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(Trump, one day into his presidency, is beginning to sound like Nixon on
the Vietnam Moratorium Day demo in 1969--addled and defensive.)
NY Times, Jan. 21 2017
With False Claims, Trump Attacks Media on Turnout and Intelligence Rift
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and MATTHEW ROSENBERG
WASHINGTON — President Trump used his first full day in office on
Saturday to unleash a remarkably bitter attack on the news media,
falsely accusing journalists of both inventing a rift between him and
intelligence agencies and deliberately understating the size of his
inauguration crowd.
In a visit to the Central Intelligence Agency designed to showcase his
support for the intelligence community, Mr. Trump ignored his own
repeated public statements criticizing the intelligence community, a
group he compared to Nazis just over a week ago. He called journalists
“among the most dishonest human beings on earth,” and he said that up to
1.5 million people had attended his inauguration, a claim that
photographs disproved.
Later, at the White House, he dispatched Sean Spicer, the new press
secretary, to the briefing room in the West Wing, where he delivered an
irate scolding to reporters and made a series of false statements. Mr.
Spicer said news organizations had deliberately misstated the size of
the crowd at Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Friday in an attempt to sow
divisions at a time when Mr. Trump was trying to unify the country,
warning that the new administration would hold them to account.
The statements from the new president and his spokesman were a striking
display of invective and grievance at the dawn of a presidency, usually
a time when the White House works to set a tone of national unity and
build confidence in a new leader. Instead, Mr. Trump and his team
appeared embattled and defensive, signaling that the pugnacious style
the president employed as a candidate will persist now that he has
ascended to the nation’s highest office.
Saturday was supposed to be a day for Mr. Trump to mend fences with an
intelligence community he had publicly scorned, with an appearance at
the C.I.A.’s headquarters in Langley, Va. While he was lavish in his
praise, the president focused in his 15-minute speech on his complaints
about news coverage of his criticism of the nation’s spy agencies, and
meandered to other topics, including the crowd size at his inauguration,
his level of political support, his mental age and his intellectual heft.
“I just want to let you know, I am so behind you,” Mr. Trump told more
than 300 employees assembled in the lobby for his remarks.
Trump’s Inauguration vs. Obama’s: Comparing the Crowds
Early estimates put the crowd gathered for President Donald J. Trump’s
inauguration at far less than President Obama’s in 2009.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has upbraided the intelligence community for
leaks and questioned its conclusion that Russia meddled in the United
States election on his behalf. On Saturday, he said journalists were
responsible for any suggestion that he was not fully supportive of
intelligence agencies’ work.
“I have a running war with the media,” Mr. Trump said. “They are among
the most dishonest human beings on earth, and they sort of made it sound
like I had a feud with the intelligence community.”
“The reason you’re the No. 1 stop is, it is exactly the opposite,” Mr.
Trump added. “I love you, I respect you, there’s nobody I respect more.”
Mr. Trump also took issue with news reports about the number of people
who attended his inauguration, complaining that the news media used
photographs of “an empty field” to make it seem as if his inauguration
did not draw many people.
“We caught them in a beauty,” Mr. Trump said of the news media, “and I
think they’re going to pay a big price.”
Mr. Spicer said that Mr. Trump had drawn “the largest audience to ever
witness an inauguration,” a statement that photographs clearly show to
be false. Mr. Spicer said photographs of the inaugural ceremonies were
deliberately framed “to minimize the enormous support that had gathered
on the National Mall,” although he provided no proof of either assertion.
Photographs of Barack Obama’s first inauguration in 2009 and of Mr.
Trump’s plainly showed that the crowd on Friday was significantly
smaller, but Mr. Spicer attributed that disparity to new white ground
coverings he said had caused empty areas to stand out and to security
measures that had blocked people from entering the Mall.
“These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are
shameful and wrong,” Mr. Spicer said. He also admonished a journalist
for erroneously reporting on Friday that Mr. Trump had removed a bust of
the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office, calling the
mistake — which was corrected quickly — “egregious.”
And he incorrectly claimed that ridership on Washington’s subway system
was higher than on Inauguration Day in 2013. In reality, there were
782,000 riders that year, compared with 571,000 riders this year,
according to a study by The Washington Post.
In Mr. Trump’s remarks at the C.I.A., he wandered off topic several
times, at various points telling the crowd he felt no older than 39 (he
is 70); reassuring anyone who questioned his intelligence by saying,
“I’m, like, a smart person”; and musing out loud about how many
intelligence workers backed his candidacy.
“Probably everybody in this room voted for me, but I will not ask you to
raise your hands if you did,” Mr. Trump said. “We’re all on the same
wavelength, folks.”
The remarks touched off a fierce reaction from some current and former
intelligence officials.
Nick Shapiro, who served as chief of staff to John O. Brennan, who
resigned Friday as the C.I.A. director, said Mr. Brennan “is deeply
saddened and angered at Donald Trump’s despicable display of
self-aggrandizement in front of C.I.A.’s Memorial Wall of Agency heroes.
“Brennan says that Trump should be ashamed of himself,” Mr. Shapiro added.
“I was heartened that the president gave a speech at C.I.A.,” said
Michael V. Hayden, a former director of the C.I.A. and the National
Security Agency. “It would have been even better if more of it had been
about C.I.A.”
Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the
House Intelligence Committee, said that he had had high hopes for Mr.
Trump’s visit as a step to begin healing the relationship between the
president and the intelligence community, but that Mr. Trump’s
meandering speech had dashed them.
“While standing in front of the stars representing C.I.A. personnel who
lost their lives in the service of their country — hallowed ground —
Trump gave little more than a perfunctory acknowledgment of their
service and sacrifice,” Mr. Schiff said. “He will need to do more than
use the agency memorial as a backdrop if he wants to earn the respect of
the men and women who provide the best intelligence in the world.”
Mr. Trump said nothing during the visit about how he had mocked the
C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies as “the same people that said
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” He did not mention his
apparent willingness to believe Julian Assange, the founder of
WikiLeaks, who is widely detested at the C.I.A., over his own
intelligence agencies.
He also did not say whether he would start receiving the daily
intelligence briefs that are prepared for the president. The agency sees
the president as its main audience, and his dismissal of the need for
daily briefings from the intelligence community has raised concerns
about morale among people who believe their work will not be respected
at the Trump White House.
At the C.I.A., Trump did not encounter any outright hostility — the
agency prides itself as being the eyes and ears of the president around
the world — and he will certainly find supporters among its ranks. The
nomination of Mike Pompeo, a former Army infantry officer who is well
versed in issues facing the intelligence community, to lead the C.I.A.
has also been received positively at the agency, where many took it as a
signal that Mr. Trump was ready to start taking the work done by the
C.I.A. seriously.
But in the months since the election, hopes at the C.I.A. that the new
administration would bring an infusion of energy and ideas have given
way to trepidation about what Mr. Trump and his loyalists have planned.
“He has left the strong impression that he doesn’t trust the
intelligence community and that he doesn’t have tremendous regard for
their work,” said Mark M. Lowenthal, a retired C.I.A. analyst. “The
obvious thing to do is to counter that by saying, ‘I value you, I look
forward to working with you.’”
“He called them Nazis,” Mr. Lowenthal added, referring to Mr. Trump’s
characterization of the intelligence community. Mr. Lowenthal said
Saturday’s visit should have been “a stroking expedition.”
Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.
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