Anna Rascouët-Paz relates an explanation (from someone who worked in a past administration) for Trump press secretary Spicer’s repeated lies about inaugural crowd size. It’s spot on:
For more on a disinformation strategy based on insisting that nothing is knowable, see The Russian Conspiracy on Behalf of Conspiracy Theorist Donald Trump (“there is a coherent pattern to the discourse he has promoted. It is a comprehensive attack on empiricism. He spreads distrust against every institution, so that the only possible grounds for belief is trust in a person. The suspicion he spreads against every institution protects Trump from accountability.”) and For Mr. Trump, It’s STEM, Schwem, Whatever… (“he insists that the truth is indeterminable whenever he wishes to evade responsibility for his own lies.”).
For Spicer’s calculated statement to undermine truth, see The White House Press Secretary Makes A Statement.
DC had 500,000 in the streets. NYC had 400,000, LA had 500,000, Chicago had 250,000, MSN had 100,000. 260 other cities/towns had protests in the streets.
America woke up yesterday. Trump and his execrable Minister of Propaganda, Spicer, tried to lie it all away. Nobody is buying it. Trump spent his first day in the White House peeking around drawn drapes, like Nixon in the Days of Rage, at the spectacle in front of him. That is, when he wasn’t personally dumping on the CIA, to their faces.
Trump’s response to this will be an authoritarian crackdown, in the grand tradition of Augusto Pinochet. That will ratchet the situation up even more. This will get ugly.
It will also get results, but not in a way that Trump wants. Ryan and Trump’s grand plan to steamroll an agenda supported by a minority of Americans thru the process just hit a very big pothole. Yesterday gave notice that 2018 isn’t all that war away and there is dramatic anger at the Republicans and Trump. It used to take weeks to organize a protest. Not any more. We just saw a flash-mob of millions of Facebook-connected protesters organize in a day. It won’t be the last protest. You can bet that Trump’s Leftenants are frantically researching how to muscle Facebook into killing organizing threads.
It took us years to drive Nixon from office. This will be much swifter.
Yesterday was a good day for America. We’ve not had so heartening a day on this continent in months. The no to Trump is the yes to a free society.