President Donald Trump is being very sensitive about the crowd size at his inauguration, and his political opponents are wasting no time rubbing it in.
During the confirmation hearing for Rep. Mike Mulvaney (R-SC), President Trump’s pick for director of the Office of Management and Budget, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) held up a comparison photo that showed the two inaugurations of former President Barack Obama in 2009 and Trump in 2017.
Merkley then asked Mulvaney to comment on whether the crowd shown in the Obama inauguration was bigger than the crowd showed in the Trump inauguration.
Mulvaney conceded that, from the photos shown, it appeared that Obama had the bigger inauguration crowd size.
Merkley then went on to explain that there was a real point behind this apparent trolling of the president.
"The reason I'm raising this is because budgets often contain varied deceptions," Merkley explained. "You and I talked in my office about the 'magic asterisk.' This is an example of something where the president's team, on something very simple and straightforward, wants to embrace a fantasy rather than a reality."
To reemphasize his point, Merkley then went on Twitter to implore Mulvaney to deliver actual budgets with real numbers -- and not fantasy papers filled with "alternative facts."
Watch Merkley grill Mulvaney in the Senate below.