Did Trump Lie About The Size of Inauguration Crowd

Pictures don’t lie, but does Trump?

Although the National Park Service doesn’t make estimates of crowd size, CNN has a great interactive photo which shows the size of the crowds from 2009 and 2017, Trump’s Inauguration.[1]

CNN, “But the side-by-side images of Friday’s ceremony alongside the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama show a significantly smaller crowd on the National Mall for Trump than for Obama. There is empty ground exposed in the Trump photos. The same spots were almost entirely covered eight years ago, when estimates at the time suggested 1.8 million people attended the inauguration. The images above do not capture people who might have viewed from the west side of the Washington monument. And there are some differences. The grass on the mall is covered in white plastic for Trump’s inauguration, but not for Obama’s. When President Obama took the oath of office in 2009, conditions were clear with temperatures were in the 20s. Eight years later, temperatures hovered in the high 40s with intermittent rain. Another sign attendance for Trump’s inauguration could be lower: Metro ridership. Per WMATA, the Washington area transit authority, as of 11 am, 193,000 trips had been taken on the city’s subway system. At the same hour in 2009, that number was 513,000, according to WMATA. The same time for the second Obama inauguration saw 317,000 riders, and President George W. Bush’s second inauguration saw 197,000 riders by 11 am.”[1]

And now there seems to be bunches of sour grapes.

Media Matters, “In a surreal turn, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer tonight denied reality, lashed out at the press for its supposed “shameful and wrong” coverage of the size of the crowd that attended President Trump’s January 20 inaugural festivities, instructed the White House press corps on what they “should be writing and covering,” declared that the administration intended to “hold the press accountable,” and left the briefing room without taking questions.”[2]

Protestors make up some of the crowds that line the streets.[3]

The Press Secretary also did subtract from his numbers, the number of protesters that rode the transit system.

Politico, “President Donald Trump and his team are still fuming over evidence of a relatively small crowd for his inauguration, with his chief of staff claiming the reports are an effort to “de-legitimize” Trump and another senior adviser explaining that the administration is offering “alternative facts.””[5]

References:

1. CNN, January 20, 2017, Betsy Klein – Comparing Donald Trump and Barack Obama’s inaugural crowd sizes
2. Media Matters, January 21, 2017, Matt Gertz – The White House Press Secretary Just Declared War On Reality And The Press – What’s Next?
3. Wikipedia – Protests against Donald Trump
4. Huffington Post, January 21, 2017, Sam Levine – White House Press Secretary Rips Reporters In First Briefing Room Appearance – He accused them of inaccurately reporting the size of Donald Trump’s inaugural crowds. They didn’t.
5. Politico, January 22, 2017,  Tara Palmeri – Trump fumes over inaugural crowd size – The president and his allies are hitting back against reports that Trump’s inauguration drew significantly fewer people than his predecessor’s did.
6. The New York Times, January 22, 2017, Maggie Haberman – The Numbers Game of Donald Trump