More Than 2 Years Later, Trump Complains About Media Coverage of Inauguration Crowd Size in CPAC Speech

In his big speech to CPAC this afternoon, President Donald Trumpcomplained again about the media coverage of his inauguration crowd size a little over two years ago.

Trump first railed against the Washington Post‘s Dave Weigel for a misleading December 2017 tweet about the size of the crowd at one of his rallies. Weigel took down the tweet after Trump initially tweeted about it. The President followed up at the time by saying Weigel should be fired:

.@daveweigel of the Washington Post just admitted that his picture was a FAKE (fraud?) showing an almost empty arena last night for my speech in Pensacola when, in fact, he knew the arena was packed (as shown also on T.V.). FAKE NEWS, he should be fired.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2017

He blasted Weigel today for a bit––”if that were a conservative, he would’ve been fired on the spot”––before going even further back to complain about media coverage of his inauguration crowd size.

Yes, really:

“I watched one of the evening shows that are ridiculous how horrible they are, how mean, how horrible. I watched it by mistake, and they showed… from the White House all the way down, they showed there were people––nobody’s ever seen it. The capital down to the Washington Monument, but I saw pictures that there were no people. Those pictures were taken hours before, right? They always mention crowd sizes. ‘He talks about crowd sizes.’ So I’m constantly bugging Mercedes whenever we had a slow moment. I say, Mercedes and Sarah, show them the pictures. Show them and compare them with what they put on television. Those pictures were taken hours before. And remember this also, not that Obama would do this, but we had fencing all the way down to the Washington Monument, and it was raining. And it was wet and the grass was wet. And women and men… they had to walk all the way down, they had to walk with high heels in many cases. They had to walk all the way down to the Washington Monument and then back!”

Sean Spicer‘s 2017 briefing room debut, you’ll remember, involved him railing against the media coverage of the inauguration crowd size at length. He was roundly lambasted for that briefing.

[Mediaite]