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White House press secretary Sean Spicer claims that the audience for President Trump's inauguration was the:

largest audience to ever witness an inauguration - period - both in person and around the globe

Source: "Trump team in fresh war of words with US media", BBC News, 22 Jan 2017

Is this true?

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    I wasn't sure if "around the globe" means any inauguration in another country or if it meant tv viewership, for which there would be no global data (at least not available that fast). It still would fail the "in person" side. – rougon Jan 22 '17 at 20:02
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    Kelly-Anne Conway weighed in - this statement was "alternative facts". – Shadur Jan 22 '17 at 20:31
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    I have voted to close it because it seems there isn't sufficient data available to accurately calculate the number of people. – Sakib Arifin Jan 22 '17 at 21:41
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    @Mohammed For the people attending in person it would have to be an estimate - which seems ok to me so long as the methodology is the same for all the events compared. For TV there should be viewing figures (an estimate in a way as well, but the methodology is standardised at least). – A E Jan 22 '17 at 21:55
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    @MohammadSakibArifin although there is not data to calculate the number of people, there is data to answer the question as asked, so I don't see why it is closed for this reason. – rougon Jan 22 '17 at 23:54
  • This can be answered... but only when heads have cooled down, and actual undisputed numbers have come out. We will solve nothing until then. – Sklivvz Jan 23 '17 at 09:01
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    @Sklivvz this can be answered now. The claim is obviously false, which multiple reliable sources have already stated. Given that one side does not use actual facts, I highly doubt that there will ever be "undisputed" numbers. But we do know for a fact that this was not the largest audience ever. – tim Jan 23 '17 at 09:42
  • @tim fine then, there's another prior question on this, so let's move the discussion there. – Sklivvz Jan 23 '17 at 10:52

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