Trump Goes to CIA, Sucks Up to Them and Complains About the Dishonest Media

You just can't make this stuff up. (watch the video and judge for yourself)

He also is just ridiculously insecure about the size of his, er, crowds.

All this is after he bashed their work for weeks, because they said Russia interfered with our election.

CNN:

Trump spent much of his speech -- which he gave in front of a memorial wall that honors the 117 CIA officers who have fallen in the line of duty -- focusing on the size of the crowd size at his inauguration, his appearance on magazine covers and saying he "has a running war with the media."

"Former CIA Director Brennan is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trump's despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIA's Memorial Wall of Agency heroes," Nick Shapiro said in a statement. "Brennan says that Trump should be ashamed of himself."

One source who attended Trump's appearance said many people there were troubled by the political aspect of the remarks, in which the president speculated about how many people in the room may have voted for him. "We are not political in that way," the source said. "Talking about whether we voted for Trump is offensive and foreign to us by the president ... Many people felt used and awkward throughout. Of course there was applause, but it was uncomfortable."

More importantly, 24 hrs into his presidency, Trump is starting a war on the media:

If you are puzzled by the bizarre "press conference" put on by the White House press secretary this evening (angrily claiming that Trump's inauguration had the largest audience in history, accusing them of faking photos and lying about attendance), let me help explain it. This spectacle served three purposes:

1. Establishing a norm with the press: they will be told things that are obviously wrong and they will have no opportunity to ask questions. That way, they will be grateful if they get anything more at any press conference. This is the PR equivalent of "negging," the odious pick-up practice of a particular kind of horrible person (e.g., Donald Trump).

2. Increasing the separation between Trump's base (1/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong—that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong—they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here—likely to pay off—is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as "fake news" (because otherwise they'd be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.)

3. Creating a sense of uncertainty about whether facts are knowable, among a certain chunk of the population (which is a taking a page from the Kremlin, for whom this is their preferred disinformation tactic). A third of the population will say "clearly the White House is lying," a third will say "if Trump says it, it must be true," and the remaining third will say "gosh, I guess this is unknowable." The idea isn't to convince these people of untrue things, it's to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine.

This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump's White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as this, just imagine what else they'll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. It's gonna get real bad.

This is pretty disgusting-- "alternative facts"