Size Matters (Opinion)

Critics left and right are tearing at Donald Trump for his latest battle with media.

On Saturday the Trump Administration fired a couple of broadsides at reporters (and did you notice the CIA staff applauded?)  This morning Cal Thomas appeared on C-Span and suggested the new President has “bigger fish to fry”.  I agree but I believe in the first few weeks of a new Presidency some boundaries are drawn.  One is with “leftstream media” as dubbed by war veteran and Fox News anchor Pete Hegseth.

The argument over crowd sizes is interesting.  In the long run it may not matter and it appears Trump smashed some records for television on Inauguration Day even if he didn’t draw a huge crowd in Washington.  First, it’s a company town and the new guy in charge promises to downsize the company.  Two, as the old joke about the Obama Inauguration in 2009 goes only 14 people missed work.  The Washington/Baltimore corridor has a decidedly African-American population.  Of course it turned out for some history 8-years-ago.

Trump’s blue-collar backers are either working or looking for work and most don’t live anywhere near the Capitol Building.  Jobless West Virginia coalminers don’t have spare change for travel.

Here’s the thing.  Media claimed the crowds for the two big Tea Party rallies in 2009 and 2010 were small and, yet.  The 2009 rally was massive if you compare the aerial photographs with the Trump coronation.  One estimate put the Trump turnout at 900,000.  Then you could surmise the 2009 Tea Party rally was between 1.5 million and 2 million.  At one o’clock the afternoon of the first Tea Party rally I was standing outside the Capitol with Lt. Colonel Steve Hyle and a policeman chatting with us gave us an estimate of 1.5 million.  These figures are no longer released publicly but when I shared the policeman’s figure with “leftstream media” they all pooh-poohed the figure.  Why?  Because media wouldn’t admit there were millions of Americans opposed to their Lord and Savior, Barack Hussein Obama!  The following year the Tea Party crowd was considerably smaller and media pronounced the movement dead.  Just two weeks earlier Glenn Beck brought 600,000 out to the Lincoln Memorial.  People had to make choices in many cases about which event to attend.  I lived 114 miles away and easily could make most of these events.  For many others it was a big expense.

I’ll also mention every year up to 500,000 people attend the March for Life in Washington and tens-of-thousands at other locations across the country.  Your friends in news media pretend it doesn’t happen.  The figure clearly dwarfs the turnout Saturday for the women in comfortable shoes.  This morning I looked at my daily e-mail from the Nampa newspaper and it carried fawning coverage of the women’s gathering in Boise.  The state’s March for Life also occurred yesterday but there was no coverage in the e-mail.

Americans know news media is filled with laggards, drunkards and communists.  God bless Donald Trump for making it page one news.