Trump vs The Press - Crowd size matters

Friday, Trump was inaugurated.

Saturday, millions of people marched in the streets. The crowd size of the protestors dwarfed the inaugural ceremony by huge numbers.

The protests were in every state and people were marching worldwide, demanding a better equality for everybody, under the banner of women.

Protestors know Trump will increase conflict and promote policies of division, despite his pledge of allegiance to the people.

During the protests, the white house chose to complain about crowd size coverage, accusing the press of lying. They claimed there was no quantifiable way to measure attendance, after shutting down the park service communications who tweeted an image of inauguration crowd size comparisons, comparing 2009 and 2017.

Trump also complained about press dishonesty to the CIA, in a masterpiece of Orwellian symbolism and doublespeak, implying that the truth from secret sources is more reliable than what the public can collectively witness themselves, with their own eyes.

The press spent the rest of the weekend discussing inaugural crowd sizes. The reporting was a diversion from the grievances of the millions of people marching in the streets.

The press always finds a diversion from discussing the specifics of public grievance, or presenting possible solutions to alleviate social dysfunction. That’s why their approval ratings are so low.

Normally, when covering protests, corporate media pundits marvel mindlessly on crowd size, mainly mocking participants, until a window breaks allowing them to condemn the entire event. What makes this weekend different, the fist weekend of the Trump term, is the collusion of the press and the white house toward a superficial narrative, was dramatic and obvious.

Millions of people marched for equality and the corporate media assembled panels to discuss inaugural crowd sizes, agreeing that they don’t much matter. Which of course is also another incorrect assessment by the professional pundits. Crowd sizes measure popular support.

Without a credible press, or a credible public consensus system, crowd sizes are the most believable method we have to measure public support of anything. That’s how we can believe Trump beat Hillary. That’s how we know Sanders would have beat Trump.

In reality, what we have just witnessed was the opening dance of deception between the new Trump administration and the corporate media. One acts, the other reacts. Together they distract. They themselves become the story for you to consider.

It’s an old strategy to distract the public from understanding the reforms being requested by the majority of the public, as measured by the millions of people who are marching, compared to the modest crowds who came out to support president Trump.

Sunday, the weekly news pundits neglected to mention the precedent set by an administration blatantly lying to them and then denying them questions. It implies information is a privilege that can be denied if they disagree with the official version.

The white house assembled reporters together to insult them and call them liars for reporting a truth we all knew would be the truth before it happened. Trump would get smaller crowd sizes, compared to Obama, as he was sworn in as our new president.

Now, the truth itself is in trouble. Freedom of speech is meaningless without a common understanding of what is true. If something as easily provable as crowd size can be disputed for partisan purposes, or presidential pride, or some other Orwellian agenda, we are all in trouble.