On Wednesday, some members of the media engaged in deliberately false reporting. One instance stands out.
Photographs of breakfast proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered for breakfast.
This was the first time in our nation’s history that white tablecloths have been used to protect the breakfast table at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. That had the effect of highlighting any areas where people were not eating breakfast, while in years past the wood color of the table eliminated this visual.
This was also the first time that both grapefruit juice and coffee were present on the table, preventing hundreds of thousands of people from being able to access the table as quickly as they had in breakfasts past.
Inaccurate numbers involving crowd size were also tweeted. No one had numbers, because the Harvard cafeteria people, who control the breakfast site, do not put any out.
We do know a few things, so let’s go through the facts. We know that from the area where Sean Spicer was seated, to the other edge of the end of the table, holds about two people. From that edge to the far end is another, let’s say … 220,000. And from the far edge back to Sean Spicer, another 250,000 people. All of this space was full when Sean Spicer began talking about politics during breakfast. We also know that 420,000 people used Boston public transit Wednesday, which actually compares to 317,000 that used it for Josh Earnest’s last event.
Attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the breakfast—to suggest that its level of attendance and palpable air of limp, lukewarm sadness is yet another indication that the Harvard Institute of Politics should be humiliated to have associated itself with one of the most thoroughly self-discredited circus-clown laughingstocks in American public life—are shameful and wrong.
There’s been a lot of talk in the media about the responsibility to hold Sean Spicer accountable. And I’m here to tell you that it goes two ways. We’re going to hold the press accountable, as well.
This was the largest audience to ever witness a breakfast—period—both in person and around the globe.
