Bernie Sanders has mocked Donald Trump on Twitter over the size of his inauguration crowd after the President suggested his supporters would host the “biggest rally of them all”.
Mr Trump is famously prickly about the size of the crowd at his inauguration in 20th January. He has repeatedly insisted it was the biggest ever but a side-by-side comparison of aerial shots of the ceremony compared with Barack Obama’s in 2009 show the crowd was considerably thinner in the former.
Mr Trump, who has stepped up his attacks on the media in recent days by several banning organisations which criticise him from a press briefing, tweeted:
He has repeatedly claimed companies like The New York Times and CNN were “fake news” and his supporters knew the truth so would rally to his cause.
But the former Democratic presidential candidate mocked the claim on Twitter saying it had already happened and it wasn’t the biggest rally “of them all”.
Experts have estimated that the size of Mr Trump’s crowd was somewhere between 300,000 and 600,000 people compared to the 1.8m who arrived to see Mr Obama sworn in.
The Washington DC Metro station also reported fewer people used the service than on the same day in 2009.
Despite this White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer insisted it was “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period” in a widely mocked press briefing which was later spoofed by comedian Melissa McCarthy on Saturday Night Live.
