Paul Krugman reacted to enormous size of the Women’s March, which dwarf’s even his fantasy inauguration numbers.
The New York Times‘ Sopan Deb’s reaction to Spicer’s tirade showed that the press is not fooled by Trump’s reactionary response to crowd size:
I’d love to say that I am surprised that Sean Spicer led off his first press briefing in the Trump WH to discuss crowd sizes. I’m not.
— Sopan Deb (@SopanDeb) January 21, 2017
Greg Sargent went on to say, “To call Spicer a joke/clown is to miss the point…What Spicer just did is part of a concerted strategy that goes well beyond crowd sizes.”
“…it all starts to smack of an effort to stamp out the very possibility of shared agreement on the legitimate institutional role of the news media or even on reality itself. It’s easy to imagine that, if and when a news organization uncovers potential conflicts, Trump will simply deny the reality of what’s been uncovered (“fake news”) and begin threatening “consequences” towards that organization.”
Spicer’s agitated state revealed more than his words. As did Spicer’s silence on those demonstrations, as NBC News’ Katy Tur pointed out:
Remarkable for the WH not to acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of Americans demonstrating around the US – including in the WH backyard.
— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) January 21, 2017
It is probably not so much remarkable as predictable. Donald Trump cannot admit that any demonstration is sizeable given his claim to have won by a landslide. Such numbers cannot possibly exist.
As Writer/comedian Justin Shanes tweeted, “Spicer statement proves 3 things: 1) Trump knows protest crowds were enormous, 2) he’s wildly insecure about it, 3) we need to keep this up.”
There is absolutely no doubt that Tur is right on the money when she observes that, “Apparently the most important thing going on in the WH right now is Trump’s inaugural crowd size.”
It is difficult to see how Trump hopes to govern when he lets himself be so easily distracted by his insecurities while there are so many more important things to worry about, first by using an important speech to the CIA to pursue his vendetta against the press and then to order a press conference to excoriate the press for telling the truth about the embarrassingly small turnout for his inauguration.