Trump inauguration
Reince Priebus says the White House arguing about crowd size is 'really not about crowd size'
The new White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, insisted Saturday that Friday's inauguration hosted "the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period," accusing the media of "intentionally" framing photos to make the crowd look smaller. President Trump made the same accusation during his speech at CIA headquarters Saturday, claiming the press reported 250,000 people attended rather than the "million and a half" he personally observed.
On Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus argued that to focus on White House complaints about media reports on the size of the crowd is to miss the point. "President Trump said in his inaugural address that every decision he makes will be to benefit American families. How does arguing about crowd size do that?" asked Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace. "Because it's really not about crowd size," Priebus answered. "It's about honesty in the media ... [which] from Day One has been talking about delegitimizing the election, talking about the Russians, talking about everything you can imagine except the fact that we need to move this country forward."
Despite his own protests, Priebus soon brought up aerial comparisons of the crowds at President Trump's inauguration and President Obama's event in 2009. "Well, there's another issue here, though, Reince, and that is the president's honesty," Wallace said, pulling up the side-by-side pictures, "because two things that he said yesterday were just flat wrong" — namely his discussion of crowd size and the acrimony between Trump and the intelligence community that Trump now says is a media invention. Watch Priebus' reply, and their full conversation, below. Bonnie Kristian