Sean Spicer Maintains That Trump’s Inauguration Was The Largest Ever With An Interesting Twist
In a new interview, Sean Spicer maintains his widely criticized claim that Trump had the largest inauguration crowd ever but with a new twist.
On his first day on the job as White House Press Secretary following Trump’s inauguration, Sean Spicer claimed that the crowds at Trump’s inauguration ceremony was the largest ever and accused the media of reporting inaccurate crowd numbers.
Photographs of Obama’s first and second inauguration proved that the statement was false.
Trump aide Kellyanne Conway added controversy by defending Spicer’s false statement about the attendance numbers by describing it as “alternative facts.”
In an interview with The Washington Post published on Sunday, Spicer added a new twist to the claim by stating that he should have referred to the number of people watching the event rather than those who choose to attend.
“If you look at the statement that I actually made — and I will admit that we should have made it clearer — we should have focused on total audience size and not let people believe that we were talking about the Mall itself, I will concede that.”
Spicer went on to argue that the total audience who viewed Trump’s inauguration was larger than Obama’s due to a greater number of media platforms available since Obama assumed office in 2009 rather than politics.
Spicer maintains Trump inauguration had biggest audience in history https://t.co/S6ExUjoW3R pic.twitter.com/JovIcnUppJ
— The Hill (@thehill) July 22, 2018
“But where has any evidence been that suggests that I’m wrong about the total population that watched it? This isn’t a partisan thing. The bottom line is that there are platforms available today that weren’t available for Obama.”
Spicer is promoting his book “The Briefing,” which has just been released and he shared some of his experience working in the White House for six months.
The 46-year-old denied that he wants to work for President Trump again, although he still supports him.
“The inauguration crowd size, the 3 to 5 million fraudulent votes in the election, having tapes of Comey in the Oval Office those are three examples of things that are now known not to be true.” –@SavannahGuthrie
“I appreciate you keeping it to three.” –@SeanSpicer pic.twitter.com/0ua74mTwUU
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) July 19, 2018
Spicer criticized Trump’s use of the term ‘fake news,’ suggesting that it is more effective to call out individual reporters or stories. When asked about the dangers of the word when it’s used by a press secretary or a President, Spicer explained that it could imply media as a whole, which takes the focus away from the real culprit.
“I don’t know how many times I used it. If you’ve listened to a lot of what I’ve said over time, I’m not a fan of painting the media with a broad brush. I think it undermines actual instances of legitimate concern.”
During his tenure as White House press secretary, Spicer made numerous statements that were controversial or contradicted other officials in the White House, such as a comment regarding Hitler and his use of chemical weapons.
