Day 2: War on media.
1/ Photos comparing Trump’s inauguration crowd to the Women’s March (CNN)
2/ White House press secretary Sean Spicer attacked media for accurately reporting inauguration crowds. “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” Spicer said, contradicting all available data. Aerial photos have indicated that former president Barack Obama’s first inauguration attracted a much larger crowd. Nielsen ratings show that Obama also had a bigger television audience. Spicer, at times almost yelling while reading a prepared statement, took no questions. (CNN)
3/ Trump used his first full day in office on Saturday to unleash a remarkably bitter attack on the news media, falsely accusing journalists of both inventing a rift between him and intelligence agencies and deliberately understating the size of his inauguration crowd. (NY Times)
4/ Trump says he has “running war” with media, criticizes the “dishonest media,” gets facts wrong, in CIA speech. (CNN)
5/ At CIA headquarters, Trump denies feud, lashed out at critics, boasted of his magazine covers, and exaggerated the size of the crowd at his inauguration. (Politico)
6/ Trump’s real war isn’t with the media. It’s with facts. He needs to delegitimize the media because he needs to delegitimize facts. (Vox)
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