Report: Trump’s Advisers Urged Him to Not Fight Media Over Crowd Size Coverage
A new report is suggesting that some of President Trump’s aides tried to convince him not to order his administration to go on the offensive against the media’s coverage of his inauguration crowd.
Over the weekend, Trump and his press secretary Sean Spicer gave speeches blasting the “dishonest” characterization of how many people appeared to watch Trump take office. The New York Times published a report about how Trump’s inner circle tried to tell him not indulge his desire to counterpunch like he usually does.
The Times states that Trump became angry after he noticed the media outlets who were showing side-by-side photos comparing his crowd size to that of Barack Obama‘s back in 2009. This anger reportedly boiled over when Trump noticed an erroneous story about how a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. was taken out of the Oval Office.
From the Times:
“While Mr. Trump was eager to counterattack, several senior advisers urged him to move on and focus on the responsibilities of office during his first full day as president. That included a high-stakes trip to the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, where he had been coached to demonstrate support of the agency and criticize Senate Democrats for delaying confirmation of his nominee to lead it, Mike Pompeo. The advisers left thinking he agreed.
But Mr. Spicer, who often berated reporters for what he called biased coverage during the campaign, shares Mr. Trump’s dark view of the news media and advocated an opening-day declaration of war.”
Trump’s CIA speech and Spicer’s statement from the White House Briefing Room were both panned by various media figures. Criticism was directed to how the speeches reflected the Trump Administration’s tendency to push “falsehoods”, as well as their willingness to fight over relatively trivial matters.
[Image via screengrab]
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