Trump claims 1.5 million people came to his inauguration. Here's what the evidence shows.

On Saturday, President Donald Trump excoriated the media for — in his view — massively understating the size of his inaugural crowds. “I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field,” Trump said at a speech Saturday afternoon at the CIA. “I'm like, wait a minute. I made a speech. I looked out, the field was, it looked like a million, million and a half people.”

The unnamed television network, he noted, estimated a turnout of 250,000 people — a figure he argued was way too low.

“Now, that's not bad. But it's a lie,” he said. “We had 250,000 people literally around in the little ball we constructed.” In other words, 250,000 people had been given tickets to the swearing-in ceremony, which is what the Joint Congressional Committee for Inaugural Ceremonies told CNN.

“The rest of the 20-block area, all the way back to the Washington monument was packed,” Trump claimed.

This is an exaggeration. Photos taken at 12:09 pm, just after Trump was sworn in, show the crowd thinning closer to the Washington Monument:

National Park Service EarthCam

Of course, this would have been hard for Trump to see from his vantage point at the front of the crowd:

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

The National Park Service no longer provides official inauguration crowd estimates, and the mayor's office and other agencies have not released an official estimate, as they did two days after President Obama’s inauguration in 2009. So we don’t yet know how many people were there yesterday.

What we can say is that the turnout was likely between the low estimate of 250,000 and Trump’s quite high estimate of 1.5 million.

The Washington-area transit authority, WMATA, reported that only 193,000 people rode Metro on Friday as of 11 am, significantly fewer than the past two inaugurations and slightly fewer than President George W. Bush’s inauguration in 2005:

We can also compare aerial photographs of the National Mall during Trump’s inauguration with previous ones, like Obama’s inauguration in 2009:

Javier Zarracina/Vox

It seems clear that Trump drew significantly fewer people than Obama did eight years ago, and Obama’s crowd has been estimated at around 1.8 million people. So Trump’s estimate of 1.5 million people seems unlikely. But we’ll have to wait for an official estimate to be sure.

Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?

Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:

First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.

Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.

So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)

If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via