President Donald Trump has spent his first days in the White House repeatedly trying to defend the crowd size at his inauguration, which drew fewer attendees than former President Barack Obama’s 2009 ceremony.
On Tuesday, Trump shared a panoramic photo of his inauguration and said he plans to hang it in the White House press hall — another apparent attempt to dispute reports that show his inauguration crowd was relatively small.
While many side-by-side comparison photos have shown that Trump’s crowd was more sparse near the Washington Monument, the photo Trump plans to hang in the press hall is more flattering, as it shows the area near the Capitol where supporters were closely packed together.
But, as many on social media quickly pointed out, his panoramic photo includes the wrong date, identifying the day of his inauguration as Jan. 21. Trump was actually inaugurated on Jan. 20. On the following day, hundreds of thousands of protesters flooded the nation’s capital to protest his presidency.
Trump complained about reports on his crowd size during a visit to the CIA on Saturday, and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Monday stood by his false claim that Trump’s inauguration was the most-watched in history. Obama’s 2009 inauguration actually exceeded Trump’s in both in-person attendance and television ratings.
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