So That's How It's Going to Be

Press briefings to berate (read: warn) the press.



He did TOO have a big audience.  The best audience.  The BIGGEST audience.

And the CIA LOVES him.

And let me tell YOU what you need to be reporting.

You have been warned.


(ed:  Prime Minister "Pinionato" of Mexico.)

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

But didn't you hear what he said?  There was grass on the mall when Obama was inaugurated.  That made it less obvious where the empty spaces were than the white stuff they put down for Trump.

Time lapse video of mall "crowd".

pic.twitter.com/uZWiKw0rRm

— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) January 22, 2017

Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, used his first White House briefing to shout at journalists about what he incorrectly termed “deliberately false reporting” on Trump’s inauguration, declaring: “We’re going to hold the press accountable.”

“This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period,” said Spicer, in one of several statements contradicted by photographs and transit data. “These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong.”

Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House aide, told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday Spicer had merely been offering “alternative facts”, a phrase that was received with widespread astonishment.

[...]

Trump was earlier sharply criticised for delivering a campaign-style speech in front of a memorial to fallen CIA officers. Saying he was at “war with the media”, Trump called accurate news reports about his inaugural crowd being smaller than Barack Obama’s “a lie”.

[...]

Reince Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff, also echoed Trump’s false claims in interviews on Sunday.

  Guardian

UPDATE:

Perhaps the worst assertion was that “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.” That statement was instantly ridiculed. Obama’s 2009 Inauguration was a record breaker. Moreover the television audience was smaller: 30.6 million compared to 41.8 million for Reagan in 1981 and 37.7 million for Obama in 2009.

[...]

Spicer appears clearly wrong in saying that “We know that 420,000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit yesterday, which actually compares to 317,000 that used it for President Obama’s last inaugural.” He is right about the 317,000 figure. This was the number of people who traveled before 11 am — in time for the Inaugural speech. If the same period is used for this Inauguration, the figure for Trump would be 193,000. In terms of the whole day, there were 570,557 — a very large number. However, in 2013, the full day ridership was 782,000 and in 2009 it was 1.1 million.

[...]

Again, we are only crunching number because the White House used the first press conference almost exclusively to this dispute. Instead of focusing on the hundreds of thousands of people who were there and their celebration in pulling off one of the greatest upsets in U.S. political history, Spicer (and the President). made this the framing story of the first 24 hours of this Administration.

[...]

Trump has started to keep his promises on the ACA and other issues. That should have been the focus of the conference to convey that Trump remains committed to being a vehicle for change. Rather than convey strength, the conference conveyed a hypersensitivity and insecurity.

  Jonathan Turley

I might use a different word than "conveyed". Such as "revealed".

Trump Administration motto: Cut off your nose to spite your face.