Conway tweets story that differs from Spicer's claim on inauguration audience

Less than 48 hours after new White House press secretary Sean Spicer insisted that the audience for President Donald Trump’s inauguration was the largest ever, incoming counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway referenced a story saying viewership for Friday’s swearing-in was the “second biggest” in history.

Conway, fresh off a weekend in which she defended demonstrably false statements about inauguration attendance and viewership by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer as “alternative facts,” linked to an Entertainment Weekly article on her Twitter account, publishing the headline “Trump Inauguration Ratings Second Biggest in 36 Years.”


That story contradicts what Spicer said during an impromptu press conference Saturday evening, when he told reporters that, “this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe."

Spicer’s claim that Trump’s inauguration crowd was the largest ever has been shown to be inaccurate through the use of aerial photographs comparing it to the 2009 inauguration of former President Barack Obama, which packed the National Mall with significantly more people than Friday’s ceremony.

Calculating the overall global viewership for Trump’s inauguration would be nearly impossible, but in the U.S., it was viewed by 30.6 million Americans, according to Nielsen ratings. That would put Trump’s inaugural ceremony behind that of former Presidents Ronald Reagan (41.8 million viewers in 1981), Obama (37.7 million in 2009), Jimmy Carter (34.1 million in 1977) and Richard Nixon (33 million in 1973).

The Nielsen numbers do not include viewers who watched on online livestreams, options that would not have been available to those watching most past inaugural ceremonies. CNN said that it hosted 16.9 million online viewers on its website, a number that fell short of the 25 million who watched Obama’s 2009 inauguration on the cable news giant’s site.