Schumer to GOP: Push back against Trump’s ‘alternative facts’
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) tore into the Trump administration and congressional Republicans on Monday over a top adviser using “alternative facts.”
“We have to be able to agree on a baseline of facts. Facts aren’t partisan,” Schumer said. “They don’t have ‘alternatives.’ The alternative to fact is fiction.”
He added that if the Trump administration is going to be “ignoring the facts on the ground we’re going to have huge problems” and that Republicans should join their Democratic colleagues in speaking out.
“The need for Republicans to speak out when President Trump engages in the kind of rhetoric he engaged in this weekend,” he said. “A White House that presents ‘alternative facts’ needs to be called out for doing so — by both parties.”
{mosads}Schumer said the Trump administration capped off a “bizarre” first weekend that involved Trump talking about the size of his inauguration crowd at the CIA and White House press secretary Sean Spicer calling in reporters on Saturday to blast their coverage of the event.
“[Trump] sent his press secretary out to hold an emergency briefing to present ‘alternative facts,’ as one of President Trump’s advisors described them yesterday, about the size of the crowds again,” he said.
Spicer insisted at a Saturday press conference that Trump’s inauguration was the “largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.”
Asked about the comments, Kellyanne Conway told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Spicer was offering “alternative facts.”
Schumer argued that the specific fight over crowd sizes wasn’t important but questioned whether it is indicative of a larger strategy by the Trump administration to push back against facts and reports they don’t like.
“If the White House is ignoring facts on the ground and is willing to make up ‘alternative facts’ about crowd size, what else are they willing to stretch the truth about?” he asked. “National security? What Vladimir Putin is really up to? The implications are terrifying.”
Spicer stood by his claim when questioned by reporters on Monday, but noted that there were times when the Trump administration could share share information that would turn out to be wrong.
“Our intention’s never to lie to you,” he told repoters. “[But] there are times when we believe something to be true, or we get something from an agency, or we act in haste because the information available wasn’t complete.”
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