2017 Jan 22^nd

Today it’s all about counting: How badly did the press distort the attendance at Trump’s inauguration? This is the critical concern for the nation’s 45^th president. Yesterday, as I mentioned in the Detritus, Sean Spicer fulminated against the press for minimizing the number of people there. Then President Trump made a trip to CIA headquarters to declare his continuing adoration of this particular group. Of course this required everyone to forget his comparison of the intelligence services leaking of information about him to the actions of German Nazis. He stood before a wall at CIA headquarters which held the stars representing fallen CIA agents and for nine of the fifteen minutes he performed there he complained about the press minimizing his inaugural attendance. Not once did President Trump pay tribute, or even mention, these fallen agents. Perhaps he didn’t know what the stars meant.  More likely he didn’t give a damn.

Pictures of the inaugural crowds at Obama’s and at Trump’s swearing in are available. You can believe Sean Spicer or you “can believe your own lyin’ eyes.” This morning Kellyanne was on “Meet the Press” and Chuck Todd asked her why Spicer would be sent out to harangue the press with an obvious lie about crowd size. Kellyanne had no answer for Todd but intead tried to declare that the press had lied about the removal of Martin Luther King Jr.’s bust from the oval office. The reporter apologized for his mistake. He said he didn’t see the bust and thought it had been removed. According to Kellyanne, therefore, he lied. Long short, she never answered Todd’s question but kept uttering irrelevancies as she got angrier and angrier at Todd’s persistent questioning.

The major news of the day were the many women’s marches. Some estimates put the number at about three million people. That probably underestimates the number because the estimators used numbers from major cities and there were marches everywhere. The right winger’s claimed these protesters all came from major cities that are Democratic strongholds, but there were marches in Kotzebue, Alaska, and in Traverse City Michigan. Traverse City had  around three thousand marchers; my wife was one of them.

The rallying cry was “Freedom,” reproductive freedom among others. When the right to life women wanted to join this group, they were not welcomed. The aim of right to life folks is to restrict women’s freedom of choice. Why would a group whose stated aim is to restrict women’s freedom of choice expect to be welcomed in parades promoting women’s freedom of choice? It isn’t odd that they weren’t welcomed; it is odd that they thought they would be.