President Obama Had About One Million More People Than President Trump’s #Inauguration Crowd [Aerial Photos]

As soon as President Donald Trump was sworn in on Inauguration Day on Friday, January 20, the comparisons between the crowds drawn by President Obama during his 2009 inauguration began as folks compared aerial photos of each inaugural crowd. As seen in the below photo gallery, some of the photos of the crowd at President Trump’s Inauguration Day activities looked sparse and are deceptive because the crowd just began to fill in at the National Mall when the sun rose. However, other aerial photos comparing the swearing in of President Trump as No. 45 during the 58th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, as compared to President Obama as No. 44, show quite a difference in President Obama’s massive crowds drawn to the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

View photos of President Trump’s Inauguration Day crowd on January 20, 2017:

As seen in the above photo gallery, some of the photos from Friday, January 20, show a Capitol Hill police officer watching over the crowd prior to Mr. Trump being sworn in as president. However, as captured in photos from President Obama’s Inauguration Day crowd on Tuesday, January 20, 2009, crowds stood and sat atop statues at the National Mall prior to the inauguration of President Obama as the 44th President of the U.S., finding every available space to witness history as the first African-American president was sworn in.

As the crowds gathered to watch President Obama in 2009, aerial photos captured a massive amount of bodies on the west side of the Capitol in Washington — as well as those crowded all the way to the Washington Monument. Crowds were shown together in the National Mall during the swearing-in ceremony of President Obama, as seen in the below photo gallery from that day.

View photos of President Obama’s Inauguration Day crowd on January 20, 2009.

As reported by Mother Jones, the comparison of President Obama’s Inauguration Day crowd in 2009 and President Trump’s Inauguration Day crowd in 2017 was notable; especially in light of Mr. Trump claiming that President Trump’s Inauguration Day crowd would have a “record-setting turnout.” According to the publication, a quick view of the aerial crowd photos comparing Mr. Trump’s turnout to Mr. Obama’s crowd turnout shows that President Obama had a much larger crowd than President Trump enjoyed.

#PaltryCrowd #Inauguration
Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd compared to Barack Obama’s https://t.co/3A5ZPp7JoE

— Dan Gross (@DanJGross) January 20, 2017

President Trump’s crowd was estimated to potentially contain as many as 700,000 people to 900,000 people; at least according to estimates put forth by Mashable and other publications, but President Obama enjoyed 1.8 million people at the National Mall in his inaugural crowd in 2009. Therefore, according to the publication, President Obama conservatively had about one million more people than President Trump during his inauguration. As noted by NBC, although no more than 900,000 people were expected at Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the photos of crowds can be deceptive.

The lack of as big of a crowd for President Trump was anticipated due to about 10,000 charter buses that requested permits on President Obama’s big day in comparison to only 200 buses that applied for permits for President Trump’s swearing-in ceremony. Whereas President Obama’s celebration meant that nearly 100 percent of the hotel rooms in Washington, D.C. were sold out in 2009, there were still available hotel rooms as of Thursday afternoon.

According to the trend graph from Trendolizer, the Mother Jones article about the crowd photos has been shared thousands of times on social media.

According to Twitter, search terms like “inauguration crowd, small crowd, crowd size, crowd Trump” and “inauguration crowd” prove that some people are buzzing about President Trump’s crowd size being smaller than that of President Obama’s crowd size years ago. Some of the social media comments about the crowd size from Friday can be read below.

Daniel Valentine: “Will be interesting to see exactly how much smaller the crowd today is compared to #WomensMarch.”

Alyssa Johnson: “The crowd for Trump’s inauguration was looking a little sparse.”

[Featured Images by Carolyn Kaster, Mark Wilson, Luis M. Alvarez, Jae C. Hong/AP Images]