After a bad first full day, the Trump regime decided to make it a bad second full day, too, sticking with the lies about crowd size that made day one so bad. On Saturday, Donald Trump himself lied about the size of his inauguration crowd, then sent White House press secretary Sean Spicer out to lie even bigger, claiming it had been the biggest inauguration crowd ever. This didn’t go over well with the traditional media or on social media, because hello, we have picture and Metro ridership statistics showing that these are lies. But Trump’s people can’t back down from a lie—especially one so dear to the heart of their boss—so Kellyanne Conway and Reince Priebus went on the Sunday talk shows to lie some more. It didn’t go so well.
On Meet the Press, Chuck Todd asked why Trump would send Spicer out to lie to the press, saying “It undermines the credibility of the entire White House press office on day one.”
"No, it doesn't. Don't be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck," Conway replied. "You're saying it's a falsehood, and they're giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. But the point really is—"
"Wait a minute. Alternative facts? Alternative facts?" Todd interjected, looking incredulous. "Four of the five facts he uttered were just not true."
Yes, now blatant lies are “alternative facts.” Let’s keep an eye out for that terminology going forward.
Meanwhile, things weren’t going any better for Reince Priebus on Fox News Sunday, where host Chris Wallace was not having Priebus’ claims that “It's really not about crowd size.”
No, “What it's about is honesty in the media." Apparently, accurately reporting crowd size is “attacks” and “attempts to delegitimize this president in one day.” (Reince, this president lost the popular vote despite benefiting from Russian interference. He comes pre-delegitimized.)
"You talk about honesty, and say that this was about honesty," Wallace said. "Well, there's another issue, though, Reince, and that's the President's honesty, because two things that he said yesterday were just flat wrong."
Wallace then pulled out pictures of the Mall during Trump’s inauguration and President Obama’s 2009 inauguration so that Priebus could try lying with the pictorial evidence out there fore everyone to see. And try it Priebus did, with Wallace not backing down: “I was there! I was there on the Mall!”
When day one involves protests many times the size of your inauguration crowd plus everyone pointing out that you sent your press secretary out to lie about crowd size and day two features a senior adviser and your chief of staff trying to sell those same lies to incredulous hosts, including at Fox News, safe to say you are not having a historically good start to your presidency.