By Clarence Page
Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017 | 2 a.m.
White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said more than a little bit when she described President Donald Trump\u2019s press secretary as offering \u201calternative facts.\u201d
That may well be the most startling description of our new president\u2019s promotional style that I have heard since his best-selling \u201cThe Art of the Deal\u201d said his most useful promotional tool is \u201ctruthful hyperbole.\u201d
Sure, it was probably a slip, yet also too on-the-nose in its accuracy to warrant a correction.
Conway, a counselor to the president after managing his election campaign, was in a heated exchange with NBC\u2019s Chuck Todd on \u201cMeet the Press\u201d on Sunday, defending an inaccurate claim by White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.
The issue started the day before when Spicer yelled at reporters for allegedly \u201csowing division\u201d and \u201cdeliberately false reporting\u201d of Trump\u2019s inauguration crowd \u2014 which he called \u201cthe largest audience to witness an inauguration \u2014 period!\u201d
Unfortunately for Spicer, there was no evidence to support his claim. Trump\u2019s inauguration crowd was much smaller than President Barack Obama\u2019s in 2009, and he drew fewer television viewers in the United States (30.6 million) than Obama did in 2009 (37.8 million) and Ronald Reagan did in 1981 (41.8 million), according to Nielsen figures reported by The New York Times.
Figures for online viewership were not available, although Spicer expressed confidence that the final count would reveal that more eyeballs witnessed this inauguration than any other.
The fact-checking later grew even more interesting on \u201cMeet the Press\u201d when Todd challenged Conway about Spicer\u2019s promoting \u201cfalsehoods.\u201d Conway disagreed:
\u201cYou\u2019re saying it\u2019s a falsehood, and … Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that,\u201d Conway said.
\u201cAlternative facts?\u201d Call me old fashioned, but is that a euphemism for lying? I\u2019m just asking.
Or maybe Conway, who has described herself as \u201ca fully recovered lawyer,\u201d is simply thinking like a lawyer and spin doctor. Courtrooms and political campaigns are arenas for dueling narratives. Each side has its set of facts and the other side has its, well, alternative facts.
But why is Team Trump so determined to argue on behalf of their president over something seemingly so trivial as his crowd count and television ratings? Because they represent Donald Trump, the unlikely candidate whose aspirations to greatness have left him disappointed that more Americans don\u2019t think he\u2019s all that great.
So he turns for reassurance to favorable numbers \u2014 such as crowd size, TV ratings and poll numbers, especially when they show him \u201cwinning.\u201d
But his desperation is showing. His efforts to minimize the significance of the Women\u2019s March and Obama\u2019s inaugurations only served instead to glorify them with more attention \u2014 well deserved, in my view.
Even on Monday, The New York Times reported that the new president used part of his first official meeting with congressional leaders to rehash his old and false claim that millions of unauthorized immigrants had robbed him of a popular vote majority. He also reportedly talked about the size of the crowd for his inaugural address.
Donald, let it go.
But even after his swearing-in, his inner salesman will not be contained. It is still hard at work, giving us a hard sell to prop up his legitimacy, perhaps in his own mind as much as anyone else\u2019s \u2014 even if he has to inflate a few numbers here and there.
\u201cThe final key to the way I promote is bravado,\u201d he says in \u201cThe Art of the Deal,\u201d co-authored by Tony Schwartz, who says he made up the phrase \u201ctruthful hyperbole\u201d and Trump approved it. \u201cI play to people\u2019s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That\u2019s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It\u2019s an innocent form of exaggeration \u2014 and a very effective form of promotion.\u201d
Welcome to the zone of alternative facts, where your fantasies will be pandered to.
Trump\u2019s bravado challenges our traditional notions of the presidency. George Washington never told a lie, according to legend. But would he tell an alternative fact?
Or would alt-facts make \u201cHonest Abe\u201d Lincoln less honest? In today\u2019s politically cynical times, maybe not so much. But I wouldn\u2019t call that progress.
Clarence Page is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.<\/p>\n

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