"Alternative facts" clarified - (AKA: lies exposed)

[El Mimbreno]

From the New York Times via MSN.com:
By NICHOLAS FANDOS

WASHINGTON — Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the White House had put forth “alternative facts” to ones reported by the news media about the size of Mr. Trump’s inauguration crowd.

She made this assertion a day after Mr. Trump and Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, had accused the news media of reporting falsehoods about the inauguration and Mr. Trump’s relationship with the intelligence agencies.

In leveling this attack, the president and Mr. Spicer made a series of false statements.

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Here are the facts.

1. In a speech at the C.I.A. on Saturday, Mr. Trump said the news media had constructed a feud between him and the intelligence community. “They sort of made it sound like I had a ‘feud’ with the intelligence community,” he said. “It is exactly the opposite, and they understand that, too.”

In fact, Mr. Trump repeatedly criticized the intelligence agencies during his transition to office and has questioned their conclusion that Russia meddled in the election to aid his candidacy. He called their assessment “ridiculous” and suggested that it had been politically motivated.

After the disclosure of a dossier with unsubstantiated claims about him, Mr. Trump alleged that the intelligence agencies had allowed a leak of the material. “Are we living in Nazi Germany?” he asked in a post on Twitter.

2. Mr. Trump said of his inauguration crowd,“It looked honestly like a million and a half people, whatever it was, it was, but it went all the way back to the Washington Monument.”

Aerial photographs clearly show that the crowd did not stretch to the Washington Monument. An analysis by The New York Times, comparing photographs from Friday to ones taken of Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, showed that Mr. Trump’s crowd was significantly smaller and less than the 1.5 million people he claimed.

3. Mr. Trump said that though he had been “hit by a couple of drops” of rain as he began his address on Inauguration Day, the sky soon cleared. “And the truth is, it stopped immediately, and then became sunny,” he said. “And I walked off, and it poured after I left. It poured.”

The truth is that it began to rain lightly almost exactly as Mr. Trump began to speak and continued to do so throughout his remarks, which lasted about 18 minutes, and after he finished.

4. “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe,” Mr. Spicer said.

There is no evidence to support this claim. Not only was Mr. Trump’s inauguration crowd far smaller than Mr. Obama’s in 2009, but he also drew fewer television viewers in the United States (30.6 million) than Mr. Obama did in 2009 (38 million) and Ronald Reagan did in 1981 (42 million), Nielsen reported.

5. Mr. Spicer said that Washington’s Metro system had greater ridership on Friday than it did for Mr. Obama’s 2013 inauguration. “We know that 420,000 people used the D.C. Metro public transit yesterday, which actually compares to 317,000 that used it for President Obama’s last inaugural,” Mr. Spicer said.

Neither number is correct, according to the transit system, which reported 570,557 entries into the rail system on Friday, compared with 782,000 on Inauguration Day in 2013.

6. Mr. Spicer said that “this was the first time in our nation’s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall. That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not standing, while in years past the grass eliminated this visual.”

In fact, similar coverings were used during the 2013 inauguration to protect the grass. The coverings did not hamper analyses of the crowd size.

7. Mr. Spicer said that it was “the first time that fencing and magnetometers went as far back on the Mall, preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the Mall as quickly as they had in inaugurations past.”

The Secret Service said security measures were largely unchanged this year. There were also few reports of long lines or delays.

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[link:http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-pushes-%e2%80%98alternative-facts%e2%80%99-here-are-the-real-ones/ar-AAm7yEL|

[luvMIdog]

1. My thoughts on this after being married to a narcissist for 26 years

I'm sorry this is so long and windy..

Being a narcissist IMAGE is EVERYTHING to Donald Trump. His IMAGE is all he really is capable of caring about. He will absolutely not be able to focus on any business at hand if he thinks his image is at risk of being damaged. He wants to be the best ,the biggest, etc. He won't care if it's true- he'll just want it in print for posterity. The ONLY world problem Donald Trump is going to be able to focus on right now is gaining total control of the press and the media.

The only thing Narcissists do is fantasize about being superior to everyone else and people worshiped by others. This is all he ever has cared about and this is what he will go crazy trying to protect during his term. He is going to begin some very nasty reprisals on news people and media .
Gaslighting is the first drawn weapon of the narcissist. They are very good at this type of mind manipulation. Trump will begin a campaign of making the public distrust any and all sources of news and also any sources they might otherwise appeal to for help. He will try to break people down and do this until they begin to ignore all news sources altogether. It's the same thing any abuser would do to their victim- isolate them and then conquer. This is the established pattern. It's ALREADY working, so don't underestimate those tactics.
He will always assign flunkies to do his dirty work and let them take the fall for any backlash. Like he just did with the press secretary. If something turns out good he will take credit for it. If something turns out bad he will assign blame onto someone else. The one skill they use more than any other is delegating. Right now the real work of being a president is being delagated onto the backs of others I assure you.

Many will drop off vigilance as this gaslighting becomes a common theme and tv news anchors are replaced with Trump yes men ( and women).

So gaslighting will be the first step and then will come the retaliations.

But the greatest hope here is that Donald never had to learn to filter his comments because he was the privileged son of a rich powerful man. He threw around law suits. Narcissists from more humble beginnings have learned to filter. Donald has no filter he will not be able to contain himself . I firmly believe he will destroy himself in public office because of his inability to see himself as having to follow any rules and believing himself above them all.

[Nitram]

2. Good analysis. I have noticed that Dump ALWAYS takes credit for what he likes (whether or not

he had anything to do with it), ALWAYS blames others for things he does that don't run out the way he wanted, or prove to be unpopular. Alternatively, he just invents out of thin air achievements that he wants to take credit for. What gets me is how videos and good reporting make it all so very obvious to anyone with half a brain.