Analyzing Trump's Lies About the Inauguration Crowd Size and Why it Matters

Sean Spicer, President Trump’s press secretary, held his first press briefing on Saturday. During the briefing Spicer claimed, “Some members of the media were engaged in deliberately false reporting.”After describing a tweet in which a reporter erroneously reported that Trump had removed a Martin Luther King, Jr. bust from the Oval Office, Spicer moved on to inauguration crowds.“Photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the national mall.”Spicer didn’t refer to a specific tweet, but since this picture appeared all over social media and news outlets, I suspect this is the picture he had in mind:

Despite the evidence in the picture, Spicer claimed, “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration. Period. Both in person and around the globe.”Trump’s thirty-one million viewers came in seven million viewers behind Obama’s 2009 inauguration, and eleven million viewers behind Reagan’s 1981 inauguration. However, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say there were twelve million more people streaming the inauguration, so he actually did receive more at-home viewers.In person viewership is a bit easier to quantify.First, let’s assume that the pictures above are not accurate. Let’s say that the Obama crowd picture shows the crowd as Obama is speaking, and the Trump picture shows the crowd forty-five minutes before the ceremony began.Luckily, Sean Spicer can clear things up for us. Just before discussing the crowd size he said, “Let’s go through the facts.”Spicer then recited the capacity of different sections of the National Mall from the Capitol to the Washington Monument and said, “All of this space was full when the President took the oath of office.”To support his claim he had next to him two large prints of the following picture:

Wow, that looks like a lot of people. Seems like he caught that damn liberal media in a big fat lie. Look at all those people.Not so fast.He just taught us a little bit about camera angles, and how the higher you get, the better you can see.Here’s another picture. (Click on it for the full-size version.) It’s a screenshot I took of ABC’s coverage. I paused the video at 1:43:35.screen-shot-2017-01-21-at-10-17-10-pmGranted, this isn’t the exact moment of Trump’s oath of office, or his speech. He’d take the oath thirteen minutes and four seconds after this picture. But you can see that the platform at the bottom of the picture is full, indicating that the proceedings are underway.And there’s a hell of a lot of open space.Assuming there are six sections beyond the Capitol Reflecting Pool, it looks as though section 1 is about two-thirds full, section 2 is almost entirely full, section 3 is about a third full, section 4 is mostly full, section 5 is about half full, and section 6 is empty.This jives with the pattern in the side-by-side picture above.Yet Trump's spokesman utters the words, “All of this space was full when the President took the oath of office.” Now, maybe there was a sudden influx of people in the thirteen minutes after this picture was taken, but that’s not likely.Spicer decided to go even further with his claims about enormous crowds and state that 420,000 people used the DC Metro yesterday, which, he said, is more than the 317,000 people that used the Metro during Obama’s last inauguration.However, that’s not the full truth. Yesterday 420,000 people rode the Metro over the course of the entire day. The 317,000 number for Obama’s last inauguration was by 11:00 am. The corresponding number for Trump’s inauguration was 193,000, which is 124,000 less than Obama’s last inauguration, and 320,000 less than his first inauguration.The numbers and the pictures don’t lie. It’s irrefutable that Trump had significantly fewer people attend his inauguration than attended Obama’s inauguration in 2009. His press secretary’s claim that “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration,” is a blatant lie.Now, on its face, this is no big deal. The number of people who attend an inauguration is rather insignificant in a world dealing with ISIS, climate change, Vladimir Putin, and a host of other problems.However, for the press secretary to stand up there and tell blatant, deliberate lies just to save face is appalling. We’re not talking about political interpretation here. These aren’t policy differences between the parties, or arguments about the approaches to peace in the Middle East.These are basic, absolute, undeniable facts that the president and the press secretary are ignoring, and blatantly stating the opposite.And then, as if lying about it weren’t bad enough, they go on to accuse the media of lying about it.This is incredibly dangerous.Donald Trump received almost sixty-three million votes. A good portion of those who voted for him will believe him when he says that he’s telling the truth and the media is lying. By planting the seed of distrust in the media, he’s setting himself up to have the ability to convince his supporters that whatever he says is truth, and whatever the media says is not.Right now it’s inauguration crowd size.But what happens when the topic is something more serious? Like eliminating healthcare for millions of Americans. Or tax cuts that entirely benefit the wealthy. Or a military showdown with China.Watching Sean Spicer’s press briefing was exactly like watching Fascist rallies from seventy years ago. There’s no regard for the truth. Trump seems to buy into the theory of the Big Lie, which is if you repeat something loud enough and often enough, that people will begin to believe it, because they believe that no one would have the shamelessness to distort the truth so grandiosely.But Donald Trump has no shame.Which is exactly why we should all be so worried.Click here to receive an e-mail each time I write a new post! Guaranteed spam-free, unsubscribe any time IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: The Cubs World Series Victory Parade and Rally Didn't Have Five-Million in AttendancePREVIOUS POST: The Oval Office Letter from Obama to Trump

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