"Unbelievable, Perhaps Record-Setting Turnout"

Well, that was Donald Trump's prediction for his big day.  And how did that work out for you, Donald?

Green Eagle loves to make a record of the turnout for right wing demonstrations, which is inevitably a small fraction of what they claim, and I am not going to stop now.  Better pictures will undoubtedly emerge in the next few days, but here is what we can see already:
Oh wait, my bad- wrong picture.  Oh yeah, here it is:
A little hard to see what is going on here.  Just for your information, for some reason, the ground on the mall has been covered in white plastic for Trump's inauguration.  Maybe someone had the idea of just rolling it up and using it as giant garbage bags to dispose of the Trump supporters.  Unfortunately, they apparently scattered like cockroaches before the cleanup crews arrived.

Well, what can we see here?  The photos are a little bit hard to see.  They were apparently taken from the top of the Washington Monument, so they don't show the whole Obama crowd, which went all the way back to the monument.  The Obama crowd was estimated to have been about 1,800.000 people.  I think it is clear even in these inadequate views that Trump would be stretching things to claim that even a third as many turned out for his inaugural- we are being kind to credit him with 600,000, which, for comparison, would be about twice the size of the last large Iraq war protest, several years ago.

Other measure would seem to comport with this.

"The Washington transit agency tweeted a little before noon that there were 193,000 trips taken by 11 a.m., down from 513,000 by the same time on Jan 20, 2009"

When you consider that Friday is a work day for many people, and that at least a fair number of these trips must be for other purposes, this is pretty stark, and would be well within the likelihood that Trump's crowd was no more than a third the size of Obama's.

We've seen even greater disparity in the number of bus parking permits applied for by Trump's people, and not just Obama's, but even the vastly larger number of permits issued for tomorrow's march against Trump.  Or  consider this story:

"The crowd also did not appear to be great for commerce. Vendors Karone Williams and Dominique Christian set up a table full of Donald Trump merchandise only blocks from the White House. But two hours into their gig, they had sold only six items: a couple of hats, some T-shirts and a $5 rain poncho.

“It’s been real slow,’’ said Williams, a D.C. native. “We’re just trying to make a few pennies."

Williams couldn’t explain the slow business."

No, but I think just about every sane person in America could.  And lady, Trump's Presidency is about him making money, not you.  Deal with it.

But of course, our magnificent mainstream media are already on the job, arguing away the significance of this humiliation.  The Washington Post already has this to say:

"So we can assume that Trump's inauguration was not quite as popular as Obama's...To a large extent, such comparisons are simply a form of partisan competitiveness."

A third of the crowd at best is "not quite as popular," and anyway, it is meaningless, so forget about it.  Even though we know the Republicans would be trumpeting it to the skies as the greatest mandate ever if the crowd sizes had been reversed.

We have never, even with the stolen election of George W. Bush, seen a President enter the White House with less right to be there, and the American people, at least the sane ones, despite lecturing by the press, know it damned well.  Now, let's see how Trump's supporters compare to the people who show up in Washington tomorrow.


UPDATE:  And here is a better picture, clearer and showing more of the Obama crowd:
Looking at these two views, I would say that Trump would be floating in a sea of delusion to claim that he even got a third of Obama's crowd.  This looks more like 300,000 max.  And remember that the people can get on the Capitol side of the reflecting pool by invitation only, so those are the committed partisans.  The people on the mall side of the reflecting pool represent the ordinary citizens who showed up for the event, and I don't think I am being unreasonable to wonder if there are even 100,000 of them.

UPDATE 2:  Let the lying begin!  Here is the picture that is now featured as the background at Donald Trump's Twitter page:
The crowd in the background is actually a photo of Obama's 2009 inauguration.  There is no lie so despicable and so easily disproven that they will not trot it out.

UPDATE 3:  And the parade!  I first saw news of this shortly after the inauguration, but I didn't quite trust the source, and I wasn't sure that the photos were taken during the parade, and not before or after.  Well, here is Mike Pence walking past the bleacher area:
And one more...I can't resist:
And what you are looking at here are the VIP stands.  He couldn't even get the Republican leaders to make his show look even barely normal.  The English language does not contain words sufficient to explain what a humiliation this is.

No one showed up for the parade either. I read somewhere that there were more people in the parade than watching it.  Man, this is pathetic.

Comments

Zog said…
Williams couldn’t explain the slow business.

The rain might have had something to do with it.

I will not comment on people who don't have the sense to come in out of the rain.
Marc said…
An Inauguration to match his hands, not his ego.
ez said…
Time to put some Pictures on Milk Cartons-two million Bikers failed to appear for the Festivities and are missing.
Magpie said…
Uncanny. I just got back from the Tasmanian highlands where there were no people, some wetness and some rather weird rock.

It was a shitload prettier than this though.
Percy said…
Green Eagle,
Did you get wet today?
Kevin Robbins said…
Well, the good news is that he's not Hitler. That guy could really draw some crowds.
Green Eagle said…
Okay, Kevin, I take your point. After the last few days, he is going to be lucky to be compared to Idi Amin.

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