Since his election, the news media and some rogue government officials have pulled out all the stops to disrespect and belittle President Donald Trump. Their latest assault came on the very day he was sworn into office, spreading an outrageous lie about his supporters.
Left-wingers began circulating photographs claiming that the crowds at Trump’s inauguration were much smaller than the number who showed up at Barack Obama’s inaugurations… maybe only one-third as large.
A photo supposedly showing side-by-side images of the two presidents’ inaugurations hit social media, showing a massively small number of people at Friday’s swearing in. Amazingly, the Twitter account of Donald Trump’s own government – the Interior Department – retweeted the pictures, along with another left-wing attack on his handling of the White House website. Different versions of these images went viral:
https://twitter.com/michikokakutani/status/822983200880361472
Soon, the media and whining liberals were consoling themselves – and convincing anyone who still listens to them – that Trump is really unpopular.
The Washington Post’s “conservative” blogger, Jennifer Rubin, tweaked Trump, writing:
puny crowd at inauguration, empty streets for parade, historically low approval — most people really dont like him, you think?
— Jennifer Truth Over Phony Balance Rubin 🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@JRubinBlogger) January 20, 2017
At a speech before the CIA, President Trump said many decided not to attend due to rain. But from where he stood the crowd looked like “a million-and-a-half people.”
That just drove the Left even crazier, even bringing major league sports into the massive show of disrespect. On Saturday night, the NHL hockey team the Dallas Stars mocked Donald Trump by flashing that the attendance at its game was 1.5 million.
There are as many problems with their version of the inauguration as there are problems with their elitist attitudes.
Eagle-eyed critics said that the photos were cherry-picked. For one thing, the picture circulated of Trump’s inauguration was actually taken 45 minutes before the ceremony even began. As Reince Priebus said, “If you’re not comparing apples to apples, it doesn’t matter” what the photos look like. A picture during the history-making event revealed a much larger crowd:
https://twitter.com/EINarizon/status/822852326645989376
Second, it’s harder for Trump’s supporters to get to Washington, D.C., on a weekday. They have jobs.
They also live farther away than Obama’s supporters. “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd reported the numbers: In 1988, the nearest county that voted for a Republican was only 5.8 miles away from the White House. But a lot has changed since then – and not for the better.
D.C. bureaucrats have moved into the suburbs, crowing out working class and middle class Americans. They live off taxpayer dollars and vote for the party of government: the Democrats.
In 2016, the nearest county that voted Republican is 27 miles (Calvert County, Maryland) – or 43 miles to Fauquier County, Virginia.
That’s pretty astonishing since Trump won U.S. counties in a blowout. Donald Trump won 2,623 counties nationwide, compared to Hillary Clinton’s 489, the biggest landslide since 1984 at the county level.
Since they can’t attend in person, Trump’s supporters watched on TV. A total of 30.6 million Americans watched the inauguration on TV according to Nielsen, the third-highest number of people in its ratings history.
The highest was Ronald Reagan in 1980. Not bad company.
The media are so desperate to decrease Trump’s numbers for two reasons.
The media elite live inside the Washington Beltway bubble. They don’t know anyone who likes Trump. They don’t even know anyone who knows anyone who likes Trump. Since they – and some pathetic entertainers and about 70 Democratic Congressmen – boycotted Trump’s inauguration, they want to convince themselves that they’re the real majority. None of their people – the cool people – would be caught dead at the inauguration, so they are convincing themselves that other people followed their lead.
Worse, though, this is part of a narrative to say that Donald Trump’s presidency is phony and illegitimate. Russians hacked the election. He lost the popular vote. And now no even came to his inauguration. He’s not really the president of the American people, so the talking points go.
Democratic National Committee (DNC) senior adviser Zac Petkanas wrapped all these into a single sentence this weekend, blathering, “After he finished ranting about crowd sizes on the National Mall, I hope President Trump sat down for an interview with the CIA to help with their investigation into his team’s possible collusion with the Kremlin to win the election.”
Whatever, “Zac.”
It’s impossible to know exactly how many people showed up last Friday. The National Park Service no one reports or estimates those numbers.
But The Horn News readers know that the number of people who show up for an event like this doesn’t mean anything to a normal American. We don’t care how many people go to parties, or if the “right” people showed up. We have bigger concerns: the mortgage, retirement, paying for our drugs and health care, hoping our kids find and keep their jobs.
President Trump’s counselor, Kellyanne Conway, nailed it this weekend, when she told an obnoxious Chuck Todd, “I don’t think ultimately presidents are judged by crowd sizes at their inauguration. I think they’re judged by their accomplishments.”
That’s the measuring stick we’ll be using at The Horn.
— The Horn editorial team