On Friday, Donald Trump made his way to Washington, D.C. to be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. After reports concluded that the crowd on hand to watch the inauguration was much less than anticipated, the new president wasn't happy about it.
Trump unloads
After meeting with members of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Saturday in Langley, Virginia, Donald Trump took questions from reporters, but quickly lost his cool when the issue of his Inauguration Day crowd was brought up. Trump had previously promised to break records for inauguration attendance, but that wasn't to be.
Trump's crowd paled in comparison to the number President Obama brought out in 2009, 1.2 million, and in 2012, nearly one million. With an estimated crowd of only 250,000 people, Trump was noticeably upset. As reported by CNN on January 21, the billionaire real estate mogul lashed out.
President Trump on crowd size at inauguration: “It looked like a million and a half people.” https://t.co/U5pWhBBMzt https://t.co/NX6vI6UTHR
— CNN (@CNN) January 21, 2017
"We had a massive field of people, you saw that. Packed," Donald Trump said while taking questions at the CIA headquarters. "I get up this morning and I turn on one of the networks and they show an empty field," Trump continued, before noting, "I said wait a minute, I made a speech, I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, a million and a half people."
BREAKING: President Donald Trump accuses media of lying about inauguration crowds, wrongly says crowd reached Washington monument.
— The Associated Press (@AP) January 21, 2017
Not stopping there, Donald Trump pointed out, "They (the media) showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there." "Honestly it looked like a million and half people, whatever it was it was," Trump went on to say, before adding, "It went all the way back to the Washington Monument." Going further, Trump went on to blame the media, saying "it said we drew 250,000 people.
Now that's not bad, but its a lie."
Moving forward
While Donald Trump was complaining about the report of his Inauguration Day crowd size, over a half a million protesters took part in the Women's March in the nation's capital. In addition, various protests were also taking place across the United States, and in multiple cities around the world to express the opposition to the new administration. With both ends of the political spectrum continuing to push back at each other, only time will tell if they are able to find common ground.
