By Doina Chiacu and Jason Lange
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House vowed on Sunday to fight the
news media “tooth and nail” over what it sees as unfair attacks, with a
top adviser saying the Trump administration had presented “alternative
facts” to counter low inauguration crowd estimates.
On his first full day as
president, Trump said he had a “running war” with the media and accused
journalists of underestimating the number of people who turned out
Friday for his swearing-in.
White House officials made
clear no truce was on the horizon on Sunday in television interviews
that set a much harsher tone in the traditionally adversarial
relationship between the White House and the press corps.
“The point is not the crowd
size. The point is the attacks and the attempt to delegitimize this
president in one day. And we’re not going to sit around and take it,”
Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said on “Fox News Sunday.”
The sparring with the media
has dominated Trump’s first weekend in office, eclipsing debate over
policy and Cabinet appointments.
It was the main theme at the
Republican president’s first visit to the CIA, at the press secretary’s
first media briefing and in senior officials’ first appearances on the
Sunday talk shows.
Together, they made clear the administration will continue to take an aggressive stance with news organizations covering Trump.
“We’re going to fight back tooth and nail every day and twice on Sunday,” Priebus said.
He repeated White House
press secretary Sean Spicer’s assertions on Saturday that the media
manipulated photographs of the National Mall to make the crowds on
Friday look smaller than they really were.
Aerial photographs showed the crowds were significantly smaller than when Barack Obama took over as president in 2009.
The Washington subway system
said it had 193,000 riders by 11 a.m. (1600 GMT) on Friday, compared
with 513,000 at that time during the 2009 inauguration.
Spicer’s categorical
assertion that “this was the largest audience to ever witness an
inauguration - period” was widely challenged in media reports citing
crowd count experts and was lampooned on social media as well.
Asked on NBC’s “Meet the
Press” why the press secretary was uttering provable falsehoods, White
House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway fired back.
“If we are going to keep
referring to our press secretary in those types of terms I think that we
are going to rethink our relationship here,” she said.
Conway responded to
criticism that the new administration was focusing on crowds rather than
on significant domestic and foreign policy issues by saying: “We feel
compelled to go out and clear the air and put alternative facts out
there.”
Priebus and Conway focused
on a press pool report that said the bust of civil rights icon Martin
Luther King Jr. had been removed from the Oval Office after Trump took
office. The report on Friday night was quickly corrected, but Trump
called out the reporter by name during a visit to the Central
Intelligence Agency on Saturday. Spicer also berated the reporter later
in the day.
RUSSIAN SHADOWS
With the Nov. 8 election
results shadowed by U.S. intelligence reports of Russian meddling on his
behalf, Trump has bristled at reports suggesting his popular support is
soft and that the election was not legitimate.
Trump, who lost the popular
vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes, made no
mention of Russia in his first visit to the CIA on Saturday. He praised
his nominee to head the agency, Mike Pompeo, and ranted against the
“dishonest” media, a favorite target during his presidential campaign.
The president accused the
media of fabricating his tensions with the U.S. intelligence community,
despite his frequent posts on Twitter that derided the agencies.
Trump drew criticism from
Democrats as well as former CIA Director John Brennan for his remarks at
the agency, where he spoke before a memorial wall with stars
representing personnel killed in action.
“President Trump ought to
realize he’s not campaigning anymore. He’s president,” Senate Democratic
leader Chuck Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“Instead of talking about
how many people showed up at his inauguration, he ought to be talking
about how many people are going to stay in the middle class and move
into the middle class.”
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Paul Simao)
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