How To Be A Liberal: The Story of Freedom and the Fight for its Survival

by Ian Dunt

The lies started immediately. In the days before his inauguration, Trump boasted there would be ‘an unbelievable, perhaps record-setting turnout.’ In the end, it was a subdued affair, far less full than for the inauguration of Obama eight years earlier and with several empty areas on the parade route. The next morning, the president personally demanded that the director of the National Park Service produce aerial photographs of the crowds. A government photographer was then asked to doctor the images to cut out the empty spaces. When the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, briefed the press on the event, he insisted it was ‘the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period,’ and accused the media of downplaying its size to ‘lessen the enthusiasm.’ The comment on audience size was subsequently refuted, prompting Trump’s spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway, to say that Spicer had merely used ‘alternative facts.’