Just one day after he took office, President Trump allegedly called the head of the U.S. National Park Service, or NPS, to confront him about issues relating to his inauguration’s crowd size.
Just one day after he took office, President Trump allegedly spoke with the head of National Park Service, or NPS, and confronted him about issues relating to his inauguration’s crowd size.
According to the Washington Post, Trump asked acting director Michael Reynolds to provide additional photos from the day to potentially disprove media claims about lackluster attendance.
Reynolds reportedly did so, but the images did not support Trump’s position.
The Post report adds, “Trump also expressed anger over a retweet sent from the agency’s account, in which side-by-side photographs showed far fewer people at his swearing-in than had shown up to see Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009.”
However, the president’s deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, told the New York Times about the conversation, “It was a, ‘What’s going on?’ type of thing. Why is the National Park Service tweeting out comparison photos? That was the bigger issue there.”
The NPS deleted its retweets from January 20 and wrote the following day, “We regret the mistaken RTs from our account yesterday and look forward to continuing to share the beauty and history of our parks with you.”
Since the inauguration, Trump and his team have spoken out several times about the number of people who witnessed the event; in fact, White House press secretary Sean Spicer has declared that “this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.”
However, estimates have placed the figure at a fraction of Barack Obama’s first term inauguration crowd.