Regarding the post-inauguration news conference, featuring new WhiteHouse Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Politico fact checkers claim "at least 5 untruths in 5 minutes."

I claim their claim is a baseless Anti-Trump smoke and mirrors show. Here's my critical thinking re-check check-up. Let’s go through these, shall we?

1. "This was the first time in our nation's history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall."

First off, remember persuasive writing skills? Never start with your most boring argument first. Unless you WANT to lose the reader immediately, because your entire purpose was to generate a headline for people to tweet and post that will generate a popular impression that Sean Spicer is a big fat liar, when really all you had to offer on the subject was tantamount to nothing. Headline-doesn't-match-content red flag. Anyone actually interested in the content suffers to read this article, and I suspect this was intentional.

Here's my analysis of this insufferably lame fact check:

Why is Sean Spicer bragging about floor coverings? And lying about it, too. That’s lame to the power of lame. People should be more upset over how boring this is, rather than fact-checking past floor coverings, which is even more boring. I'm far more pained by boredom than the lie.

Haven’t you ever been talking, not paying close attention to your wording because you are bored with what you’re saying, and then you realize you just said something inaccurate? I think most of us would just keep talking rather than backpedaling over your boring words to correct a boring, unimportant fact.

I submit that this easily provable, uncorrected lie speaks to the verbal efficiency of Sean Spicer.

2. "All of this space [from Trump’s platform to the Washington Monument] was full when the president took the Oath of Office."

He didn’t say “full of people”, he just said “full”. He could have been referring to air. It was full of air. Not a lie.

3. "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."

Not a lie! He stated the number of people who used the metro in one full day (he even says “yesterday”), compared to the number of people that used it before a speech (he says for Obama’s inaugural, i.e., before 11 am) on another date.

If you inferred these numbers mean that more people showed up for Trumps’ inauguration than Obama’s, then the only lie here is the one that you just told yourself. Boom.

Fun fact: Comparative deception was born in the 1700s. It’s called Statistics, which can be used to make the gullible infer just about anything. Is this what statistics SHOULD be used for? No. But we NEED people like Sean Spicer, who will grossly abuse numbers, to teach us all important lessons on how to pay attention to comparisons and interpret them for ourselves, rather than believing every skewed bar graph or indirect comparison we ever see.

I give Sean Spicer mad props for demonstrating to Americans, in his first speech on the job, no less, how math can be used to your advantage. I hope we all learned an important lesson.

4. "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe."

This is just a misunderstanding, not a lie. He said “the largest audience”. It was a commentary on the average weight of the audience, not a head count.

5. "This was also the first time that fencing and magnetometers went as far back on the Mall, preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the Mall as quickly as they had in inaugurations past.”

Sounds to me like a classic play on words. The nested fact here could be that it has never before taken people so long to get into the Mall. The best way to get people excited about an incompetency is to confuse them by hiding it behind a normal thing, that you present as a fancy thing. The first part that sounded kind of impressive wasn’t the fact, the second part that said that it didn’t go smoothly was the fact. Not a lie.

They were hoping you would hear the word “magnetometer” and miss the rest of the statement because you’re thinking in your head “ooooo magnetometer, how’s that work, that sounds fancy, what does that even look like. What’d he just say? It’s not about the magnetometers so we don’t care.”

Conclusion:

Sean Spicer might actually be a closeted genius who wants to make America better at critical thinking, math, and satire.