Category: Not Factual

Trump Stands by Unsubstantiated Voter Fraud Claims: ‘It’s Really a Bad Situation’

President Trump in a new interview seemingly defends his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election, maintaining that illegal immigrants and “dead people” around the U.S. were registered to vote.

“Well, many people have come out and said I am right, you know that,” Trump told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly in an interview slated to air Sunday.

When O’Reilly notes that Trump needs data to back up his claim that three million undocumented immigrants voted in the election, Trump insisted “a bad situation” exists regarding voter fraud.

“Let me just tell you — when you see illegals, people that are not citizens and they are on registration rolls … look, Bill, we can be babies, but you take a look at the registration, you have illegals, you have dead people, you have this, it’s really a bad situation. It’s really bad.”

Trump threatened last month to launch “a major investigation” into voter fraud in order to “strengthen up voting procedures,” though the White House has since not provided details on such an effort.

“I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and….even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time),” Trump wrote last month.

“Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!” he added at the time.

(h/t The Hill)

Media

Kellyanne Conway Blames Refugees For ‘Bowling Green Massacre’ That Never Happened

Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Donald Trump, has come in for criticism and ridicule after blaming two Iraqi refugees for a massacre that never happened.

Conway, the US president’s former campaign manager who has frequently faced the press to defend his controversial moves, cited the fictitious “Bowling Green massacre” in an interview in which she backed the travel ban imposed on visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball programme on Thursday evening, Conway compared the executive order issued by Trump in his first week in the White House to what she described as a six-month ban imposed by his predecessor Barack Obama.

This claim has been debunked by commentators who have pointed out that the 2011 action was a pause on the processing of refugees from Iraq after two Iraqi nationals were arrested over a failed attempt to send money and weapons to al-Qaida in Iraq.

Conway told Matthews: “I bet it’s brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalised and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre.

“Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.”

It didn’t get covered, many are now pointing out, because there was no such massacre.

The two Iraqi men arrested in 2011 did live in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and are currently serving life sentences for federal terrorism offences. But there was no massacre, nor were they accused of planning one. The US department of justice, announcing their convictions in 2012, said: “Neither was charged with plotting attacks within the United States.”

Analysis by the Cato Institute of terrorist attacks on US soil between 1975 and 2015 found that foreign nationals from the seven countries targeted by Trump’s travel ban – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia – have killed no Americans.

Following the Conway interview, some social media users pointed out that false rumours about a Halloween massacre had circulated in several universities, including Ohio’s Bowling Green state university, in 1998.

But the likelihood that Conway had Kentucky in mind was bolstered when that state’s senator Rand Paul also made a variation of her false claim. In a separate interview with MSNBC, Paul referred to “the attempted bombing in Bowling Green, where I live”.

Conway had already prompted astonishment by describing comments by White House spokesman Sean Spicer that Trump’s inauguration crowd “was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period” as “alternative facts”.

“You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and they’re giving – Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that,” Conway told NBC last week.

Matthews did not press Conway on her Bowling Green massacre claim in the interview, and she has not yet responded to reports that she misrepresented the events of 2011.

(h/t NBC News)

Media

 

The White House Cited the Quebec Mosque Attack by White Supremacist to Justify Trump’s Policies

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is citing the Sunday attack on Muslims in Quebec City as an example of why his own policies are needed.

“We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms. It’s a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant, and why the president is taking steps to be proactive, rather than reactive, when it comes to our nation’s safety and security,” press secretary Sean Spicer said at his daily briefing on Monday.

Spicer did not specifically identify the policies he was referring to.

But the “proactive, rather than reactive” language is similar to the rhetoric Trump and his allies have used in defending his “temporary” ban on refugees and by visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries, which has caused a worldwide uproar.

Spicer used similar words when asked directly about the travel ban later in the briefing, saying Trump was not going to “wait and react.”
“There is nothing nice about searching for terrorists before they can enter our country. This was a big part of my campaign. Study the world!” Trump himself wrote on Twitter earlier Monday.

The Quebec City massacre killed six Muslims who were attending a mosque for evening prayers. Trump’s policies have been condemned by Muslim groups and many others around the world as discrimination against Muslims.

Trump spoke to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earlier on Monday.
Spicer said Trump offers “his condolences as well as his thoughts and prayers to the victims and their family and to all Canadians.”

He noted that Trudeau was “cautious to draw conclusions of the motives at this stage of the investigation.” He said “the president shared those thoughts.”

(h/t Toronto Star)

Trump on Waterboarding: ‘We Have to Fight Fire With Fire’

President Donald Trump said he wants to “fight fire with fire” when it comes to stopping terrorism, suggesting that he could be open to bringing back torture because he “absolutely” believes it works.

By reinstating enhanced interrogation, Trump would violate a US law ratified by the Senate in 2015 and go against the view of Defense Secretary James Mattis. CIA Director Mike Pompeo told senators earlier this month that he wouldn’t sanction the use of torture, though he later said he would consider bringing back waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation measures under certain circumstances.

In an interview with ABC News, Trump said “people at the highest level of intelligence” have told him that torture does work, something military experts have refuted. He went on to say, however, that he will listen to what his Cabinet secretaries have to say about the issue.

“When ISIS is doing things that no one has ever heard of, since medieval times, would I feel strongly about waterboarding?” Trump said. “As far as I’m concerned, we have to fight fire with fire.”

Trump’s argument was that ISIS is beheading people and posting the videos online, but that the United States is “not allowed to do anything.”

“We’re not playing on an even field,” Trump said. “I want to do everything within the bounds of what you’re allowed to do legally. But do I feel it works? Absolutely, I feel it works.”

Democrats and Republicans alike have shot down the idea of bringing back torture methods that were used by the Bush administration after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Pompeo said earlier this month that he would “absolutely not” restart the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation tactics that fall outside of Army Field Manuals.
“Moreover, I can’t imagine I would be asked that by the President-elect,” Pompeo said during his confirmation hearing.

But in a series of written responses to questions from members of the Senate intelligence committee, Pompeo later said that while current permitted interrogation techniques are limited to those contained in the Army Field Manual, he was open to making changes to that policy.

The Senate voted overwhelming to ban torture across the US government in 2015, codifying a ban President Barack Obama issued by executive order shortly after he was sworn in in 2009. Obama then signed the updated defense authorization bill into law.
Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said the use of torture is “settled law” and that “Congress has spoken.”

The Senate intelligence committee produced a nearly 7,000-page classified report on torture, detention and interrogation after the George W. Bush administration brought back the practice. The authors of the report found the practice was ineffective and did not produce actionable intelligence.

“Reconstituting this appalling program would compromise our values, our morals and our standing as a world leader — this cannot happen,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said in a statement on Wednesday. “We can’t base national security policies on what works on television — policies must be grounded in reality.”

(h/t CNN)

Reality

Trump’s proposed reliance on tactics used by Bond villains as a practical response to the terrorist acts of the Islamic State should be leaving people feeling aghast and concerned.

Unlike fictional TV shows, like 24 where Jack Bauer runs around and tortures his way to the bad guy or movies like Zero Dark Thirty who include torture scenes that never happened which lead to the capture of Osama Bin Laden, reality is quite different.

Waterboarding, and other forms of torture, is considered a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions and is not reliable for obtaining truthful, useful intelligence.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that “the CIA’s use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.” There was no proof, according to the 6,700 page report, that information obtained through waterboarding prevented any attacks or saved any lives, or that information obtained from the detainees was not or could not have been obtained through conventional interrogation methods.”

In-fact, we’ve know for centuries that torture is not effective. Here is Napoleon’s own words on the subject:

“It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know.”

Instead, rapport-building techniques are 14 times more effective in extracting information than torture and has the upside of not being unethical.

Media

ABC GO

Trump Seeks ‘Major Investigation’ Into Unsupported Claims of Voter Fraud

President Trump plans to ask for a “major investigation” into allegations of widespread voter fraud as he continues to claim, without providing evidence, that he lost the popular vote in November’s election because millions of illegal votes were cast, according to tweets posted Wednesday.

The White House has yet to provide details, but Trump said in back-to-back tweets that the investigation into “VOTER FRAUD” — Trump used all capitals for emphasis — would cover “those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal” and “those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time).”

“Depending on results,” Trump tweeted, “we will strengthen up voting procedures!”

Trump did not indicate who would lead such an investigation or what ground it would cover. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on whether it would now launch an investigation.

Trump continues to face scrutiny, along with some mockery, for insisting during a private reception with congressional leaders Monday that there were between 3 million and 5 million ballots illegally cast in the election, allowing his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton to win the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes, although she lost the electoral-college vote to Trump. The president and his aides have yet to provide any verifiable facts to back up his claim, and analyses of the election found virtually no confirmed cases of voter fraud, let alone millions.

Trump’s campaign attorneys fought recount attempts in several states by Green Party candidate Jill Stein and stated in a recent court filing, “All available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud or mistake.”

A Trump adviser told The Washington Post on Wednesday that Trump has been stewing about his popular-vote count for weeks and insisting to friends that Clinton benefited from illegal votes in Democratic-leaning states such as California. He has mentioned to several of them his interest in launching an investigation into possible voter fraud, said the adviser, who was not authorized to speak publicly.

The adviser went on to frame Wednesday’s tweets as a deeply personal move by Trump reflective of his thinking on the election and did not have details on whether congressional leaders had been briefed on Trump’s desire to have an investigation, although the adviser said Trump did tell them Monday about his broader concerns regarding the election count during a reception at the White House.

Trump also tweeted that he will make his pick to fill the Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court on Feb. 2. Scalia died last February.

Lawmakers from both parties have declined to embrace Trump’s version of the election. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Tuesday that he has “seen no evidence to that effect.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said at a news conference Wednesday that she cannot understand why the newly installed president is “so insecure.”

“To suggest and to undermine the integrity of our voter system is really strange,” Pelosi said. “. . . On top of it, he wants to investigate something that can clearly be proven to be false, but he resists investigations of a Russian disruption of our investigation and any connection to his campaign. All we want is the truth for the American people.”

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said he believes the “prime jurisdiction” to investigate alleged voter fraud is at the local and county levels. But he said there is a “federal function” since states set voting laws and certify the tallies.

“I don’t see the evidence [of fraud],” Chaffetz added. “But he’s the president and if he thinks it’s there, have at it.”

The National Association of Secretaries of State, which represents many of the country’s state elections officials, said in a statement Tuesday: “We are not aware of any evidence that supports the voter fraud claims made by President Trump, but we are open to learning more about the administration’s concerns.”

Given that studies have shown that cases of in-person voter fraud are exceptionally rare, voting rights activists and others are worried that Trump’s unfounded comments could lead to more voter-identification laws that they say disenfranchise poor or minority voters, such as the one in North Carolina that the Supreme Court declined to reinstate last summer.

Three congressional Democratic — Reps. Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, Robert A. Brady of Pennsylvania and James E. Clyburn of South Carolina — say they are sending letters to 102 chief election officials and attorneys general in all 50 states and the District to request all cases of voters who tried to cast a ballot in the November election and were barred from doing so.

“Republicans in statehouses across America have passed restrictive laws that impair the ability of legitimate voters to participate, and they use the myth of voter fraud to justify their abuses,” Cummings said in a statement.

At the Tuesday briefing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended Trump’s “long-standing belief” that large-scale voter fraud occurred and pointed to a study that did not contain the conclusion he said it did. Spicer said there were no plans for an investigation but left the option open.

“Maybe we will,” Spicer said. “We’ll see where we go from here, but right now the focus of the president has is on putting Americans back to work.”

When pressed again by reports on the possibility of an investigation, Spicer seemed to play down the prospect, saying “anything is possible.”

Such an investigation could be led by the president’s attorney general. Trump’s pick for the position, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), has asserted in the past that voter fraud exists, but he has distanced himself from Trump’s claim of millions of fraudulent votes.

“I don’t know what the president-elect meant or was thinking when he made that comment or what facts he may have had to justify his statement,” Sessions said at his confirmation hearing this month. “I would just say that every election needs to be managed closely, and we need to ensure that there is integrity in it. And I do believe we regularly have fraudulent activities occur during election cycles.”

Sessions, who has yet to be confirmed, said he had not talked to Trump “about that in any depth or particularly since the election.” A spokeswoman for Sessions declined to comment beyond what the senator said at his confirmation hearing and referred questions about the investigation to the White House. Sessions has been questioned on his handling of a voter fraud case brought against black civil rights activists in Alabama in the 1980s, when he was a U.S. attorney.

The Justice Department can establish jurisdiction when a federal candidate’s name is on the ballot, though it is significantly harder when one is not. Although state law generally governs voter registration and other election-related matters such as the method of casting ballots, federal authorities are often seen as preferable to lead investigations into claims of irregularities. That is because federal authorities have more resources and are detached from local political interests and because their juries are generally drawn from a broader geographic area.

The Justice Department, though, looks at cases with an eye on whether they can be prosecuted — and does not intervene to attempt to improve voting systems. The investigation contemplated in the president’s tweet might be more akin to a study that broadly assesses the problem, or non-problem, of voter fraud, and how state and local systems might prevent it.

(h/t Washington Post)

Reality

His alternative fact originated from a flawed survey on the conspiracy theory website InfoWars, which Trump is known to read.

CNN Fires Back at Trump on Inauguration Ratings Winner

CNN fired back late Tuesday at President Trump, who said more people tuned in to watch his inauguration on Fox News than “FAKE NEWS” CNN.

“According to Nielsen cumulative numbers, 34 million people watched CNN’s inauguration day coverage on television. 34 million watched Fox News,” read the message tweeted from CNN Communications. “There were an additional 16.9 million live video starts on CNN Digital platforms. Those are the facts.”

The response followed a tweet from Trump’s personal account praising Fox News for “being number one in inauguration ratings.”

Earlier this week, White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended his claim that Trump had the largest inauguration audience ever.

Spicer said Saturday that Trump had “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”

“It’s unquestionable,” Spicer said this week, doubling down on his initial claim, though not providing specific numbers.

“And I don’t see any numbers that dispute that when you add up attendance, viewership, total audience in terms of tablets, phones, on television. I’d love to see any information that proves that otherwise.”

(h/t The Hill)

 

 

 

Without Evidence, Trump Tells Lawmakers 3 Million to 5 million Illegal Ballots Cost Him the Popular Vote

Days after being sworn in, President Trump insisted to congressional leaders invited to a reception at the White House that he would have won the popular vote had it not been for millions of illegal votes, according to people familiar with the meeting.

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that widespread voter fraud caused him to lose the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, even while he clinched the presidency with an electoral college victory.

Two people familiar with the meeting said Trump spent about 10 minutes at the start of the bipartisan gathering rehashing the campaign. He also told them that between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes caused him to lose the popular vote.

The discussion about Trump’s election victory and his claim that he would have won the popular vote was confirmed by a third person familiar with the meeting.

The claim is not supported by any verifiable facts, and analyses of the election found virtually no confirmed cases of voter fraud, let alone millions.

Clinton won the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes. Trump won 304 electoral college votes to Clinton’s 227.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) alluded to Trump’s comments as he returned to the Capitol from the meeting Monday night.

“We talked about different electoral college, popular votes, going through the different ones,” McCarthy said. “Well, we talked about going back through past elections. Everyone in there goes through elections and stuff, so everybody’s giving their different histories of different parts.”

Asked by reporters after the meeting if Trump made any surprising statements at the gathering, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) replied, “Well, I won’t even go into that.”

(h/t Washington Post)

Media

Kellyanne Conway Defends White House’s Falsehoods as ‘Alternative Facts’

President Donald Trump‘s counselor Kellyanne Conway said White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer used “alternative facts” when he falsely called the crowds at Trump’s swearing-in ceremony “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.”

Spicer on Saturday gave a five-minute statement to the press riddled with falsehoods and claimed photos showing clearly that the audience for Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration was significantly larger than Trump’s on Friday was an attempt by the media to “minimize enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall.”

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, Conway staunchly defended Spicer, and said his untrue statements were “alternative facts.” When asked by host Chuck Todd why Spicer used his first appearance in front of the press to proclaim falsehoods, Conway said Todd was being “overly dramatic” about the statement.

“You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and they’re giving- Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that,” she said.

Todd countered Conway: “Alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods.”

(h/t Time)

Media

Of Course The CIA Gave Trump Standing Ovations. He Never Let Them Sit.

While President Donald Trump brags about how hundreds of CIA employees gave him standing ovations during his Saturday visit, it should not have come as a surprise.

He never told them to sit.

The 400 agency staffers were standing when Trump entered the room, were still standing when he came to the lectern, and then remained standing through his 15 minutes of remarks.

“You know that the CIA will not sit down until the president tells them to,” said Yael Eisenstat, who spent more than half of her 13-year career in counterterrorism and intelligence work at the agency.

On Sunday morning, Trump tweeted: “Had a great meeting at CIA Headquarters yesterday, packed house, paid great respect to Wall, long standing ovations, amazing people. WIN!”

It’s unclear whether the new president understood that federal employees, regardless of the agency ― but particularly in national security fields ― will likely remain standing until he tells them otherwise. Military audiences, in the presence of their commander in chief, will absolutely remaining standing until instructed to sit.

The White House did not respond to a Huffington Post query on the matter, but press secretary Sean Spicer, during his first press briefing Monday, again referred to the “standing ovation” at the CIA as proof of the employees’ support for the president.

“I’m amazed by the fact that he doesn’t understand basic protocol,” said Rick Wilson, a former Pentagon staffer with a background in military intelligence. “There’s no Miss Manners in this group. There’s no one telling him, ‘Here’s what you need to do.’”

Even more offensive to many in the intelligence world than Trump’s lack of understanding about protocol, though, was the content of his remarks ― a rambling, campaign-style speech that attacked the news media for their coverage of the inauguration, a boast about his own intellect, and a claim that almost everyone in the room had voted for him ― all of it while standing in front of a memorial wall honoring the 117 CIA agents who have died in the line of duty over the decades.

“Unbelievable,” Wilson said. “It’s like going to do standup in Arlington Cemetery. I know how much that wall means to the people in the agency. I know how sacred that space is. It was a graceless display.”

Eisenstat, who also served in the White House as former Vice President Joe Biden’s counterterrorism adviser, is one of those people. “One of those stars behind him was a friend of mine,” she said.

Greg Wenzell, who joined the CIA immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks from a career as a defense lawyer in Florida, was killed in 2003 in Ethiopia. He is star No. 81 on the wall.

“People are outraged,” Eisenstat said. “I have yet to hear anyone not disgusted.”
She pointed to speeches by former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush at the CIA early in their tenures. They talked about the agency, its employees and the challenges they faced ― and avoided speaking about themselves.

“Both did exactly what a president does when they speak to the CIA,” she said. “Obama did all throughout his speech. And George W. Bush did it too.”

Trump came to the agency ostensibly to show his support for its work after weeks of disparaging the CIA and the other U.S. intelligence agencies for their analyses that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had directed his spy agencies to help Trump’s campaign by stealing private emails embarrassing to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Trump for months had claimed it was impossible to determine who had done the hacking ― all the while praising WikiLeaks for releasing the stolen emails. Many in the U.S. intelligence world consider WikiLeaks a mouthpiece for Russian spy agencies.

Trump also used his visit to praise his pick for CIA director, Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo, describing how Pompeo had finished first in his class at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, and then near the top of his class at Harvard Law School.

“And then he decided to go into the military,” Trump said, not seeming to understand that accepting a commission at West Point comes with the commitment of serving at least five years in the Army and three years in the Reserve.

Trump, who described himself as “the most militaristic” person ever to run for president during his campaign, had other instances where he displayed a lack of knowledge about military issues.

Standing on the deck of the World War II-era battleship USS Iowa in Los Angeles harbor in 2015, Trump wondered why the Navy was not recommissioning that vessel now ― seeming not to know that navies have been shying away from large surface ships since the 1982 sinking of Britain’s 400-foot HMS Sheffield during the Falklands War. The ship was taken down by a single cruise missile fired by an Argentine plane from two dozen miles away.

Trump in November became the first president to be elected with no experience in the government or the military. Trump said he avoided the draft during the Vietnam War because of bone spurs in one of his heels. In 1997, he joked on Howard Stern’s radio show that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases in the 1970s was “my personal Vietnam,” and that he felt like “a great and very brave soldier.”

(h/t Huffington Post)

Trump Boasts, Lies, and Attacks the Media in Solemn CIA Setting

President Trump traveled to CIA headquarters Saturday to make peace. But as he spoke in front of a wall with 117 stars marking spies who died while serving, Trump quickly shifted back to campaign mode — boasting about his achievements, lodging grievances against the media and making off-the-cuff observations.

The new president bragged that “probably everybody in this room voted for me,” told agents, “Trust me, I’m, like, a smart person,” and said his many appearances on the cover of Time magazine surpassed those of quarterback Tom Brady. He warned that the television networks would pay a “big price” for coverage that showed empty fields on Inauguration Day.

He blamed the media for ginning up his fight with the intelligence community, though Trump had, a week earlier, compared agents’ tactics to those of the Nazis while accusing them of leaking an unsubstantiated report about him.

“There is nobody that feels stronger about the intelligence community and the CIA than Donald Trump,” he assured a crowd of about 400 employees at the CIA’s Langley, Va., headquarters in suburban Washington.

The free-form speech at such a  location and occasion underscored that though Trump has taken the oath of office, he will not restrain his style to meet traditional expectations for presidential behavior.

His habit of bragging and lashing out at enemies helped Trump build loyal support in his election run, but may also have contributed to his record-low approval ratings for an incoming president.

But Trump was consistently applauded by rank-and-file CIA employees. Senior staffers sitting near the front became more subdued as the president began to veer from topic to topic and charge that the media underestimated the crowd size at his swearing-in.

“Maybe sometimes you haven’t gotten the backing that you’ve wanted,” he said at another point. “You’re going to get so much backing. Maybe you are going to say, ‘Please, don’t give us so much backing.’”

The CIA speech came on a day that started with Trump and his family attending a traditional ecumenical prayer service at the National Cathedral. He refrained from taking on millions of people attending women’s marches around the world during their protests Saturday, suppressing his tendency to retaliate against those he perceives as challenging his authority.

But Trump’s team has been obsessing over its own crowd sizes. Pictures of large crowds were placed in the White House briefing room as Press Secretary Sean Spicer chastised the media for what he labeled irresponsible, reckless and false reporting about the inauguration that he said sowed division. He pointed out that no official crowd estimates were given, yet insisted, improbably, that it was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration.

Overhead photos and subway ridership statistics showed smaller crowds than in recent inaugurations, especially compared with former President Obama’s 2009 swearing-in as the nation’s first African American president.

Spicer did not take questions but issued a strong warning to the media that the new administration would be holding it accountable.

While Trump kept a handful of events on his public schedule, aides continued setting up the White House. Among the crucial housekeeping items: The Justice Department published an opinion stating that Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, could work as a top White House advisor, notwithstanding a 1967 anti-nepotism law. The 14-page opinion, written by Daniel Koffsky, a career attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel with decades of experience, concluded that the law grants the president broad hiring authority.

Spicer said Trump had spoken with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. He said Trump would meet with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Washington at the end of the week and with Peña Nieto at the end of the month.

Trump’s visit to the CIA building’s white marble lobby followed months of mocking the agency and questioning its conclusions on Russian hacking during the election. In addition to sending a message to agents, Trump wanted to show his support for Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.), his pick to run the CIA, who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate early in the week. Trump met with senior CIA leaders who highlighted the agency’s counterterrorism efforts before he spoke to the larger group.

The CIA is expected to play a major role in increasing attacks on Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, a top priority for Trump. During his inaugural address Friday, Trump promised to “eradicate from the face of the earth” Islamic terrorist groups like Islamic State and Al Qaeda. On Saturday, he told agents they would be at the forefront of those efforts and asserted that the intelligence community had not been fully used to help win wars.

“This group is going to be one of the most important groups in this country toward making us safe, toward making us winners again,” Trump said.

The CIA split with Trump last fall when the agency’s analysts concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered intelligence officials to launch an operation to influence the U.S. election to undermine Hillary Clinton and help Trump win.

Trump has acknowledged that Russia hacked Democratic files in an effort to interfere with the election. But he praised Putin, denied the effort was aimed at helping him win, and suggested the hacked information may have helped voters.

Top CIA leaders were eager to put the public spat with the commander in chief behind them Saturday. Meroe Park, who is leading the agency until Pompeo is approved, said Trump’s decision to visit on his first full day as president meant a lot. The hall was only able to accommodate 400 CIA employees, but hundreds more wanted to attend, Park said.
“CIA’s relationship with the president has been essential,” said Park, who has been at the agency for nearly three decades.

But Trump’s first appearance at the agency was panned by Rep. Adam B. Schiff of Burbank, the ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

“While standing in front of the stars representing CIA personnel who lost their lives in the service of their country — hallowed ground — Trump gave little more than a perfunctory acknowledgment of their service and sacrifice,” Schiff said in a statement that criticized Trump’s speech as frivolous and meandering.

“He will need to do more than use the agency memorial as a backdrop if he wants to earn the respect of the men and women who provide the best intelligence in the world,” Schiff added.

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