Trump and Spicer Attack Media for Rightly Scrutinizing Small Inauguration Crowds
“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe,” said Spicer.
Polaris/NewscomWell that was something. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer made a public statement this afternoon in which he eviscerated the press for reporting (correctly) that President Trump's inauguration drew smaller crowds than President Obama's.
Spicer was also furious at TIME for claming that the White House removed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. This story was indeed inaccurate—the bust was not removed.
Trump also slammed the reporter, Zeke Miller, during his press conference at the CIA earlier today. Miller quickly corrected his reporting and apologized to the White House. Sean Spicer even tweeted "Apology accepted."
Correction: The MLK bust is still in the Oval Office. It was obscured by an agent and door.
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 21, 2017
But during Spicer's afternoon address to the media, the issue was again raised.
More alarming was Spicer's attacks on the media for pointing out the true fact that there weren't as many people at the inauguration as anticipated. Spicer claimed that the decision to put white covers over the grass on the National Mall made gaps in the crowds more obvious than they had been for previous inaugurations.
"This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe," said Spicer. "Attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong."
It isn't shameful to lessen public enthusiasm for the inauguration, given that Trump's inauguration speech was a dark moment for U.S. economic policy. But anyway, there's little reason to believe Trump's inauguration crowds were as large as Obama's. As New York Times correspondent Binyamin Applebaum tweeted, the images speak for themselves.
Compare the crowds: 2009 inauguration at left, 2017 inauguration at right.#Inauguration pic.twitter.com/y7RhIR2nfC
— Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) January 20, 2017
Note that the Department of the Interior retweeted the above tweet, which apparently got the agency in trouble with its new boss.
Spicer claimed that the number of people using the D.C. Metro this weekend supported his contention that the Trump crowds were massive, but according to The Washington Post, Metro usage was down significantly: 570,000 trips compared to 1.1 million in 2009 and 700,000 in 2013.
It's true the media has made mistakes when writing about Trump. BuzzFeed made a major one, TIME a lesser one.
But that does not change the fact that Trump lies through his teeth about everything. The argument about inauguration crowds may seem like an unimportant aspect of Trump's lies, but it's deeply symptomatic of the president's commitment to self-aggrandizement. He is a uniquely thin-skinned political figure who can't stand to have the pageantry of his reign mocked or criticized. If you say the emperor has no clothes, be prepared to be accused of peddling fake news.
The denizens of a free society should be disturbed that their president demands everyone recognize the greatness and bigness of his crowds.
Watch Spicer's presser here.
Photo Credit: Polaris/Newscom
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Since the old thread is dead ---- seriously, what are they marching for today? Are Women already not equal, or what specifically do they want?
I really don't understand. Trump's been in office less than 24 hours and they're already protesting more than 8 years under Obama or 8 years under Clinton, who was every bit as sexist / etc as Trump, but they turned a blind eye to Bill.
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what specifically do they want?
YOU WILL NOT SILENCE THEM
THEY WILL BE HEARD
THEY ARE STRONG
ALSO, HATS
(breaks into tears) -
They want to be able to bitch at men that aren't in a relationship with them and force them to listen. It's the holy grail of feminism.
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Free fem shit.
The answer is always free shit.
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Reason: I've seen the picture comparisons between Trump and Obama and they are not valid as they were not taken at the same time. 11:04AM when people were still filing in for Trump vs. 11:30 for Obama when the event started. Give me a fucking break
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How many protestors were at Obama's inauguration doing their best to disrupt the event?
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The early reports indicated that DC was going to be inundated with violent rioters. It rained, as well. That in reality reporters outnumbered protestors is irrelevant to what the media was selling.
And Reason is embarrassing itself by allowing Robby to write on anything outside his usual college campus SJW beat.
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How many showed up to block the roads to prevent people from going to the inauguration?
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I could not care less how many people attend an inauguration, but that said, you ask a great question. I ran across a picture yesterday of three girls, (very large girls) chained together blocking an entrance to the event. I can't find it anywhere. We are talking, "hey get the tow truck to move these protesters" kind of girls. How many teathuglicans blocked the entrances to Obama's inauguration?
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Theres a video on facebook that compares the current protest to that time in 09 when some small church had a protest somewhere with some people.
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My buddies and I arrived at the entrances around 10:00 and got in around 12:30 due to protestors blocking gates. There were thousands and thousands and thousands of people waiting to get in.
They did, however, turn out on election day so I guess the Libs won the inauguration attendance *and* the popular vote. I'm still waiting for someone to educate me on why those things matter more than Electoral votes and Congressional votes and Governorship votes and state Senate and Representative votes.
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Cause team d
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You went to support him? Is that what your saying? If so, Question: Does meth-mouth hurt? It looks like it does, but the people I've met who have it don't seem to complain.
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It would be shocking for Trump to turn out the same crowds in DC as Obama..
Google sez: As of March 31, 2016, Democrats make up 76 percent of the registered voters in the District of Columbia, while 6 percent are registered with the Republican Party
DC is the Imperial Metropolis. Is it likely that the reptiles that infest it would turn out to cheer the inauguration of the guy promising to Drain the Swamp?
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That's another great point. DC is not only a Dem stronghold, but is surrounded by Dem strongholds in MD and VA.
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So which is it? Is the media lying about the size Trump's crowd, did protestors prevent hundreds of thousands of attendees, or is the D.C. Metro too black?
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I'm sure Politifact and Snopes are getting right on that.
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I usually just lurk. But here's what CNN's website shows, and it's a far cry from the pictures Robby disingenuously used. And CNN is pretty hostile to Trump.
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"More alarming was Spicer's attacks on the media for pointing out the true fact . . . "
Please don't say "true fact." Just don't.
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"Correction: The MLK bust is still in the Oval Office. It was obscured by an agent and door."
Wow, what a rigorously-researched report that original article must have been.
"I don't see the MLK bust - maybe that guy is blocking the view? Maybe it's behind the door? Should I take some time to verify my initial impressions, maybe ask some people? Nah, everyone knows Trump is a racist, of course he removed the bust. Let's file the story."
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Oh, I see, it was a tweet.
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Trump could troll a fertile field swapping MLK bust for, say, Benjamin Banneker's in appropriate period hairstyle, then wait for the chants of racism after press-pool snowflakes look around and, not seeing MLK, fire up the Twitter.
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More alarming was Spicer's attacks on the media for pointing out the true fact that there weren't as many people at the inauguration as anticipated.
This is what passes for a "true fact" with The Hair: a comparison between a how many people showed up and how many people an unnamed mind anticipated showing up.
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They did not turn a blind eye to Bill, they made excuses for him. As long as you parrot the correct lines from the Prog Playbook your actual actions don't matter if you have enough power. The more power, the less your actions matter.
I know somebody who participated in one of these marches in Germany. Why they are protesting the US Prez over actions he has not yet taken (and may never take) versus the actual sexual assault crises in Germany and western Europe is beyond me. On an intellectual level I understand the left's surrender but I can't internalize it. These jackasses don't realize that they'll be the first taken to midfield and shot as halftime entertainment.
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But that does not change the fact that Trump lies through his teeth about everything.
Everything? So does he grab pussies or not? You may need to tell all those marchers he was lying, because they are pissed.
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You don't understand! You don't understand! When it's politically convenient, we take what Trump says as deathly literal. When it's not convenient, it's ridiculous hyperbole. And all of it is dark and ominous!
Weeks after Robby wrote that ridiculous article about getting outside his bubble in DC and how wrong he and his cohort of merry morons in DC were about everything this election cycle, he continues to speak as some sort of authority on the subject with zero humility.
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The same dude that projected weird thoughts on a dude changing his tire, we all understand that as he didn't want to break a nail.
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Everything? So does he grab pussies or not?
Well, according to Robby several months ago, no, because back then he made the brilliant claim that Pussygate meant that Trump admitted to sexual assault.
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If a woman lets you touch her, it's sexual assault. Psshht, everyone knows that.
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I'm having a hard time coming up with a person who attracted massive throngs of people and ended up doing bad things. IOW, you know who else...
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Leave Obama alone!
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Britney Spears?
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Jesus of Nazareth?
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Pretty much any "Jam" band?
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But that does not change the fact that Trump lies through his teeth about everything.
Trump does lie about everything. Blatantly. Trump does not, however, leave one with distinct impression they're being taken as a sucker, or stupid, or even have expectation you'll believe him, as he tells his lies. Hillary had all those problems when she'd tell her lies - also about everything.
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^
This- as my old platoon sergeant used to proclaim "sir I don't mind eating the occassional shit sand which just don't ask me to smile and tell you it tastes like pastrami" -
So that conparison was AT BEST 40 minutes before the inauguration. What was the time stamp on actual photo?
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Maryland dc and surrounding areas are overwhelmingly democrat. Comparing to 2009 seems silly as that was also first black potus
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Chuck Todd had interesting observation about that yesterday. He said closest county to DC Reagan won was just over the river in Arlington; but the distance from DC to closest county that went Republican in Prez election since has gotten farther and farther from there. With Trump, one has to drive fifty miles or so from DC to get to county that went for him.
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I wonder if the size of the federal govt growing 300% in the intervening 32 years has something to do with that.
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Eventually DC metro will capture some states; same way Chicago controls Illinois or LA + Bay Area controls California. Already happening in Virginia with their governor.
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McAuliffe's gubernatoriality was a gift from Ted the Attention Whore's pointless govt shutdown.
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What was the expectation for trump robby? May want to include that in article
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It isn't shameful to lessen public enthusiasm for the inauguration, given that Trump's inauguration speech was a dark moment for U.S. economic policy.
To most Americans, this is not a dark moment. They loved hearing America first, even if wrong and misguided. And I personally consider the last 8 years of having a pinko in the White House - a guy who proudly used rhetoric like "you didn't build that" and "spread that wealth around" while regulating the shit out of everything - darker no matter how much other fluffy rhetoric he employed.
If Trump cuts and/or freezes the introduction of new regulations, it will be a boon for the economy. By comparison, his hands are far more tied on international trade and the world isn't going to come crashing down because he pushes policies that Obama advocated for within the last 4 years with regards to keeping corporations here. Wait, no. Trump wants to keep jobs here. Obama just cared about the government getting its cut through taxes.
Regulation is the greatest burden on the economy. And restricting Mexican immigrant labor (even if Trump could accomplish that) or reworking trade deals (not going to happen) aren't the end of the god damn world even if I disagree with them. Trump's economic policies are a lot less dark than the socialist/Keynesian claptrap the left has been pushing for the last 8 years.
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So a Robby Soave post about how the media was right to criticize the size of Trump's crowd, followed immediately by a Eric Boehm post about how terrible Trump is for talking about the size of his crowd rather than more important issues.
LOL @ Reason
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This. Without the commenters who to me add far more value than anything. If not for great commenters i wouldnt be reading reason
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No doubt about it. To me, Reason has the best comment section of any site I read. Want humor or snark? Got It. Want actual factual counters to biased or simply head scratching columns, here.
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You read the articles?
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I read Reason for the nude pictures.
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I'd like to show you something real neat that I learned in summer camp.
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Where else can a bunch of libertarian leaning Republicans collect and preen about their superiority to everyone, burn progressive strawmen, and carry water for Team Red? It's a truly special place!
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I seem to recall that as recently as October, the size of Trump's campaign event crowds vs. Hillary's was a non-issue.
Now it's dispositive.
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The fact that Trump spoke to the CIA about the size of the inauguration crowd is moronic. The fact that a sitting President spoke to an intelligence agency against two "groups", IS and the media, is frightening.
In happier news, two weeks ago I switched my voter registration to Libertarian.
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In happier news, two weeks ago I switched my voter registration to Libertarian.
That'll show 'em. Because having a president who doesn't know what "a leppo" is and thinks Hillary Clinton is a great public servant would certainly be less frightening than a president getting pissy about the media.
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that Trump's inauguration speech was a dark moment for U.S. economic policy.
I'll be frank about this, how fucking ignorant do you have to be to think this is true? Ignoring that it was just a speech, protectionism is consistently a part of U.S. history from the start up until the end of the Second World War.
What's an actual dark moment in U.S. economic policy? I don't know, maybe the freaking cotton trade. It's frankly embarrassing the ignorance and lack of perspective Soave spews sometimes. Read something other than Twitter Robby, you'll learn something.
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What's an actual dark moment in U.S. economic policy?
Nixon's wage and price controls? Wickard v. Filburn?
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Smoot hawley
The entire new deal
The great society programs
Min wage
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Slave biz not exactly puppies and rainbows.
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Dread Scott
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I've had a progressive now tell me with a straight face that when Donald Trump referred to "The Establishment" in his speech, he was really referring to black people, and when he talked about how people in Washington have done well at the expense of the rest of us, those were secret code words to white racists talking about how blacks and hispanics have benefited from government programs. This person assured me that the millions of Trump voters out there completely understand this secret code, and as proof offered up the fact that Trump is officially supported by the KKK. This person referred to the speech as "chilling."
At this point, it doesn't matter what Trump actually says. The actual words that come out of his mouth are irrelevant. Depending on political perspective, people now just invent a story about what is meant by whatever sounds happen to come out of the guys face as a means of proving how right they are. I don't know whether it's hilarious or sad.
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To this progressive I said, you know how crazy all those far right people sounded when they ranted on and on about all the secret communist messages coded into whatever Obama said? Remember how you rolled your eyes at them, calling them paranoid, crazy? Yeah, that's you now. You're that person.
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Well-done, but of course it's always different when they do it.
Also, stealing that.
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Expect heavy flow at the Million Women March and dress accordingly.
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The demographic maps show support for God's Own Prohibitionists came from outside densely populated cities. It makes sense for urban crowds to flock toward communism. Secondly, the economic collapse of 1929 had almost nothing to do with tariff protectionism. It was caused by enforcement of the recent Prohibition Amendment using asset-forfeiture made possible by the income tax amendment copied out of the communist manifesto at about the same time. In fact, the income tax was offered as a replacement for the protective tariff, and its use in 1914 sparked a crash just as threats to make public corporate excise tax returns had done on many occasions before the income tax was imported from socialist Germany into the US Constitution. A revenue-only tariff, which protectionists like Morrill called "free trade," is better than the income tax and makes weaning the looters off of communism more gradual and painless. To collect tariffs the feds have to fight angry state governments and corporate lobbyists--more of an even match.
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Less attendees to the inauguration = good. Fewer fucksticks engaging in stupid cult of personality garbage.
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What's the deal with having the kanji for "what" in your handle? If it were an ideogram for "world", I could understand. :-)
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It's to be read with the Cantonese pronunciation (Yale/Jyutping: ho4) so as to provide the American urban vernacular slang. The character's various in-practice significance within Chinese isn't meant to be used.
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You might know some shit. Find me a good Szechuan place within 15 miles of zip 90266. I've been on a quest for 10 years.
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Unfortunately my exposure to good Sichuan is limited to 2 restaurants in metro Boston and a handful of places in Hong Kong. I wish I knew more about Sichuan cuisine too, but I don't know all that much. I just know that there's a world of difference between very fresh Sichuan peppercorns and dried old musty dogshit peppercorns in terms of achieving that insane mouth numbness you get when you pair 'em up with some hot chili.
I haven't been to LA in something like 19 years, but I can have my wife ask her uber-rich Mainlander friend that lives in LA if she knows anything. I expect no yield, however, since she's the kind of person with the means to take a trans-Pacific flight just to satiate a particular authentic cuisine hankering.
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Back in November I went to this place, where you get to choose between grades smth like mild/medium/hot/killer for the soup base. I liked the soup base precisely because it was a little bit sour, though my wife and mother-in-law would prefer that it was less hot. For the sort of "chili oil" style Sichuan, I went to this place and it was good enough remember. But there are millions of choices in HK.
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my wife and mother-in-law would prefer that it was less
hotsour. -
Is that another of those euphemisms everybody talks about here?
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Ted: Context
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Ironic that the people calling trump a fascist slobber all over FDR who actually was a strongman in the economy and put people into camps
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The fact that Trump still feels the need to boast in an effort to soothe his fragile ego after winning the Presidency troubles me. The fact that this is somehow 'newsworthy' while retail sales at brick and mortar stores are collapsing and auto/student loan bubbles are poised to pop concerns me far more. We're collectively plucking the strings of the fiddle while Rome burns.
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Agreed. Funny thing is progressives dont realize their policies actually favor the people they claim to hate large corps, politically connected rich people.
See california. However once they go after Silicon Valley they are fucked
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You assume that the people who claim to be Progressive really do hate the people they claim to hate.
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retail sales at brick and mortar stores are collapsing
Which has been going on for two decades and frankly is probably not reversible. It's a relatively benign collapse too, since it's just a matter of consumers having better options.
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Say, could we get more stories from that dude that wrote that great Actually Libertarian article about Hamilton?? and less of this cosmotarian shit show worrying about Trump.....
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The thread is probably dead by now (I was out), but it's not a surprise that the media is criticized about these stories because the legacy media has gotten to the wolf-crying stage. For the last several years, the media has been so blatantly and provably partisan that they are utterly untrustworthy. It's gone from the journ-o-list conspiracy, to the DNC/media conspiracy (there's really no other word to describe them), to front-page NYT editorials openly saying they were going to be unfair to Republicans.
It is any surprise that media isn't trusted when they've proven they can't be trusted?
It's going to take a generation for the legacy media to repair its reputation (if it can be repaired). The legacy media may have to die and be replaced with new networks.
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It isn't shameful to lessen public enthusiasm for the inauguration, given that Trump's inauguration speech was a dark moment for U.S. economic policy. But anyway, there's little reason to believe Trump's inauguration crowds were as large as Obama's. As New York Times correspondent Binyamin Applebaum tweeted, the images speak for themselves.
Once again with Trump, his detractors are so far away from rational that I end up being more annoyed with them than with Trump.
The guy is a blowhard narcissist. But not one person who was reporting on the "Nobody wants to be there for Trump's inauguration" story was doing so because his speech was so terrifying and dark. They were 100% on board with "my guy is better and we are the real good guys and everybody knows it" message. That is all that story was about.
So he's not entirely nuts to feel insulted by the coverage when the only point of the coverage was to insult Trump and his support. It is kind of a truism... they intended to insult and therefore he was insulted. And we are supposed to be shocked that team Trump was insulted?
That's just dumb.
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They did not "rightly scrutinize" anything. It isn't even a thing that deserves scrutiny.... maybe a single line "crowds were down in the cold, rainy weather compared to Obama's historic first black president inaugural". But these were entire stories, in print, online and on TV about the size of the crowds and with the implication that Trump has no support from the people.
That was the only reason to run the story. It was on CNN, Today, MSNBC, the top of HuffPO.... they all wanted to crow that Trump has no support.
So it is pretty unhinged to complain that his team is miffed. The stories since have all been about not doing anything because they are focused on crowd sizes. This when he's already got a cabinet and moved on healthcare?
He's a blowhard and it seems stupid to me to run around getting in flame wars.... but to cover it as if everyone else is holy and just and Trump is running around flinging crap like a monkey in a cage is just nuts.
And what did he accomplish by doing this? Well.... he managed to push the pussy hat stories off of center stage. It is a dumb story, but somehow his dumb tweets seem to keep on randomly happening to deflect media attention away from something that might gain traction against him.
So a more thoughtful analysis would be to ask - is this actually a strategy? He seems to have a pathological need to counterattack even the slightest insult. But somehow it keeps working out positively for him.
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'The media makes mistakes'
To be sure, they lie consistently to further their narrative. The major media has discredited itself over the past eight years and Trump is taking advantage of that.
