March for Our Lives crowd tops Trump inauguration, according to organizer estimates
Ahead of Saturday’s March For Our Lives, officials associated with the event were bullish on their crowd expectations, anticipating that as many as a half a million demonstrators were poised to descend on the nation’s capital in Washington, D.C. Shortly after one o’clock on the day of the rally, as the bulk of the attendees had settled in to listen to the speakers and musical guests on the main stage, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) felt confident enough about the size of the crowd to take a salty swipe at President Donald Trump.
“I can tell you for sure, it’s larger than the Trump inauguration,” Van Hollen told The Hill, picking at the oldest sore spot of the Trump presidency — the crowd size at his inaugural celebration. Famously smaller than that of his predecessor, President Trump’s sensitivity to comparison spurred former White House press secretary Sean Spicer into his first controversy, hours into his tenure — a moment he now regrets.
A few hours after the March For Our Lives concluded, organizers laid down their marker with reporters, setting their figure at 800,000 attendees.
Link to tweet
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Should those numbers bear out, Van Hollen’s enthusiasm would be validated: a crowd that size would push past most estimations of the Trump inaugural, though it would still be considerably short of the number that were tallied at President Barack Obama’s first inaugural, or the first Women’s March.
https://thinkprogress.org/march-for-our-lives-crowd-trump-inauguration-d57dd1c70337/
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