White House goes to war with media, accusing it of delegitimising Trump

WASHINGTON — The White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus yesterday intensified the Trump administration’s criticism of the news media, accusing it of trying to delegitimise Mr Donald Trump’s presidency and vowing to fight such coverage “tooth and nail”.

Mr Priebus’ remarks came a day after Mr Trump’s visit to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where he attacked the news media following reports on the crowd size at his inauguration on Friday.

Mr Priebus added in an interview with Fox News Sunday that “we’re not going to sit around and take it”.

The White House over the weekend accused the media of framing photographs to understate the crowd that attended Mr Trump’s inauguration, a new jab in a long-running fight between the new President and the news organisations who cover him.

In an unusual and fiery statement on Saturday night (US local time), White House spokesman Sean Spicer lashed out about tweeted photographs that showed large, empty spaces on the National Mall during the ceremony on Friday.

“This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period. Both in person and around the globe,” said Mr Spicer. “These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm about the inauguration are shameful and wrong.”

Washington’s city government estimated that 1.8 million people attended President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, making it the largest gathering ever on the Mall. Aerial photographs showed that the crowds for Mr Trump’s inauguration were smaller than in 2009.

Mr Spicer’s rebuke followed a larger-than-expected turnout for women’s marches protesting against Mr Trump across the US on Saturday, including at the flagship event in Washington, where a crowd of hundreds of thousands clogged the streets and appeared to be larger than those who came for Mr Trump’s inauguration.

Mr Spicer, who did not take questions from reporters, said spaces for 720,000 people were full when Mr Trump took his oath. He also said the National Park Service does not put out official crowd counts.

Washington’s Metro subway system said 193,000 users had entered the system by 11am on Friday, compared with 513,000 at that time during Mr Obama’s 2009 inauguration.

On Saturday, Metro reported ridership of 275,000 at 11am as it struggled to handle the crowd converging on downtown Washington for the protest march.

That same day, Mr Trump blamed the media for making up his feud with the CIA over its investigation into Russian hacking, as he turned what was intended to be a bridge-building visit to the CIA into a media-bashing session centred on what he saw as low-ball reports about the crowd size on Inauguration Day.

Mr Trump, who visited the CIA headquarters in nearby Langley, Virginia, insisted that he drew 1.5 million people to his Friday swearing-in ceremony. “I made a speech. I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, million and a half people,” he told CIA staff. “They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there. And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well. So we caught them and we caught them in a beauty and I think they’re going to pay a big price.”

Mr Spicer appeared eager to lay down the new law with the press, which his boss repeatedly criticised on the campaign trail, even branding mainstream media outlets “fake news”.

The intensity of Mr Spicer’s delivery suggested he and Mr Trump were furious at the coverage of the inauguration, which many outlets said fell well short of Mr Obama’s 2009 inaugural in terms of crowd size. AGENCIES