Like millions of Americans, I watched the new White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, as he tried to convince reporters and viewers last weekend that President Trump’s inauguration was the most watched ever — “both in person and around the globe, period!”
Spicer made his case even though photos of the National Mall show that attendance was much smaller than at Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, which – incidentally – I covered.
The next day, on NBC’s Meet the Press, White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway tried to persuade host Chuck Todd that Spicer was using “alternative facts.” When Todd pressed Conway on Spicer’s falsehoods, she responded: “Chuck, if we’re going to keep referring to our press secretary in those types of terms, I think we’re going to have to rethink our relationship.”
To most viewers, that sounded like a threat.
To me, all this sounded like standard operating procedure in authoritarian China, where I’d spent a decade as a reporter.
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