User:Elio Midna/Inauguration of Donald Trump

Crowd Size
The National Park Service does not publish crowd estimates about events at the National Mall. Overhead imagery and statistics on public transportation ridership from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), which operates Metrorail, are therefore used to estimate crowd sizes.

Crowd counting experts cited by The New York Times estimated that about 160,000 people were in the National Mall areas in the hour leading up to Trump's speech. Crowd science professor Keith Still estimated the total attendance at 300,000 to 600,000 people. CNN provided a gigapixel panorama of the area.

The WMATA reported that 193,000 passengers rode the Metro before 11 a.m. on the day of Trump's inauguration, and 570,557 passengers during the entire day, noting that it was lower than the average weekday ridership of 639,000 passengers.

Controversies over the crowd size
Before the event, federal and local agencies had prepared for turnout of between 700,000 and 900,000 people. Trump predicted that there would be "an unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout" at his inauguration. However, the the total estimated attendance, that of 300,000 to 600,000 attendees, fell short of the estimated 1.1 million to 1.8 million people that attended Obama's 2009 inauguration – which set a record for the total number of people in the National Mall at any one given time.

In a press conference on January 21, Sean Spicer, Trump's White House press secretary, stated that the crowd "was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe", and accused the media of reporting false crowd estimates to "lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration". Spicer also stated that 420,000 people rode the Metro on the day of Trump's inauguration, and that only 317,000 rode on the day of Obama's. In fact, 570,557 Metro trips were taken on the day of Trump's inauguration, compared to 1.1 million on Obama's 2009 inauguration day and 782,000 on Obama's 2013 inauguration day. Ridership at 11 a.m. was 193,000, 513,000 and 317,000 respectively.

Numerous sources highlighted the fact that Spicer's statements were incorrect, and many accused him of intentionally misstating the figures. In response, Donald Trump's counselor and spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway, in an interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, stated that Spicer merely presented "alternative facts". Todd responded by saying "alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods."

On January 23, Spicer admitted his error concerning WMATA ridership levels, stating that he was relying on statistics given to him, but he stood by his claim that the inauguration was the most-viewed, stating he also included online viewership in addition to in-person and television in his estimates. Spicer's claim of the largest audience ever was still shown inaccurate as Nielsen reported 30.6 million viewers across 12 networks while Obama had 37.8 million and Ronald Reagan 41.8 million. As for online viewership, Spicer himself cited a figure of 16.9 million livestreams provided by CNN. However, CNN served nearly 27 million streams in 2009 for Obama's inauguration. CNN reported in 2009 that 7.7 million people watched the inauguration online, while nearly 27 million watched streaming video of any sort on CNN's website on that day. NBC's livestream on YouTube of Trump's inauguration in 2017 accumulated over 8 million views within a day.

The incoming administration briefly shut down the Interior Department's Twitter accounts. The National Park Service's official Twitter account had re-tweeted two Tweets on "omissions on policy areas" on the White House website and Trump's and Obama's crowd sizes. An NPS spokesman issued an apology for "mistaken RTs".

On the morning following the inauguration, Trump telephoned acting National Park Service director Michael T. Reynolds and personally directed him to produce additional aerial photographs of the Inauguration Day crowds. Reynolds and the Park Service complied with the directive; the additional photos, however, "did not prove Trump's contention that the crowd size was upward of 1 million." In September 2018, documents released from a Freedom of Information Act request showed that Reynolds and the National Park Service cropped photos of the inauguration, at the direction of the President, in an attempt to make the crowd size seem larger. In the same month, a government photographer admitted that he, at Trump's request, edited pictures of the inauguration to make the crowd appear larger: "The photographer cropped out empty space 'where the crowd ended' for a new set of pictures requested by Trump on the first morning of his presidency, after he was angered by images showing his audience was smaller than Barack Obama's in 2009."

Public's Response
Los Angeles Times staff writer Noah Bierman described Trump's speech as unusual due to it polarizing and combative rhetoric that was quite characteristic of his campaign. His campaign was so polarizing that in a survey by the Pew Research center less than half of Americans (about 46%) said they had plans to watch the Inauguration. However, more support was found in Russia especially amongst the "diehard supporters of [Trump's] counterpart Vladimir Putin" due to Trump expressing a desire to mend US-Russia relations during his campaign. In Washington D.C. people were more divided in their response to the inauguration as both supporters and opposers of Trump visited the city in the days surrounding the Inauguration. The event itself was split amongst those who wore red MAGA hats and flying Trump flags and those who carried thank you signs for former president Barack Obama.

Amongst the bigger demographics that showed disapproval towards Trump and the event were women who protested multiple of Trump's policies in international women's march he following day after the inauguration, on January 21, 2017. According to Heidi M. Przybyla, from USA Today the consensus, amongst the women that attended the protest, was that the incoming administration's policies would pay little attention to gender-equality issues in part due to Trump's cabinet being 90% male and 90% white. Amongst other things the protesters wanted further action from the government concerning women's rights such as equal pay and paid family leave.