Trump Called National Park Chief Over Twitter Post on Inaugural Crowd

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/26/us/politics/trump-inauguration-crowd-size-park-chief.html

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WASHINGTON — President Trump spoke by telephone with the acting director of the National Park Service the day after his inauguration to ask why someone from the agency had shared someone else’s Twitter post giving an unflattering comparison of his inaugural crowd, according to Mr. Trump’s deputy press secretary.

“It was a, ‘What’s going on?’ type of thing,” Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, said on Thursday evening. “Why is the National Park Service tweeting out comparison photos? That was the bigger issue there.”

During the call, Mr. Trump also asked the National Park Service’s acting director, Michael T. Reynolds, if he could produce further photographic evidence of the size of his inaugural crowd, according to a second person briefed on the Jan. 21 telephone call between the two men.

Since becoming president, Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed outrage toward the news media for what he believes is a deliberate attempt to undermine his legitimacy by understating the size of the crowd that attended his swearing-in and speech.

One of those instances happened on Inauguration Day, when an employee of the National Park Service used the agency’s Twitter account to share someone else’s post of images comparing the inaugural crowds in 2009 and 2017. The images, originally posted by a New York Times reporter, showed the 2009 crowd to be much larger.

Mr. Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, expressed outrage the next day during a forceful statement at the White House in which he lashed out at the press and claimed, inaccurately, that Mr. Trump had drawn “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration.” Mr. Spicer later said he was talking about a combination of in-person, television and online audiences.

That same morning, before Mr. Spicer’s statement, Mr. Reynolds received a message from the White House that the president wanted to talk to him.

They connected in the early afternoon, according to one of the people who was briefed on the call and asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it. The new president asked for additional photos that could confirm his view of his crowd size.

A park service spokesman, Tom Crosson, said he could confirm that a call took place between Mr. Reynolds and the president, but he would not describe the content. The call was first reported by The Washington Post.

Mr. Reynolds could not be reached for comment.

The fact that Mr. Trump sought out Mr. Reynolds to discuss the Twitter message and seek more proof of the size of his crowd during his first full day as president is further evidence of the anxiety that he has demonstrated when people raise questions about the extent of his public support.

As a candidate, he frequently commented on the size of his rallies, and when he became president-elect, he repeatedly spoke about the magnitude of his Election Day victories in states that few people thought he would win.

Some political commentators had speculated that Mr. Trump’s focus on the magnitude of his support would fade once he took office, as the election became less important than the issues facing him.

But his frustration about the size of the inaugural crowd is continuing. During an interview with David Muir of ABC News this week, he talked about it, saying: “We had a massive crowd of people. We had a crowd — I looked over that sea of people and I said to myself, ‘Wow.’ And I’ve seen crowds before. Big, big crowds. That was some crowd.”

He also walked Mr. Muir over to a panoramic picture of the crowd hanging in a hallway in the West Wing.

Ms. Sanders said Mr. Trump’s decision to call Mr. Reynolds is a reflection of what his supporters find appealing: his willingness to do something himself when he thinks it needs to be done.

“The reason that people like him is because he takes action himself,” she said. “If he sees something that’s an issue, he picks up the phone and directly engages to fix it.”