In spite of photos showing a low inauguration day turnout for Donald Trump, he claimed to the contrary on Jan. 21. The President SLAMMED media outlets for their coverage on the event, saying, ‘it’s a lie, we had a massive field of people.’

Donald Trump, 70, slammed the media for reports of his “low” inauguration day turnout while at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia on Jan. 21. He definitely had some fighting words after photos were released the day prior, showing a vastly smaller crowd than his predecessor Barack Obama in 2009 as seen by side-by-side photos. The President proclaimed, “I have a running war with the media, they are among the most dishonest humans on Earth. We had a massive field of people. This morning I turn on the news and what do they show? An empty field! The truth is that it stopped immediately [the rain]. We have something that’s amazing.”

He continued, “Honestly it looked like a million and a half people, it went all the way back to the Washington monument. It said we drew 250,000 people. Now that’s not bad, but its a lie. We have 250,000 in the ball! So, we caught them, and we think its going to cost them a big price.” Donald then segued onto another issue bothering him, claiming, “They said ‘Donald Trump took down the statue of MLK,’ but it was right there! There was just a cameraman in front of it I would never do that, but this is how dishonest the media is. I love honesty, I like honest reporting.”

However, many still believe Donald is trying to hide the actual size of his turnout, and that the only reason he would do that is because it WAS low. He allegedly asked the Parks Department not to release the official numbers. In the pics shown on the National Park Service Twitter account, it reveals a HUGE crowd of people at Barack’s event, while Donald’s appeared to be very sparse.

HollywoodLifers, do you think Donald had a big or small turnout? Let us know!</s>The day started with an inauguration viewing event at Town Hall. And Friday night, Seattle was wrapping up with a big protest at Westlake Park and another at the University of Washington.

Art Varela from Edmonds was at the Town Hall viewing party. He voted for Donald Trump and says he got chills seeing the new president sworn in.

Also at the viewing event was UW student Emily Torjusen.

She says she's concerned about the next four years but wants to hear what the other side has to say.

Across the country, Aubrey Gelpieryn of Woodinville saw the inauguration in person. She’s a journalism student in Washington, D.C.

She had asked for inauguration tickets back in October, when she thought Hillary Clinton would win.

The tickets came through last month, and Gelpieryn decided to go.

After watching Donald Trump take office, she says America needs dialogue.

Washington State Republican Party Chair Susan Hutchison was also there on the National Mall for Trump’s inauguration speech.

Later in the day, hundreds gathered for protests on Capitol Hill and at Judkins Park, then joined up to march downtown. They got thumbs-up from bystanders and people on passing buses, even children at a day care center.

At Westlake Center, James Watkins held up an unusual protest sign.

He said he had some big worries about the new administration, chief among them the environment and health care.

Also at the Westlake protest was Merci Lopez, a student at Seattle Central College who plans to transfer to Washington State University.

She said she also was concerned about what Trump might do in office, especially on climate change and race relations.

And Seattle isn't done with Trump protests.

On Saturday, thousands are expected to join the women's march, paralleling the giant march in Washington, D.C.</s>WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 20: First Lady Melania Trump, President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Karen Pence wave goodbye to Barack and Michelle Obama on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. In today's inauguration ceremony Donald J. Trump becomes the 45th president of the United States. (Photo by Rob Carr/Getty Images)

In a look that crossed party lines, Melania Trump wore her admiration for Jackie Kennedy on her sleeves Friday morning as she swept into view on the day of her husband’s inauguration in a sky blue suit dress that channeled Kennedy’s dove gray inaugural outfit 56 years earlier.

During the campaign, Trump had said she wanted to be a first lady in the mode of Kennedy, a mid-century fashion icon.

Like Kennedy’s Oleg Cassini ensemble, Trump’s custom-designed Ralph Lauren outfit had bracelet-length sleeves worn with long gloves. Both were made by American designers.

Twitter erupted in admiration, with most writers honing in on the Kennedy homage.

Michelle Obama, who wore a sober brick red dress and matching coat for the inauguration, was a fashion industry darling, appearing in bold, colorful styles by both established and up-and-coming designers, but many designers refused to work with Trump, citing dislike of Donald Trump.

Not Lauren, however, who in a bi-partisan move also designed Hillary Clinton’s inaugural day ivory pantsuit and coat.

Both first daughters Ivanka and Tiffany Trump also chose white for their father’s big day. Ivanka donned a long, fitted Oscar de la Renta jacket with asymetrical hemline and matching pants. Tiffany wore a double-breasted white coat and matching gloves.</s>For years, presidential candidates have promised to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem only to renege after entering office. President Donald Trump appears serious about breaking this precedent, and there is rampant speculation in the Israeli press that he may announce this move in the next few days.

Moving the embassy would upend 50 years of American policy, which has held that the issue of Jerusalem can be negotiated only between Israelis and Palestinians. It’s a high-stakes move, and, given the religious sensitivity around it, it could spark violence targeted at American diplomatic facilities across the Middle East. But Trump could fulfill his pledge, while mitigating some negative consequences, if he were to pair it with another radical move: formal recognition of the state of Palestine. On the surface, such a move may seem entirely unrealistic. But for a deal-maker like Trump who wants to shake up policy across the U.S. government, it could represent an attractive compromise.

The underlying dispute in the U.S. on this issue is less about whether Jerusalem should be the capital of Israel. Since 1996, both party platforms have called for acknowledging Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Instead, the dispute is strategic about whether moving the U.S. Embassy would help—or set back—the prospect for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.

There are sensible arguments for moving the embassy. Ending the fiction that Jerusalem will not be the capital of Israel and encouraging the international community to do so would reassure Israelis who remain deeply insecure that the legitimacy of their state will never be recognized by the world. This could give the Israeli public and its leadership greater confidence to move forward in making a two-state solution a reality.

An embassy in Jerusalem is in line with the vision of a two-state solution laid out in both the Clinton parameters and more recently by former Secretary of State John Kerry. The new embassy would be built in West Jerusalem—an uncontested area that will be part of Israel in any agreement.

On a more practical level, the American Embassy in Tel Aviv is in poor physical condition, making it harder for our diplomats to do their jobs and for embassy security to keep U.S. officials safe. The foreign ministry, prime minister’s office and Knesset are all in Jerusalem, where key Israeli interlocutors spend most of their time at work. American diplomats waste hours going back and forth.

Despite those reasons to move the embassy, presidents in both parties have largely agreed that moving the embassy would not help the peace efforts and posed an unnecessary risk. In 1995, Congress passed with overwhelming support the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which mandated that the embassy be moved to Jerusalem. But successive administrations have chosen not to do so, using a clause in the law that allows presidents to waive the move if they judge that holding off is in the national security interest of the United States. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all believed that the United States, as the primary mediator in the conflict, should not prejudice the outcome of the negotiation. Jerusalem is the most sensitive of all the final-status issues, as both Israelis and Palestinians claim it as their capital and have deep religious ties to the city.

That was a prudent move, one that Trump would be wise to follow. Simply moving the embassy would infuriate Palestinians and be seen as a biased step to giving Israel full control of Jerusalem while not acknowledging historic Palestinian claims and the importance of Jerusalem to the Muslim faith. Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat has threatened that this would destroy the peace process and lead to the Palestine Liberation Organization revoking its recognition of Israel.

There could be protests and violence in the West Bank as even minor incidents around the holy sites in Jerusalem have led to violence and were the proximate trigger for the wave of stabbing attacks by young Palestinians in late 2015 and early 2016. While the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has lost some resonance in the Arab world, the status of Jerusalem has religious overtones that could set off violence and targeting of American diplomatic facilities across the region. This is especially true in Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, where pluralities still view the conflict as the greatest obstacle to regional stability.

Doing nothing is better than stirring this pot. But if Trump insists on moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he should mitigate the negative consequences by opening two embassies in Jerusalem—one to engage with the state of Israel and the other with the newly recognized state of Palestine.

The recognition of a Palestinian state has powerful symbolic resonance for the Palestinian people and is a central demand of the leadership. In the same way that it is essential to reassure Israelis by dispelling the myth that Jerusalem will not be their capital, it is critical to reassure Palestinians and dispel the myth that they will not have a state of their own.

Recognizing the state of Palestine would allow the United States to take a balanced position on Jerusalem. The United States Consulate in Jerusalem is responsible for engaging with the Palestinians, and, after recognition, this facility would be converted to an embassy cementing the American view that the two-state solution will include both an Israeli and Palestinian capital in Jerusalem. Practically, this step will do little to immediately bring us closer to peace, and the Israelis would undoubtedly have strong objections. But in the long term, symbolism matters in this conflict, and having the United States take clear positions on Palestinian statehood and the reality of an Israeli capital in Jerusalem could help both those aspirations become realities.

It may be hard to see Trump taking such a position, given his appointment of David Friedman, a pro-settlement lawyer, as ambassador to Israel. Already, Friedman has said he intends to live in Jerusalem. But Trump will also likely receive advice from his secretary of defense and secretary of state, James Mattis and Rex Tillerson, respectively—two men with deep experience in the Arab world who understand the risk of moving the embassy to Jerusalem with no reciprocal step. And Trump himself has shown interest in negotiating peace, calling an Israeli-Palestinian agreement “the ultimate deal.”

Ultimately, this approach would be in line with Trump’s image as an outsider willing to dispose with polite fictions and deal in stark realities—finally recognizing the obvious truth that the only viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict includes two states, both with their capitals in Jerusalem.

Ilan Goldenberg is the director of the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security and previously served as part of Secretary of State John Kerry’s negotiating team on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.</s>After the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States, there seems to be no stopping to protests against the Republican. On a day when women across Washington DC and 60 nations marched against Trump “to stand up for women’s rights and human rights”, there were some who took the protest to Paradise Bay, a remote town in Antarctica. As reported by CNN, 30 volunteers comprising of eco-minded tourists and non-government scientists, boarded a ship to the international waters of Antarctica and held placards saying, “penguins for peace” and “seals for science” to support the women’s march.

Hundreds of thousands of women, supported by a smaller number of men, gathered in dozens of cities across North America on Saturday to march in opposition to US President Donald Trump the day after the maverick Republican took office. The march went international as 670 cities joined by launching “sister protests”. Women took to the streets in nations ranging from Peru to Kenya, Georgia to Israel. In the US, an estimated 200,000 women were expected to descend in Washington, but, according to reports, a much larger group of people turned up for the march, from states far and near.

The US President has angered many liberal Americans with comments seen as demeaning to women, Mexicans and Muslims, and worried some abroad with his inaugural vow on Friday to put “America First” in his decision making.</s>The White House announced it was beginning to discuss moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but the timeline remains vague.

"We are at the very beginning stages of even discussing this subject" White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Sunday (22 January).

The statement, along with information from another anonymous source, led Israeli Channel 2 to report that President Donald Trump would confirm the plans for the move during his first week in office. The same news channel later reported that Washington officials "cooled Israeli enthusiasm", saying that talks of an immediate embassy move were "inflated".

Trump had a phone conversation on Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but the subject of the embassy was not mentioned in the call, according to government statements issued afterwards.

Instead, the two leaders discussed Iran, Syria and the conflict between Israel and Palestine. During the call, Trump "affirmed his unprecedented commitment to Israel's security" and invited Netanyahu to an early February meeting at the White House.

"The president emphasised that peace between Israel and the Palestinians can only be negotiated directly between the two parties, and that the United States will work closely with Israel to make progress towards that goal. The president invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to an early February meeting at the White House," the statement said, as quoted by CNN.

A change in location for the US embassy in Israel would effectively recognise Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel, whereas the UN-backed two-state solution to the conflict considers the city as a shared capital of the two states. Foreign diplomatic missions traditionally locate their embassies in Israel in Tel Aviv, with consular offices in Jerusalem.

In a meeting with Netanyahu in September, Trump said he "recognised Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel". The president's choice for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, also supports moving the embassy and Republican senators have proposed a bill in January which aims to do just that.

Senior Palestinian officials have warned they would no longer recognise the state of Israel should the US embassy move to Jerusalem, marking the end of US-led efforts to negotiate a two-state solution as enshrined in the UN resolution 181.

According to the internationally-backed two-state solution, Jerusalem would become the shared capital of the state of Israel and of a Palestinian state which would comprise East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. East Jerusalem is currently under Israeli occupation, as a recent UN resolution reiterated, demanding a halt to "all Israeli settlement activities".

Yet, just three days after Trump's inauguration as president, Israel approved 566 new settlement homes, which are considered illegal under international law. The Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Meir Turgeman, told AFP that Trump's inauguration means that Israel can go ahead with settlement plans: "The rules of the game have changed with Donald Trump's arrival as president ... Now we can finally build."</s>Donald Trump: US President says he will keep tweeting

According to him, even those who did not like him had told him after the inauguration that “it was incredible!”

U.S. President Donald Trump has hinted his supporters that he will keep tweeting as president.

A Correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Trump had at one of his Presidential Inaugural Balls on Friday night, asked the audience if he “should keep the Twitter going”.

“Let me ask you, should I keep the Twitter going or not?

“Keep it going? I think so.

“Because the enemies keep saying ‘Oh, that’s terrible’.

“But it’s a way of bypassing dishonest media,” Trump asked the crowd, who cheered in affirmation.

Trump also talked about how he broke all the analyses against him and went on to win the presidency.

According to him, he knew for a long time that he would win.

“I knew that I would win; about four weeks to the election, I knew that we would win.”

He explained his campaign team’s strategy to win the election, disclosing that two weeks to the poll, they had 42 rallies adding, “incredible!”

The president said his support base was no longer just supporters but “a movement”.

“This (Make America Great Again!) is an incredible movement.

“I mean, the world has never seen something like this before.

“There is nothing like this anywhere in the world,” the president said.

He also said that he would bring jobs back to America again.

“The jobs are already coming back. Can’t you see it?” Trump asked the cheering crowd.

According to him, even those who did not like him had told him after the inauguration that “it was incredible!”

Trump, a Republican, was inaugurated on Friday as the 45th president, succeeding former president Barack Obama, a Democrat.

This post was syndicated from pulse.ng - Nigeria's entertainment & lifestyle platform online. Click here to read the full text on the original website.

Also, Like us on facebook</s>Some optimists thought that Donald Trump would be inclusive, seeking to carry everyone along, once he actually became President of the United States.

He has been combative and divisive from the word 'Go'. In the manner of a petulant child answering an opponent on a playground with a "No, you’re a liar! Liar, liar, pants on fire!", his administration began its four-year innings by telling the media it was wrong to say more people had watched Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration than Trump’s — photographic evidence notwithstanding.

The combativeness was not one-sided.

People at large voiced their opposition to the new president on the streets across much of the US the day after his Friday inauguration. Women, in particular, rallied in processions in several towns and cities, making it clear that they would stand up to their new president. Society in the US has not been so divided, and alienated from the government, for half a century — since the Vietnam War brought millions on to the streets to oppose their country’s war policies.

The worst part of this is that Trump probably isn’t actually just being petulant. He may be working to a plan. Perhaps it is part of his agenda to put the media on the back foot, forcing it to be cautious about saying anything negative about him, his decisions or policies. It would not be the first time such an agenda had played out in a leader’s national policies. No doubt Trump and his colleagues will seek to undermine other institutions of democracy too. Their task will be easier if they do put the media on the back foot at the outset.

However, it might turn out to be a strategic mistake for liberal intellectuals to attack Trump on his chosen battleground. His backers might rally to him, just as they did after audio recordings of his lewd comments became public. His backers, it turned out, did not share his critics’ abhorrence for misogyny and sexual predation.

Many in the demographic segments that back Trump may not watch television news (preferring sports, sitcoms and movies) or even read the papers. In fact, they might be easily convinced to suspect the liberal media of ulterior motives. That would make it easier for the administration to marginalise the media, as well as universities and other bastions of liberality.

Combative divisiveness could prove even more dangerous on the international plane. Trump’s selections for top jobs in his administration indicate that the oil lobby will play a powerful role, at least as much as it did during the George W Bush regime — and look at how that turned out! Dubya’s Neocon backers, led by his vice-president Dick Cheney, pushed the US into a terribly destructive war in the Levant (Iraq), which has divided the world bitterly.

Since then, the northern Levant (Syria) has become a battle zone too. Alongside — and intertwined with — the civil war in Syria, the world’s leading Muslim powers and a former superpower too have become embroiled in war there. Obama played his cards cautiously when Russia got openly, actively involved in defence of the Bashar al-Assad regime. So the danger that the Cold War could have received a greater boost via Syria was averted — although the Cold War has been back in play in the regions of Ukraine and Belarus.

The dynamics of Trump’s relationships with Russia on one hand, and with the leading Gulf states on the other, are yet to become clear. If the US oil lobby enhances American relations with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it would put the US more firmly on the opposite side of the Russia-Iran axis — and deepen this very major global rift.

Much will hinge on why Russian president Vladimir Putin preferred Trump to become president, and the extent to which Putin will now be able to influence US policy — or, conversely, the US’ belligerence. Either way, it appears almost certain that division and combat are going to be the order of the day — both domestically within the US, and in the global arena — under Trump in the White House.</s>Donald Trump: Palestinians warn US President not to relocate US embassy in Israel

The second in line to President Mahmoud Abbas in the Palestine Liberation Organisation and others gave the warning in Ramallah.

Palestinian officials on Monday warned new U.S. administration which was preparing to move U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem not to do so, saying it was “very dangerous.”

Saeb Erekat, the second in line to President Mahmoud Abbas in the Palestine Liberation Organisation and others gave the warning in Ramallah.

Erekat told the official Voice of Palestine radio on Monday that “Palestinians and the Arab world must strongly voice their objections now, lest the U.S. think that people won’t take to the streets if such a move happens.

He cited as an example, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s visit to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem in 2000 which spurred the second Intifada (uprising) that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians and Israelis.

President Abbas who repeatedly warned that such a move would be viewed as an “aggression”, also said he had asked Jordan for help in opening direct line of communication with the White House after meeting with King Abdullah on Sunday.

Abbas said “talk about moving the embassy is important to the king and us.

“We urge the new U.S. administration to either stop talking about moving the embassy to Jerusalem, or to engage with us in serious negotiations to reach a political solution.”

The Islamist Hamas movement also warned U.S. President, Donald Trump, on Monday, of the dangers of following through on his promise to move the U.S. embassy to “occupied” Jerusalem.

The group, which had been in charge of Gaza since 2007, said in a statement on Monday that “the American administration is exceeding all red lines by moving its embassy.

White House Speaker, Sean Spicer, on Sunday, said the U.S. administration was “at the very beginning stages of discussing the relocation of the embassy,” the Haaretz newspaper reported.

While the statement was criticised by some in Israeli media as vague, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat told Army Radio on Monday that based on his conversations with the U.S. administration, the White House was serious about its promise to relocate the U.S. embassy.

“They have several assets in Jerusalem that could provide a solution. I definitely think that you don’t move an embassy in a day.’’

Spicer’s comment came shortly before a “very warm’’ phone conversation between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about peace and security in the Middle East and the nuclear deal in Iran.

Meanwhile, there was no mention of talks about moving the embassy, according to statements from Netanyahu and the White House.

Trump, who repeatedly promised to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from its location in Tel Aviv, also invited Netanyahu to Washington in February but an exact date was not fixed yet.

Israel had long considered Jerusalem to be its capital.

However, since the Palestinian Authority would like to make East Jerusalem the capital of an eventual state, picking Jerusalem as the site of the U.S. embassy would be a clear signal of favouring one side over the other.

This post was syndicated from pulse.ng - Nigeria's entertainment & lifestyle platform online. Click here to read the full text on the original website.

Also, Like us on facebook</s>Dozens of radical groups had pledged to bring hundreds of thousands of “protesters” to Washington, D.C. to “disrupt” the inauguration of Donald J. Trump and wreak havoc on the new administration. However, the inauguration ceremony went off without a hitch, and the demonstrators, who were kept some distance away, were mostly invisible and inaudible during the broadcast of the solemn event.

When President-elect Trump approached the microphone to take the oath of office, protester chants, yells, and whistles could be heard (faintly, in the background) on the live broadcasts, but one of our reporters who was there in person said he did not hear the chants from his position on the Capitol Mall. Patrick Krey, who was tweeting comments and photos for The New American from the Inaugural events at #InaugurationDay, told us the security appeared to be successfully keeping the disrupters from breaking through the police lines and he had not heard any of the protester noise during the ceremonies.

It would appear, from what we have seen thus far, that the organized Left’s much-hyped plans for massive demonstrations and civil disobedience have fizzled, much like Hillary Clinton’s campaign. However, even though Donald Trump is now officially President Trump, there may still be serious trouble in the streets — in Washington, D.C. and many other cities across the country, where socialist, communist, anarchist, environmentalist, LGBTQ, Black Lives Matter, and open borders activists have vowed to re-enact the days of rioting that followed Trump’s victory on Election Day, November 8. As Steve Byas reported for The New American on Wednesday, the undercover videos of Project Veritas exposed the criminal plans of DisruptJ20 organizers to, among other things, obstruct Trump inaugural events by using butyric acid gas and setting off hotel fire alarms and fire-sprinkler systems.

Footage shot by Media Research Center and CNSNews.com shortly before the inaugural events Friday morning shows protestors vandalizing local businesses, destroying a limousine with hammers, spray-painting on walls and windows, smashing kiosks, and chanting “no cops, no borders, fight law and order.” Most of the roving band several dozen are clad in black, many with masked faces, and carrying communist and anarchist flags and banners. Many are armed with hammers, ice hammers, and steel pipes.

As President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and their entourage walked in the Inaugural Parade up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House, violent protests erupted nearby and police flash grenades and tear gas were employed against disrupters. Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins and his camera crew were engulfed in the fast-moving clashes between police and DisruptJ20 activists. (Caution: This video includes graphic language.)

The Women’s March on Washington, which is expected to be one of the largest anti-Trump events, will take place on Saturday, January 21. Scheduled speakers for the event include the usual far-left of the angry estrogen brigade: Gloria Steinem, Angela Davis, Cecile Richards, Michael Moore, Van Jones, and Melissa Harris-Perry. Its top sponsors are: Planned Parenthood, NARAL, Natural Resources Defense Council, the ACLU, Emily’s List, MoveOn.org, Human Rights Campaign, and the American Federation of Teachers/AFL-CIO.

Amanda Golpuch at The Guardian tweeted on January 20: “Planes, trains and buses full of women are headed to Washington DC ahead of tomorrow’s Women’s March on Washington.” Feminist blogger and New York Magazine columnist Ann Friedman tweeted a photo with the caption:

“THIS IS WHAT a plane full of women who are ready to resist the Trump agenda LOOKS LIKE.”

Other protests/riots/disruptions planned by the violence-prone Revolutionary Communist Party, the Workers World Party,

And the Communist Party USA are scheduled to run throughout next week — and beyond.

Photo at top showing protest in Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day: AP Images

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Following the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States, Israel approves the construction of 566 new settlement homes in East Jerusalem.