President Donald Trump pressured the National Park Service via telephone on Saturday to release more photographs of crowds at his inauguration the previous day to beat back news reports of smaller attendance than four years earlier.
Trump believed that the additional photos he "personally ordered" from the agency "might prove that the media had lied in reporting that attendance had been no better than average," The Washington Post reported Thursday.
The president, in his telephone call with acting director Michael Reynolds, was also angered by a retweet sent from Park Service's account showing photographs comparing crowds at his inaugural versus former President Barack Obama's in 2009, according to the report.
The Post said that its article was based on "three individuals who have knowledge of the conversation."
"Word rapidly spread through the agency and Washington," the Post disclosed, and the three people interviewed "declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the conversation."
Trump widely slammed the retweet and news reports saying that his inaugural crowd was dwarfed by Obama's — even slamming the media at a speech at CIA headquarters on Saturday.
Sean Spicer, Trump's White House spokesman, also bashed the inaugural coverage as "irresponsible and reckless," vowing to reporters at a press briefing that "we're going to hold the press accountable as well."
Neither Reynolds nor other Park Service officials would discuss the call.
"The National Park Service does not comment on internal conversations among administration officials," agency spokesman Thomas Crosson told the Post.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House deputy press secretary, told the newspaper that the call reflected Trump's efforts to be "so accessible, and constantly in touch."
"He's not somebody who sits around and waits," she said. "He takes action and gets things done.
"That's one of the reasons that he is president today, and Hillary Clinton isn't."
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