Team Trump offers ‘alternative facts’
UNITED STATES: Donald Trump launched an all-out war on the media yesterday, vowing to fight it ‘‘tooth and nail’’ after a row in which his press secretary made false claims about the crowds at his inauguration.
The White House also declared that the president will not release his tax returns despite an earlier pledge that he would, saying that the American people ‘‘didn’t care’’ about them.
In his first briefing, Sean Spicer, Trump’s press secretary, accused journalists of ‘‘deliberately false reporting’’ after attendance at the inauguration was compared unfavourably with Barack Obama’s in 2009.
Trump, in a speech at CIA headquarters, had accused the press of ‘‘lying’’ and called them ‘‘among the most dishonest human beings on Earth’’.
The confrontation showed that in office, Trump intends to escalate his antagonistic relationship with the ‘‘mainstream media’’.
Aerial photographs taken of Trump’s inauguration and Obama’s has appeared to show a significantly larger crowd in 2009.
But Spicer said: ‘‘This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration. Period. Both in person and around the globe. These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong.’’
He claimed the photographs were misleading, saying white flooring had been placed on the National Mall for the first time this year, which highlighted spaces in the crowd. It later transpired that similar covers were used four years ago.
Spicer also said magnetometers – to measure magnetic forces – were used at the Mall for the first time, so the area was slower to fill up, but the Secret Service later said it had not used the devices.
He cited figures that showed more people used the Washington train system on Saturday, Trump’s inauguration day, than they did when Obama was sworn in. But CNN cited figures showing that by 11am on Saturday, 193,000 trips had been taken, compared with 513,000 eight years ago.
Speaking two weeks ago about the job of White House press secretary, Spicer said: ‘‘The one thing, whether you’re Republican or Democrat, you have your integrity. I’ve never lied. If you lose the respect and trust of the press corps, you’ve got nothing.’’
A long war between the White House and the media now looks likely, and advisers to Trump went on the offensive. Kellyanne Conway, counsellor to the president, said: ‘‘We feel compelled to go out and clear the air and put alternative facts out there.’’
Chuck Todd, the NBC Meet The Press host interviewing Conway, responded: ‘‘Wait a minute. Alternative facts? Alternative facts? Four of the five facts he [Mr Spicer] uttered were just not true. Alternative facts are not facts, they’re falsehoods.’’
Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, said: ‘‘The point is not the crowd size. The point is the attacks and the attempt to delegitimise this president in one day. And we’re not going to sit around and take it. We’re going to fight back tooth and nail every day and twice on Sunday.’’
Priebus singled out an incorrect report that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr had been removed from the Oval Office. Major US media outlets hit back, with The New York Times accusing Trump’s team of making ‘‘false claims’’.
Amid the controversy, it was confirmed that Trump will not release his tax returns. During the election campaign, he said he would release them once an audit was completed. A petition on the White House website calling for him to release the returns has been signed by more than 200,000 people. Every president since 1976 has released their returns. – Telegraph Group