New white house press secretary Shawn Spicer destroyed his credibility in five minutes during the very first press briefing. Three weeks ago in Chicago, Mr. Spicer told David Axelrod that all any press secretary has is their integrity and that anyone who has a legitimate claim to the job should resign rather than tell a direct lie.
Saturday evening in the White House press room Mr. Spicer told five blatant lies in less than five minutes and they were incredibly obvious lies about the size of the Inaugural crowds (vs. the size of the women's march) which everyone in the room or with a television had actually seen for themselves.
The next morning presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway told NBC's Meet the Press that Spicer had merely presented “alternate facts,” as opposed to blatant lies. For example, both she and Spicer insisted it was impossible to count the crowd despite the fact that President trump keeps claiming (falsely) it was the largest crowd in history. He also referred to metro traffic, the covering for the grass, and more -- all obviously false.
What’s the difference?
The lies were all about trivial things, which is what really concerns many people. The reason people are so upset is that no one will be able to believe anything he says in the future, whether a trivial headcount, healthcare, or the economy. In other words, things which aren’t easy to see.
As several media observers and reporters told CNN on Sunday morning, if an administration is willing to lie about such trivial things, what would stop them from lying about important, life threatening matters?
CIA
President Trump told a direct lie to a group at the CIA when he declared a “running war” with the media, as the President had earlier compared the CIA to Nazis.
He also said the Inaugural crowd "looked like about a million people." Independent estimates put the number at about 200,000, 1/3 the number that attended Mr. Obama's first inauguration.
The President said this to a group of about 400 CIA employees while standing in front of the memorial wall which honours those CIA employees who have been killed in the line of duty -- in other words, the CIA’s equivalent of the Army’s Unknown Soldier Memorial.
President Trump made a point of saying his first visit to any agency was to the CIA to show his support. The visit had been scheduled earlier to swear in the new CIA chief but the vote on his confirmation was delayed a few days.
President Trump began by saying he was 1,000% behind the intelligence community, his talk quickly turned to complaints about the media. But he also made an important policy statement during his short speech, calling terrorists “radical Islamic,” a term that angers some in the Muslim community, and a term that President Obama refused to use, despite ordering a massive number of drone attacks against suspected terrorist targets.
