Trump vs. Obama Inauguration: Here Are The REAL Photos, You Decide…

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by Brian Hayes | Top Right News

It’s a topic that has been debated to death over the past 48 hours: Whose Inauguration drew the biggest crowd?

It all started when some Obama holdovers at the National Park Service reportedly re-tweeted photos from NYTimes reporter Binyamin Applebaum — unfavorably contrasting the crowds at the 2009 Barack Obama swearing-in, with Donald Trump’s, shortly before his event began…

The Tweet was re-circulated millions of times in nearly every media outlet, entering the public consciousness in a major way.

On Saturday, Trump himself estimated the crowd above 1 million saying: “Whatever it was, it was, but it went all the way back to the Washington Monument.”

Saturday White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer stirred things up big time , calling in the media to give a statement lambasting them for their “unfair” coverage and concluded:

“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration. Period.”

But the retort from the media was uniform: Not only is that untrue, but it wasn’t even close.

Well was it? Who had the larger crowd? And did the 2009 Obama inaugural really dwarf Trump’s?

Since the National Park Service no longer issues crowd estimates due to a controversy that stemmed from their estimates of crowds at the Million Man March in 1995, the best way to get an idea of the crowd is to look at the pictures.

Not the NYTimes photos above taken at 11:20 am, but the official, final photos released after the events were concluded. (Meticulously collected by IJReview‘s Josh Billinson)

1. Here’s the view from the West Front of the Capitol, looking out towards the Washington Monument for Obama’s Inaugural in 2009:

Here’s a similar view for Trump’s on Friday:

2. A wider angle photo shows the true size of the massive crowd that came out for Obama in 2009:

But that very same angle seems to show a pretty similar crowd for Trump:

3. Obama’s supporters lined Pennsylvania Avenue to greet the new President:

Surely they didn’t do the same for Trump? Well, they did:

4. In 2009, crowds gathered to glimpse President Obama when he left his limo on the way to the White House:

When Trump exited his limo? A very similar scene:

But there is one variable that was not present ANYWHERE prior to the Obama Inaugural… Activists blocking dozens of security checkpoints to slow the flow of attendees.

This was ever-present at Trump’s contentious event — something the media managed to almost completely ignore.

They blocked access completely, chanting “This checkpoint is closed”…forcing Trump supporters to try and find another way in.

They were everywhere…

They even blocked Air Force personnel from getting in, berating them, while the officers themselves stayed remarkably respectful:

This went on for hours, delaying the crowd from getting into the “photo zone.”

Thus the photo taken at 11:20 am — spread around the world — was completely misleading.

The New York Times actually stated this photo represented the Trump Inaugural at “its peak density“:

But the final event photos — taken at the moment Trump began to speak — proves that the NYTimes assertion is demonstrably false:

So the debate goes on. But whether or not Trump’s inaugural crowd was larger, or smaller, one thing is clear: the mainstream media has not been showing the American people the full picture of what actually happened.

 

http://toprightnews.com/trump-vs-obama-inauguration-here-are-the-real-photos-you-decide/

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