Donald Trump's new press secretary is to hold his first press conference this evening - two days after attacking the American media for truthful reporting.
Sean Spicer insisted that the crowds who attended Trump's inauguration on Friday were the biggest of any inauguration ever, despite clear photographic evidence to the contrary.
In a last-minute speech on Saturday, after which Spicer refused to take press questions, the new Press Secretary claimed the white coverings on the grass in front of the Capitol Building had never been present before - and that this highlighted empty spaces where none had been previously.
He also claimed that the number of people travelling on Washington's Metro system last Friday - the recommended way for travelling to the inauguration - was higher than it had been on the equivalent day four years earlier when Barack Obama gave his second inaugural address.
Spicer was citing an incorrect figure for the 2013 usage, and the total number of people who travelled on the Metro on Friday was around 570,000 - lower than it would be on an average weekday.
That number is also around half of the 1.1 million people who used it to travel to Obama's first inauguration in 2009, which was the busiest day in the Metro's history.
The only other instance on which the Metro has carried more than one million passengers was last Saturday, the day of the 'Women's March' on Washington.
Our political correspondent Gavan Reilly reports:
