On Saturday night, White House press secretary Sean Spicer delivered his first news conference in the James S. Brady press briefing room at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Except that he used the occasion to yell at the media and take no questions from them.
It was the most inauspicious of beginnings to what was already a deeply fraught relationship between the Trump administration and the journalists assigned to cover him. And it was a telling sign of just how much Spicer — and the rest of the White House staff — will be required to publicly address perceived grudges and slights against the sitting president of the United States.
.. He then offered explanations for the crowd size — each of which was incorrect:
1) This was the first time in history white plastic had been laid on the Mall to protect the grass. Nope!
2) This was the first time magnetometers had been used in the inauguration proceedings. Nope!
3) More people had used the Metro — D.C.’s subway — at the Trump inauguration than had used it for President Obama’s second inaugural. Nope!
.. But Spicer wasn’t done! He went on to note that “no one had numbers” about the crowd size just before offering up a detailed assessment of just how many people can fit into each section of the Mall and, therefore, why there were far more people in attendance than the media reported.