Day One: Trump presidency gets off to rocky start
22 Jan 2017 7:01 PM GMT
Donald Trump's White House came under fire Sunday for falsely accusing media of misreporting inaugural crowd numbers, after millions took to the streets in protest against the new president.
The brash billionaire and his chief spokesman launched a startling assault on the media on Saturday, Trump's first full day in office, accusing reporters of downplaying the turnout at his swearing-in ceremony.
The attack came as more than two million people flooded US cities in protests led by women opposed to Trump, who many fear will roll back the rights of women, immigrants and minorities.
The scale of the mass protests, echoed in sister rallies around the world, highlight the challenge former reality TV star Trump faces as he leads the world's most powerful nation -- taking office with an approval rating of just 37 percent.
Usually, new US leaders start the job with approval ratings above 50 percent, and this has put 70-year-old Trump, who comments regularly about his popularity and ratings, on the defensive.
Trump and his chief spokesman lambasted the media for the reporting of the inauguration turnout, in what analysts said was an attempt to change the subject. Non-stop news network coverage of Saturday's sprawling demonstrations against Trump were replaced within hours by debate over his "war on the media," which is likely to play well among his supporters.
Visiting the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Virginia, Trump insisted, despite evidence to the contrary, that he drew 1.5 million people to his Friday swearing-in ceremony.
"I made a speech. I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, million and a half people," he told CIA staff.
"They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there. And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well," he added.
The comments drew criticism from outgoing CIA director John Brennan, who resigned on Friday, according to a New York Times report.
The Times quoted Nick Shapiro, who served as Brennan's chief of staff saying Brennan "is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump's despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA's Memorial Wall of Agency heroes.
"Brennan says that Trump should be ashamed of himself," Shapiro added.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer doubled down on the media assault, using his first press conference in the White House briefing room to blast the journalists seated before him for "deliberately false reporting" on crowd size.
"This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period!" Spicer said.
"These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong."
Spicer left the briefing without taking questions.
An estimated 1.8 million people flooded the National Mall area in 2009 when Barack Obama was first sworn in as president, according to federal and local agencies at the time.
Washington authorities reportedly predicted 800,000 to 900,000 would attend Trump's inauguration Friday, about half of the 2009 crowd.
Spicer appeared eager to lay down the new law with the press, whom Trump criticized repeatedly on the campaign trail and even branded mainstream media outlets "fake news."
The intensity of Spicer's delivery suggested he and Trump were furious at the coverage of the inauguration, which many outlets said fell well short of Obama's 2009 inaugural in terms of crowd size. A comparison of aerial photos taken on January 20, 2009 and Friday appeared to bear that out.
Washington city authorities do not provide official crowd counts but TV footage clearly showed the gathering did not stretch all the way to the Washington Monument, as Trump asserted.
Trump's attack at the CIA headquarters came as he made a fence-mending mission after his public rejection of the assessment by US intelligence agencies that Russia meddled to try to help him win the November election.
Trump, standing in front of a spot sacred to the CIA – a wall with stars honoring employees killed while serving the country – proclaimed he was fully behind the spy agency.
Trump's inauguration cake a rip-off of Obama's cake: chef
Trump team has again been hit by 'plagiarism' allegations with a celebrity pastry chef claiming that the spectacular nine-tier cake that the new president and Vice President Mike Pence cut into with a sword was a rip off of Barack Obama's inauguration cake from 2013.
For pastry chef Duff Goldman, Trump's inaugural cake seemed a little too familiar – because it looked almost exactly like the one he had made years earlier for Obama's second inauguration as president.
The one on the right was the cake that had just appeared at Trump's 'Salute to Our Armed Services' ball," the chef's tweeted with the pictures of the two cakes.
It appeared nearly identical to Goldman's cake from four years ago, right down to the colours, the patriotic bunting, and the placement of several small silver stars and seals.
"I didn't make it," Goldman wrote about Trump's cake, adding a suspicious thinking-face emoji at the end.
Tiffany MacIsaac, owner of Washington's Buttercream Bakeshop, stepped forward to say she had been the one to create the much-talked-about cake for Trump's inauguration festivities.
She said the order came in while she was out of town, and that the client had brought in a photo of the cake from Obama's inauguration asking her to re-create it.
Her bakery tried to encourage the client to use the photo as "inspiration", as they do with many others, she said.
"I just wish that it had not been presented the way that it was," she said. Goldman, who founded Charm City Cakes in Baltimore and Los Angeles, is known for his showstopping cake creations.
"Remembering a fantastic cake I made is awesome and the chef that re-created it for @POTUS Trump did a fantastic job," he tweeted. "Group hug, y'all."
Allegations of plagiarism are not new in Trump's nascent administration.
President's spouse, Melania Trump, was accused of lifting a portion of her speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention from one Michelle Obama gave at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
DONALD Trump to meet British Prime Minister next week
US President Donald Trump will host British Prime Minister Theresa May on Friday, his first meeting with a foreign leader since taking office, and receive his Mexican counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto on January 31, the White House said on Sunday. "The President will welcome his first foreign leader ...when the United Kingdom's Theresa May will come to Washington on Friday," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters here. His meeting with Theresa May comes as the UK undergoes the process of exiting the European Union, a move Trump supported. Donald Trump held telephonic conversations with the leaders of Canada and Mexico the two neighbouring countries on Sunday.
Next Story
