Trump Press Chief's First Effort Earns '4 Pinocchios'

By now, you've surely heard the news President Trump thinks the media deliberately underestimated attendance at his inauguration. But the Fact Checker blog at the Washington Post is focusing solely on press chief Sean Spicer's first news conference in which he echoed his boss' sentiments. The end result: The newspaper's Glenn Kessler gives Spicer the worst-possible rating of 4 Pinocchios for his "appalling" performance, "but seriously we wish we could give him five." Some examples:

• "This was the first time in our nation’s history that floor coverings have been used to protect the grass on the Mall," said Spicer, adding that it resulted in a misleading visual effect. However, the coverings were used in 2013.

• “We know that 420,000 people used the DC Metro public transit yesterday, which actually compares to 317,000 that used it for President Obama’s last inaugural.” Nope. The real figures are 783,000 for Obama in 2013 and 571,000 for Trump.
• The Post also picks apart Spicer's claims that the crowd extended to the Washington Monument, that the Secret Service used magnometers and thus kept "hundreds of thousands" of people from attending, and that “this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration—period—both in person and around the globe.”

Read it in full here. (More Sean Spicer stories.)