President Donald Trump personally contacted the National Park Service on his first full day in office in hopes of putting to rest reports that his inauguration was not as well attended as his predecessor's, according to multiple reports.
In a phone call made Saturday, Trump asked acting National Park Service director Michael Reynolds for images of the crowds gathered on the National Mall for his inauguration, The Washington Post reported.
He also took the Park Service to task for retweeting a pair of side-by-side photos of the Mall taken before his and before former President Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration. The images showed a much larger crowd at Obama's inauguration.
The request surprised Reynolds, but he sent additional photos of the crowd along as requested, according to the Post.
"The photos, however, did not prove Trump's contention that the crowd size was upward of 1 million," the newspaper reported.
The Park Service does not release crowd estimates.
White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed to CNN that the call took place. She said it was an example of the hands-on style that Trump has brought to the White House.
>> Related: Whose inauguration crowd was bigger, Trump or Obama?
"If he sees an issue, he is going to take action and do something to fix it," she told CNN.
The Park Service declined to comment.
Trump has slammed media organizations that reported on inauguration attendance, saying Saturday that reports that his inauguration was less attended than those of previous presidents are outright lies. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer repeated the assertion during a strained news conference later that day.
"Photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally framed in a way, in one particular tweet, to minimize the enormous support that had gathered on the National Mall," he said. "That was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period. Both in person and around the globe."
The claim earned a "Pants on Fire" rating from Politifact, the category used by the fact-checking group to denote statements it deems to be the most outrageous lies.
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