Trump Lashed Out at National Park Service Chief in Phone Call

President-elect Donald Trump arrives during the 58th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Friday, Jan. 20, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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We got tipped to this story. But we weren’t able to confirm it. WaPo did. On the day after his inauguration, the President of the United States personally called the head of the National Park Service to berate him over unflattering tweets from various NPS social media accounts and the pictures that were being used to demonstrate that President Trump’s inauguration crowded paled in comparison to President Obama’s and later the women’s march.

From the write-up by two of the profession’s masters, Karen Tumulty and Juliet Eilperin …

In a Saturday phone call, Trump personally ordered Reynolds to produce additional photographs of the previous day’s crowds on the National Mall, according to three individuals who have knowledge of the conversation. The president believed that they might prove that the media had lied in reporting that attendance had been no better than average.

Later in the article …

Reynolds was taken aback by Trump’s request, but did secure some additional aerial photographs and forwarded them to the White House through normal channels in the Interior Department, the sources said. The photos, however, did not prove Trump’s contention that the crowd size was upwards of 1 million.

It’s difficult to fully grasp what a child this man appears to be. To place this in time, this was his first full day in office, the same day he made his off-the-rails appearance at the CIA, simultaneous with the Women’s March unfolding out the White House and sometime before he sent Sean Spicer before the White House press corps to berate reporters for making him feel bad.

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