【2004 Archives】

After Donald Trump took umbrage to the size of his comparatively puny inauguration crowd in January004 Archives the photo from Wednesday was almost too good to be true.

Turns out it was. Mostly. Bear with us here as we break this thing down.

Here's the photo that went everywhereonline Wednesday after The New York Timessports section tweeted it out. It purportedly shows how many Patriots showed up to visit the White House with Barack Obama residing therein as president after winning the 2015 Super Bowl -- as well as how comparatively few Pats showed up to Trump's White House on Wednesday to celebrate winning the 2017 Super Bowl.

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But wait! The Patriots took exception to this portrayal and fired back at the Timeson Twitter.

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So what they are saying is this: The photo with Obama looks so much more populated because it features New England players as well asteam staffers; the photo with Trump looks so sad because it only features players, and notteam staffers to boost the numbers.

So that explains it -- except not quite, really.

According to a subsequent UPDATE tweet from the Times, the Patriots said that 50 players attended the 2015 White House ceremony with Obama, while just 34 attended the ceremony Wednesday with Trump.

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That means the player turnout decreased by about a third for Trump's visit -- which is significant but not nearly as significant as the original Timestweet would have you believe. The decrease is also relevant because several players specifically said after their Super Bowl win that they'd skip the White House visit due to Trump's history of racism and sexism.

So what happened with the Timestweet?

Yahoo Politics editor Colin Campbell got comment from from someone he identified on Twitter as "NYT sports editor" -- which is presumably Jason Stallman, who's listed as such by the paper. It's a mea culpain full.

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Trump, of course, was his typically magnanimous self about the whole thing, sending out this not-at-all-bizarre tweet on Thursday morning.

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Doesn't he, like, have better things to do? The opioid crisis? The Middle East? Automation coming for all our jobs?

Seriously. Pick pretty much anything -- it'd be a better use of presidential time.