Who is really twisting the truth?

Donald Trump’s presidency deserves scrutiny. But if critics are going to call him out for playing with the truth, they have to get their own facts straight first.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but those words are worthless if they tell only half the story.

By now everyone has seen the pictures shared around social media suggesting that Donald Trump’s inauguration was a sparsely-attended bomb compared to Barack Obama’s inaugurations in 2009 and 2013.

Many American media outlets have reported on this with a sly nudge-nudge, wink-wink, suggesting that somehow, despite the 60 million votes Trump earned from his fellow Americans, a low turnout on the day means he moves into the Oval Office with a cloud hanging over his legitimacy.

But those who wave pictures of a half-empty Washington Mall are guilty of exactly the same sort of truth-twisting of which they accuse the new American president.

These photos show a view of the crowd on the National Mall at the inaugurations of President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, and President Donald Trump on January 20, 2017. They were both shot shortly before noon from the top of the Washington Monument. (Pic: AP)

For one thing there is the nature of Washington, DC. A one-industry company town whose grand old neoclassical buildings are temples to bureaucratic power, any president who comes to town promising to cut the size and scope of government is not going to get much in the way of the red carpet treatment from locals.

According to official figures, 76 per cent of Washingtonians are registered as Democrats as opposed to six per cent who have declared themselves Republicans.

As such, the idea that a town full of Democrats would turn out to honour a man who ran and won on a promise to “drain the swamp” is fanciful: it would be, to borrow an American expression, like turkeys voting for Christmas. You’d have as much luck getting a crowd for an old-school Christian tent revival in Newtown (though perhaps some locals might turn out thinking it some ironic piece of performance art).

And this doesn’t take into account the large African-American population in Washington who eight years ago were keen to see in the first black president.

Other factors also helped to deter the crowd, rain being one of them, as well as increased security and metal detectors being used at the Mall.

Donald J. Trump becomes the 45th president of the United States. (Pic: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/AFP)

And of course there were the anti-Trump protesters who made it their business to make the inauguration as chaotic and unpleasant for Trump supporters as possible, scaring many off and delaying many more from taking their place in the crowd.

Several checkpoints were shut down by protesters who formed human chains and blockades, while in other parts of town rioters smashed storefronts and burned cars in protest of the democratic transfer of power.

Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, many of those eager to claim that Donald Trump is a brutish would-be dictator seemed perfectly happy to embrace tactics that at other times in history would have been called fascist. (On the other side, a group of pro-Trump bikies, “Bikers For Trump”, showed admirable restraint in publicly refusing to confront demonstrators, saying that it wasn’t their job to silence people speaking their mind, even if they disagreed.)

Sure, Trump’s inauguration didn’t have the same numbers as Obama’s back in 2009. But there are other factors to be taken into account. (Pic: Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post/Pool Photo via AP))

None of this is to say that Trump’s presidency doesn’t deserve scrutiny: just the opposite. America and the world are in uncharted waters now, which is why it is great to see a Washington press corps emboldened once again after what seemed like an eight-year hiatus to aggressively question executive power.

But if Trump’s critics are going to call him out for playing with the truth, they have to make sure they get their own facts straight first.

James Morrow is the opinion editor for The Daily Telegraph

Originally published as Who is really twisting the truth?