DON’S HIGH IN TRANS-‘FACTS’
Team offers ‘alternative’ crowd data
Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway declared Sunday that the president’s spokesman was only offering some “alternative facts” when he insisted that the crowd at the president’s inauguration was the largest ever.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer caused controversy in his very first press conference Saturday when he used his time to chastise the press and insist that Trump drew “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.”
The claim was contradicted by numerous media reports from the ceremony and aerial photographs showiing former Presiddent Barack Obama’s 2009 ceremmony crowd dwarfing Trump’s.
But in an appearance on “Meet tthe Press” Sunday, Conway doubbled down on Spicer’s assertions when host Chuck Todd asked her if making such wild claims “undermines the credibility of the entire White House press office from day one.”
“Don’t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck,” Conway shot back. “Our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts.”
Todd shot back: “Alternative facts are not facts, they’re falsehoods.”
The host also wondered why Spicer would even bother spending any time talking about crowd size when the president has many important issues to deal with.
“Curious why President Trump chose yesterday to send out his press secretary to essentially litigate a provable falsehood when it comes to a small and petty thing like inaugural crowd size,” he said.
“The president did many things that were meaningful yesterday,” Conway said, adding that Trump signed an executive order to limit Obama Care.
White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus later came to Conway’s defense during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
“There’s an obsession by the media to delegitimize the president, and we are not going to sit around and let it happen,” Priebus said.
During an address at CIA headquarters on Saturday, Trump claimed some 1.5 million people attended his ceremony.
“It went all the way back to the Washington Monument,” Trump said. “And I turn on the [news] it said we drew 250,000 people. Now that’s not bad, but it’s a lie.”
Later Saturday, at the press briefing, Spicer insisted white mats placed on the National Mall to protect the grass created a visual trick that emphasized gaps in the crowd.
“This was the first time in our nation’s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall,” he said. “That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual.”
But photos from Obama’s 2013 inaugural ceremony show similar coverings protecting the grass.