Donald J. Trump was ushered in as the 45th president of the United States yesterday on a historic day, as he became the oldest incoming President, as well as the President with the least amount of political experience.
The day following his election, in a clear effort to prove his political prowess, Trump did something that is starting to become normal: he defended his size.
Not the size of his hands, but instead the size of his inauguration crowd.
Comparing pictures of his inauguration crowd to the one at Barack Obama's first inauguration in 2009, it appears that the crowd at Obama's inauguration was much larger.
However, Trump claims that this is simply another case of the media trying to skew the public's image of him. From his perspective, he said there appeared to be millions of people at the inauguration, and that his crowd was the largest crowd ever at an inauguration. While from Trump's view it may have appeared to have been a massive crowd, it pales in comparison to Obama's Inauguration eight years ago.
Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary also defended the crowd's size. He said the news outlets intentionally manipulated photographs to "minimize the enormous support" Trump had. He also claimed that more people rode Washington's subway system on Friday than on Inauguration Day in 2013, but in fact there were 782,000 riders that year compared to the 571,000 riders this year.
This situation is unfortunate for Trump, because as soon as the tiny hands debacle seemed to die down, the tiny crowd dilemma has risen. But President Trump simply may have defended himself in the wrong way, after all, it was only his first day in office.
Maybe he should have said that it was just really cold outside, and that normally his crowd would be much bigger.
Or maybe he should have tried to divert the media's attention away from the size of the crowd, and instead focused on the quality. The classic "It isn't about the size of the crowd, it's about how you use it."
If those things didn't work, he could have chalked it up to genetics. He simply wasn't born able to have a large crowd.
The question that every man at some point asks himself, is the same one that may be plaguing Trump. In the end, does crowd size matter? Sure, a larger crowd looks better, but if Trump would focus on the job at-hand, instead of focusing on the size of his crowd, then maybe he would leave the United States feeling much more satisfied.
The only thing Trump should be worrying about now is the size of his feet. The person who last had his job left some pretty big shoes to fill.