Trump: Media Lied About the Size of Inaugural Crowd

President Trump says news organizations lied about how many people attended his swearing-in on Friday and predicted the media will "pay a big price" for not reporting the crowd's true size.

Trump press secretary Sean Spicer declared during his first briefing Saturday the crowd Friday was the "largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period." He called reports that minimized the crowd size "deliberately false reporting."

Trump made his remarks during a visit to Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, on Saturday. He told a group of employees that he had made the CIA his first official stop to dispel the notion that he is at odds with the nation's intelligence community. That's a notion arose largely from Trump's earlier dismissal of intelligence reports that concluded the Russian government tried to interfere in the U.S. presidential elections to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton.

Repeating his Friday inaugural address, Trump told his CIA audience that "radical Islamic terrorism ... has to be eradicated off the face of the Earth."

About 10 minutes into his remarks, Trump made a detour to take a swipe at media reporting The CIA employees laughed and applauded when he called journalists "among the most dishonest human beings on Earth."

He went on to say that he felt the media had misrepresented the size of Friday's inaugural crowd. Some widely circulated but hard-to-verify estimates have pegged the Trump crowd at 250,000 and compared it to the throng of about 1.8 million said to have attended President Barack Obama's first inaugural.

"I get up this morning and I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field," Trump said. "I say, 'Wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out, it looked like a million, a million and a half people.' They showed a field where there was practically no one standing there. And they said, 'Donald Trump did not draw well.'"

Trump insisted, twice, that the crowd extended all the way to the Washington Monument, about 1.3 miles to the west of the U.S. Capitol, where Friday's ceremony was held.

The report of 250,000 people in attendance is "not bad, but it's a lie," Trump said. "We had 250,000 people literally around, you know, in the little bowl we constructed, that was 250,000 people. The rest of the, you know, 20-block area all the way to the Washington Monument was packed. So we caught them, and we caught them in a beauty, and I think they're going to pay a big price."

Several media organizations showed comparative views of the Obama and Trump crowds. For instance, from the PBS NewsHour:

CNN, The New York Times and the Washington Post also analyzed the Obama-Trump crowds, and all concluded that Trump's was significantly smaller.

Spicer, the White House press secretary, said the media "was engaged in deliberately false reporting."

"Photographs of the inauguration proceeding were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize enormous support that had gathered on the mall,” Spicer said.

He added that the use of white coverings on the mall, which he said were in place for the first time, tended to emphasize areas where people were not standing. He said fencing and metal detectors places along the entrances to the mall area prevented "hundreds of thousands people from being able to access the mall as quickly as they had in inaugurations past."

In reporting Spicer's remarks, the Times pointed out that some of his claims -- about the use of the lawn coverings and the level of transit ridership, used as an indicator of attendance -- were untrue.

During his CIA visit, Trump did not mention another major gathering in Washington: Saturday's Women's March. That gathering, too, is believed to have drawn more people than Trump's inaugural.

Below: A transcript of Trump's remarks at the CIA. They occur just after the 10:00 mark of The New York Times' video above.

As you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth, and they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community. And I just wanted to let you know -- the reason you're the No. 1 stop -- it is exactly the opposite, exactly, and they understand that, too.

I was explaining about the numbers -- we did a thing yesterday, the speech -- did everyone like the speech? You had to like it. So I've been given [unintelligible]. But we had a massive field of people, you saw that -- packed.

I get up this morning and I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field. I say, 'Wait a minute, I made a speech. I looked out, it looked like a million, a million and a half people.' They showed a field where there was practically no one standing there. And they said, 'Donald Trump did not draw well.' I said, 'It was almost raining.' The rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and said, 'We're not going to let it rain on your speech.' ... We have something that's amazing. We had -- it looked, honestly, it looked like a million and a half people. Whatever it was, it was. But it went all the way back to the Washington Monument. And I turn on the thing, and by mistake I get this network, and it showed an empty field, and it said we drew 250,000 people.

Now, that's not bad, but it's a lie. We had 250,000 people literally around, you know, in the little bowl we constructed, that was 250,000 people. The rest of the, you know, 20-block area all the way to the Washington Monument was packed. So we caught them, and we caught them in a beauty, and I think they're going to pay a big price."