guests last year. This year, the biggest talent was the Martin Family Circus, a family band which played to a mostly empty lawn for much of the morning.
Senior White House staff argued that they'd intentionally aimed for a smaller crowd than in previous years.
“This is about the children. When you actually scrape it back, last year was the last year of the Obama administration, they ratcheted the number up, I think there was a lot of issues with kids being disconnected and families being separated,” a bunny-tie-clad White House press secretary Sean Spicer claimed to the Daily News as he walked around the South Lawn.
“We wanted to get this back to a focus on the children. So if you look at the number of people here in terms of school allocations, military, it’s all the same. The public lottery is the same number of people. This is getting this thing back to the focus of being about kids and families and not about adults,” Spicer — who played the Easter Bunny at the egg roll during the George W. Bush presidency — continued.
Weather may have played a factor in Monday’s light turnout, as the forecast called for rain and it drizzled on and off for much of the morning before opening up into a steady rain slightly before noon.
Trump joined First Lady Melania Trump, the official hostess of the 139th annual event, and the rest of their family as they oversaw the egg roll before heading down to a set of picnic tables where kids were filling out letters to soldiers at an “Operation: Thank our troops” station.
The First Lady then read a children’s book by Kathie Lee Gifford she said she picked because it shows “we’re all different, but we’re all the same.”
Trump worked the rope line through the crowd, signing programs and “Make America Great Again” hats.
Kellen Dunning, who is from Brazil but currently lives in D.C., said given the bad press about what might go wrong at the event, she was happily surprised with “how well-organized they are.” TURKISH PRESIDENT Recep Tayyip Erdogan got a congratulatory phone call from President Trump on Monday after winning a contentious referendum that sparked concerns among international monitoring groups.
Trump called the Turkish president after the nation’s state-run media announced a preliminary 51% win that will shift the government from parliamentary to presidential control. The country’s citizens cast votes over the weekend amid a state of emergency, claims of voter intimidation and ballot irregularities. The referendum to greatly expand the presidential powers was proposed after last year’s failed coup attempt.
The constitutional changes will allow Erdogan, who founded the right-wing Justice and Development Party, to make judicial and government appointments, issue decrees and declare states of emergency.