Alternative Facts
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/white-house-says-media-delegitimizing-trump-says-wont-144814317.html?.tsrc=jtc_news_index See linked article for pretty pictures
White House vows to fight media
'tooth and nail' over Trump coverage
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Incoming
White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus stands next to U.S. President-elect
Donald Trump as he talks to members of the media at Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm
Beach, Florida
White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus stands next to U.S. President Donald Trump as he
talks to members of the media at Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida,
U.S., December 21, 2016.
REUTERS/Carlos Barria - RTX2W2EA
By Doina Chiacu and
Jason Lange
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
The White House vowed on Sunday to fight the news media "tooth and
nail" over what it sees as unfair attacks, with a top adviser saying the
Trump administration had presented "alternative facts"
to counter low inauguration crowd estimates.
On his first full day
as president, Trump said he had a "running war" with the media and
accused journalists of underestimating the number of people who turned out
Friday for his swearing-in.
White House officials
made clear no truce was on the horizon on Sunday in television interviews that
set a much harsher tone in the traditionally adversarial relationship between
the White House and the press corps.
"The point is not
the crowd size. The point is the attacks and the attempt to delegitimize this
president in one day. And we're not going to sit around and take it,"
Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said on "Fox
News Sunday."
The sparring with the
media has dominated Trump's first weekend in office, eclipsing debate over
policy and Cabinet appointments.
It was the main theme
at the Republican president's first visit to the CIA, at the press secretary's
first media briefing and in senior officials' first appearances on the Sunday
talk shows.
Together, they made
clear the administration will continue to take an aggressive stance with news
organizations covering Trump.
"We're going to
fight back tooth and nail every day and twice on Sunday," Priebus said.
He repeated White
House press secretary Sean Spicer's assertions on Saturday that the media
manipulated photographs of the National Mall to make the crowds on Friday look
smaller than they really were.
Aerial photographs
showed the crowds were significantly smaller than when Barack Obama took over as
president in 2009.
The Washington subway
system said it had 193,000 riders by 11 a.m. (1600 GMT) on Friday, compared
with 513,000 at that time during the 2009 inauguration.
Spicer's categorical
assertion that "this was the largest audience to ever witness an
inauguration - period" was widely challenged in media reports citing crowd
count experts and was lampooned on social media as well.
Asked on NBC's
"Meet the Press" why the press secretary was uttering provable
falsehoods, White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway fired back.
"If we are going
to keep referring to our press secretary in those types of terms I think that
we are going to rethink our relationship here," she said.
Conway responded to
criticism that the new administration was focusing on crowds rather than on
significant domestic and foreign policy issues by saying: "We feel
compelled to go out and clear the air and put alternative facts out
there."
Priebus and Conway
focused on a press pool report that said the bust of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the Oval Office after Trump took
office. The report on Friday night was quickly corrected, but Trump called out
the reporter by name during a visit to the Central Intelligence Agency on
Saturday. Spicer also berated the reporter later in the day.
RUSSIAN SHADOWS
With the Nov. 8
election results shadowed by U.S. intelligence reports of Russian meddling on
his behalf, Trump has bristled at reports suggesting his popular support is
soft and that the election was not legitimate.
Trump, who lost the
popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes, made no
mention of Russia in his first visit to the CIA on Saturday. He praised his
nominee to head the agency, Mike Pompeo, and ranted against the
"dishonest" media, a favorite target during his presidential campaign.
The president accused
the media of fabricating his tensions with the U.S. intelligence community,
despite his frequent posts on Twitter that derided the agencies.
Trump drew criticism
from Democrats as well as former CIA Director John Brennan for his remarks at
the agency, where he spoke before a memorial wall with stars representing
personnel killed in action.
"President Trump
ought to realize he's not campaigning anymore. He's president," Senate
Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on ABC's "This Week."
"Instead of
talking about how many people showed up at his inauguration, he ought to be
talking about how many people are going to stay in the middle class and move
into the middle class."
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Jeffrey
Benkoe and Paul Simao)
This reminds me of the famous
discussion by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld – see
"There are known knowns" is a phrase from a
response United States Secretary of
Defense Donald
Rumsfeld gave to
a question at a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) news
briefing on
February 12, 2002 about the lack of evidence linking the government of Iraq with the supply of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups.[1]
Rumsfeld stated:
Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always
interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things
we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know
there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the
ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of
our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be
the difficult ones.
I would
offer a few similes … “There are facts, alternative facts, as there is news,
and altered reality news such as that experienced in peyote ceremonies. There
are also altered or artificial realities, now more in vogue, along with
dishonest news, and Alt Bight news … which seems to have a new home on
Pennsylvania Avenue.
Aren’t we
glad we’re not going to be subjected to the kind of media treatment that exists
in the Russian Federation. Now … test … Was that sarcasm?
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