It's official. Donald Trump's inauguration crowd was tiny

During a speech at the CIA Headquarters a few days after being sworn in, in front of the memorial wall, President Donald J Trump moaned about the media coverage of his inauguration crowd.

He told the CIA staff and media assembled:

I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field. I’m like, wait a minute.

I made a speech. I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, million and a half people.

Sean Spicer on 22 January gave a press conference dressing down the media for reporting the obvious disparity in crowd sizes, saying:

This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.

These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm for the inauguration are shameful and wrong.

The "in person" part of this statement has been proven patently false.

The Washington Post reported that Donald Trump personally called the acting National Park Service director Michael T. Reynolds, demanding he produce photographs of the people who gathered at the National Mall, in an attempt to prove the media wrong.

These images have been obtained by BuzzFeed News using the Freedom of Information Act, and shared on Flickr.

As you can see, the capitol is pretty empty.

Picture: National Park Service/Jason Leopold/Flickr

Here's a slider if you need a comparison with 2009:

And here's a time-lapse if you need it:

HT BuzzFeed News

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