Now we have confirmation. The official language of Donald Trump’s White House really is doublespeak. This is how absurd the row over crowd numbers at the inauguration has become.
It started with an extraordinary speech delivered by Trump at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where he appeared to speak off the cuff for about 15 minutes during his first national security speech. He railed against the media – ‘among the most dishonest human beings on earth’ – boasted about his appearances on the cover of Time magazine, and displayed his thin skin by exaggerating the size of his inauguration audience – ‘it looked like a million, million and a half people’.
Nonsense, of course. Trump was no doubt upset by photographs showing his audience was considerably smaller than Barack Obama’s in 2009. No matter. Sean Spicer, White House spokesman, gave a briefing.
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