The National Park Service released photos Monday from President Donald Trump’s inauguration after a Freedom of Information Act request from various news organizations, showing definitively that Trump’s crowd size was smaller than Obama’s 2009 inauguration.
After initial photos showing half-empty areas on the National Mall were constrasted with photos of Obama’s 2009 inauguration where most areas were filled to capacity, Trump said in a speech that the media was using photos taken at different times and that he had 1.5 million at his inauguration.
The National Park Service said it did not have any comment on the new photos. The images do not have time stamps but were said to have been taken at noon Jan. 20 just before Trump's inauguration and at a similar time during the Obama inauguration, CNN reported.
Trump previously claimed the “dishonest media” tried to downplay the crowd size and had unfairly compared an earlier photo of his inauguration before crowds had fully gathered to a photo of Obama’s that was taken at the time of the ceremony.
At a speech to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, the day after his inauguration, Trump said that the media had been caught in “a beauty” of a lie. “And I think they’re going to pay a big price,” Trump said at the time, USA Today reported.
Press Secretary Sean Spicer also said in a news conference was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.”
Trump’s Twitter critics had a field day.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.