On Friday, as Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States of America, the image that defined the swearing-in was not of the former real estate developer and reality TV star taking oath on the Lincoln Bible – but of the thinnish crowds at the National Mall in Washington DC.
Comparisons were made with the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009, when seas of people came to the US capical to watch the former Illinois senator become the country’s first African-American president. On social media, Friday presented a made-in-Washington opportunity to troll the new president: soon after the swearing-in, memes lampooning Trump’s unpopularity began flowing freely.
From comparisons to the regimes of Adolf Hitler and Kim Jong-Un, the posts celebrated the alternative facts presented by Trump’s Press Secretary Sean Spicer. “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period,” Spicer said. “Both in person and around the globe.”
Spicer’s claim, despite being contradicted readily by photographic evidence, faced ridicule internationally.
Spicer later offered a different interpretation. He said he did not mean that Trump drew the largest in-person inaugural crowd – rather, he was only referring to the combined in-person, TV, and streaming global audience.
The former First Lady, Michelle Obama, and the current First Lady, Melania Trump, also received attention on social media for their reactions during the inauguration.
Since the time Trump entered the White House, he has frozen federal hiring and reinstated the “global gag rule” – an anti-abortion funding rule that existed under past Republican administrations.
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