ArcaMax

White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said more than a little bit when she described President Donald Trump's press secretary as offering "alternative facts."

That may well be the most startling description of our new president's promotional style that I have heard since his best-selling "The Art of the Deal" said his most useful promotional tool is "truthful hyperbole."

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's Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press" Sunday, defending an inaccurate claim by press secretary Sean Spicer.

The issue started on Saturday when White House press secretary Sean Spicer yelled at reporters for allegedly "sowing division" and "deliberately false reporting" of Trump's inauguration crowd -- which he called "the largest audience to witness an inauguration -- period!"

Unfortunately for Spicer, there was no evidence to support his claim. Trump's inauguration crowd was much smaller than President Barack Obama's 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 "Meet the Press" when Todd challenged Conway about Spicer's promoting "falsehoods." Conway disagreed:

"You're saying it's a falsehood, and ... Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that," Conway said.

"Alternative facts?" Call me old fashioned but, is that a euphemism for lying? I'm just asking.

...continued

(c) 2017 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.