White House Spokesman Attacks Press Over "False Reporting" Inauguration Numbers

White House press secretary Sean Spicer attacked the White House press corps today for distorting attendance statistics at Trump's inauguration.

"Some members of the media were engaged in deliberately false reporting."

“This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period. Both in person and around the globe.”

This is pretty unprecedented. And also, a lie.

We have aerial photos from 11:45AM at Trump's inauguration and from the same time in 2009 at Obama's inauguration. The pics of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration showed lots of open space on the National Mall when compared side-by-side with pics of Obama’s 2009 inauguration.

The fact that this is what Trump is focusing on during his first full day as president is amazing.

Earlier today, Trump traveled to meet with members of the CIA in an attempt to clear the air from his attacks on the country's intelligence agencies these past few weeks.

After a brief comment on that subject, saying the media made up a false war between the intelligence community and Trump (ummm, we have all the tweets where he attacked the intel community), Trump went on a rant about his attendance numbers there at the CIA while standing in front of a memorial for fallen intel agents.

#BadForm

Folks, this is how dictators start out. Accusing the press of false reporting when the truth is easily provable.

"This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration -- period," Trump White House press secretary claims https://t.co/ICcog0Ivxt

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) January 21, 2017

Trump Shuts Down Interior Department Twitter After Unflattering Tweets

The Washington Post reporting that the Interior Department was told to shut down official Twitter accounts after a Park Service employee retweeted unflattering pics of the light crowds at Trump's inaugural.

The first noted the new president’s relatively small inaugural crowd compared to the number of people former president Barack Obama drew to the National Mall when he was sworn into office in 2009. The second tweet noted several omissions of policy areas on the new White House website. A Park Service employee retweeted both missives on Friday.

“All bureaus and the department have been directed by incoming administration to shut down Twitter platforms immediately until further notice,” said an email circulated to Park Service employees Friday afternoon. The email, obtained by The Post, described the stand-down as an “urgent directive” and said social media managers must shut down the accounts “until further directed.”

Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times was one of the tweets comparing crowd sizes from Trump and Obama's inaugurals:

Looks like the Trump administration hasn't taken control of the @NatlParkService Twitter feed just yet. pic.twitter.com/dCKGHoW0cU

— Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) January 20, 2017