Trump Aides Say President Obsessed With Crowd Sizes

But many – including myself – had hoped that Trump would be honest with us once he was sworn in as the 45th President.

“I would be wary of having the White House pick these out”, he said. It seemed like the closer you were to the Inauguration platform, the more civil the crowd was.

Of course, he failed to mention the fact that Obama’s inauguration in 2009 had far higher ratings. “So Zeke, Zeke from Time Magazine” wrote a fake news story, Trump said.

Trump’s latest attack on news organisations came during a rambling aside as he visited CIA headquarters on a fence-mending mission after his public rejection of the assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russian Federation meddled to try to help him win the November election. He praised his nominee to head the agency, Mike Pompeo, and ranted against the “dishonest” media, a favourite target during his presidential campaign.

For Trump, the start of his first full week in office amounted to a reset after a tumultuous weekend dominated by his and his spokesman’s false statements about inauguration crowds and their vigorous complaints about media coverage of the celebrations.

Asked if he always intends to tell the truth in the briefing room, Spicer said that he does, adding that the truth is not easy to agree on.

It’s possible no one really talked (or cared) about this war on the media during the Obama Administration because the media was mostly friendly towards the former president.

In the face of this overwhelming evidence, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Spicer was informed by “alternative facts”. “Good for both sides”.

The network Spicer cites is CNN, which said 16.9 million people watched its online stream.

He said he didn’t want to get into “the politics” of the crowd size issue. He also promised change of another form, encouraging the establishment to place the interests of the people above themselves, putting an end to government “carnage”, dreaming bigger than ever before, rebuilding American infrastructure, defeating radical Islamic terrorism, and putting America first with trade, immigration, jobs, and the military. And whether you voted for our president or not, this should raise red flags.

Beyond that, though, both the Trump White House and – to a slightly lesser extent – the US and wider global news media are being both stupid and disingenuous in how they approached the battle.

If this presidency is willing to lie about matters of vanity, how quickly will it lie about matters of national security? Spending such a valuable commodity by lying about carpets or metal-detectors on the mall or D.C. subway ridership and the rest is such a wasteful use of that finite resource that a lot of political commentators are left wondering: Is there some hidden Machiavellian objective in all this?

The election is over and Trump is no longer a candidate. By next week, it could be how many troops were killed, and who was responsible for the attack. And he keeps getting told what he can’t do by this narrative that’s out there.

President Trump and his team, whether you own a little red hat or not, must be accountable. “Alternative facts”, as NBC’s Chuck Todd so accurately put it in response to you on the air, “are not facts, they’re falsehoods!”