ABC News(WASHINGTON) — Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said the issue of crowd sizes at Donald Trump’s inauguration on Friday in comparison to prior inaugurations is “not so important.”
Her comments came just hours after President Trump made false claims about turnout and ordered his press secretary, Sean Spicer, to hold his first press conference to reiterate them. Spicer blasted the media, accusing news organizations of intentionally framing photographs to “minimize the [president’s] enormous support” and claiming the Jan. 20 ceremony had the “largest audience ever.”
Conway towed a similar line Sunday on ABC News’ “This Week,” arguing that the crowd “was historic based on the projections that were given and certainly based on the fact that we, for the first time, have a nonpolitician in the White House.”
Aerial images from Friday’s inaugural at noon during President Trump’s swearing-in show fewer people on the National Mall than during President Obama’s 2009 inaugural at the same time.
After touting a historic crowd, Conway blamed the inclement weather for discouraging more attendees: “First of all, there was rain — the downpour that was reported — and I think it deterred many people from coming.
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“But there were hundreds of thousands of people here,” she told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “And more importantly, 31 million people watched this inaugural [on TV] … according to Nielsen. That is far above the 20.5 million that watched President Obama’s second inauguration.
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Nielsen ratings reported that 30,600,000 watched Trump’s inauguration on television, more than the 20,552,000 who viewed President Obama getting inaugurated in 2013, but less than the 37,793,000 who watched Obama taking the oath of office in 2009. All of them fell short of the record 41,800,260 viewers of President Reagan’s first inauguration in 1981.
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