Merriam-Webster poked at the Trump administration through its Twitter feed, appearing to take senior adviser Kellyanne Conway to task for saying that press secretary Sean Spicer was offering up “alternative facts” about the crowd size at the inauguration.
“A fact is a piece of information presented as having objective reality,” the dictionary company said in a pinned tweet that linked to a Merriam-Webster posting about how lookups for the word “fact” spiked after Conway’s comment Kellyanne Conway described false statements as 'alternative facts'.
Conway, counselor to Trump, told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday morning that Spicer was offering “alternative facts” when he told reporters Saturday night during an impromptu briefing that “this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.” (Aerial footage and Metro ridership statistics show that attendance was down significantly from President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009.)
“Alternative facts are not facts,” Todd responded. “They’re falsehoods.”
Merriam-Webster also noted on Twitter on Sunday that the word “feminism” was getting a lot of attention in the wake of the Women’s March on Washington on Saturday.
“'Feminism' is our #3 lookup right now. It's been trending all day,” the company wrote.
After someone asked on Twitter why the company is pointing out its No. 3 lookup, and not its No. 1 lookup, Merriam-Webster had a ready comeback:
"Our #1 lookup is 'fascism', which has been trending consistently for the past few months. We report trends when they're new."
Trump is “fact-challenged” and that’s why he has created his own “Alternative Facts.”
For example, he received 3 million less votes than Hillary (63 million vs 66 million), but he thinks that he has a mandate from the majority of the voters. Or when told by Rubio that he has small hands, hence small “Doodool”, he said that his is huuuuge!
Scary thing is the hard-core Trump supporters (not the chicken-hawks here on this site) are not affected by anything other than his fascistic views. What could be worse than talking about grabbing pussy on video, mocking the handicapped and countles other things he's said that would derail a campaign 10 times over? He still became president?
On Monday, Merriam-Webster took the Trump administration to task again when searches for the word “claque” spiked following a report that many of those who cheered during Trump’s weekend visit to CIA headquarters were not agency staff but Trump supporters.
“If you’re part of a group that’s paid to applaud, you’re a ‘claqueur,’” Merriam Webster tweeted along with a link to their website.