Mr
Trump was speaking after photographs were published appearing to show more
people attended the inauguration of his predecessor Barack Obama in 2009.
Mr
Trump's press secretary said it had been "the largest audience to ever see
an inauguration" even though figures he cited add up to under 750,000
people.
He
said the new US administration would hold the media accountable.
On Saturday, millions in the US and around
the world took
part in protests to highlight women's rights, which activists believe to be
under threat from the new administration.
The
largest US rally was in the capital, Washington DC, which city officials
estimated to be more than 500,000-strong, followed by New York with some
400,000 and hundreds of thousands elsewhere, including Chicago and Los Angeles.
Inauguration: What
are the figures?
For
decades, the US National Park Service provided official crowd estimates for
gatherings on the National Mall.
But
the agency stopped providing counts after organisers of the Million Man March
protest about rights for black people in 1995 threatened a lawsuit.
Mr
Trump said "it looked like a million and a half people" there on
Friday - with the crowd extending all the way back to the Washington Monument.
He
provided no evidence.
He also said that the number of people taking Washington's subway system on the day had been higher than during Mr Obama's second inauguration in 2013.
In
fact, there were 782,000 tickets that year, but 571,000 this year, the
Washington-area transit authority says.
Mr
Spicer also said that plastic sheets had been used for the first time to cover
the grass which "had the effect of highlighting areas people were not
standing whereas in years past the grass eliminated this visual". In fact,
the grass was also covered in 2013.
He
added that fences and metal detectors had had an impact on attendance, but this
had also been denied by officials as being a factor.
District
of Columbia officials had made preparations for an estimated 700,000 to 900,000
people.
What are US media
saying?
The
new president repeated his low opinion of the media dubbing reporters
"among the most dishonest human beings on earth". Mr Spicer vowed
"to hold the press accountable".
In
their reaction, major US media outlets flatly denied the claims made by the US
president and his spokesman.
The New York Times, singled out by Mr Spicer, denounced "false claims".
CNN said it did not even broadcast the spokesman's statement
live. It said the press secretary had attacked the media "for
accurately reporting" and
went on to debunk the claims.
ABC News also goes into detail to refute the claims.
Pro-Trump Fox News reported the claims
unchallenged.
BuzzFeed News accuses Mr Spicer of lying and goes on to provide Twitter memes
generated from his remarks.
In
his first ever White House briefing, Sean Spicer rounded on reporters in a
manner few here can remember.
Echoing
President Trump's charge of dishonesty, Mr Spicer issued a thinly-veiled
warning to reporters covering the Trump presidency, saying the new
administration intended to "hold the press accountable".
Precisely
what he means by that is unclear, but the statement has left many veterans of
the White House press pool deeply concerned.
Ultimately,
of course, it begs the broader question - what will prove most unpalatable to
this new administration: the messenger or the message?
Officials
from the District of Columbia have said that 1.8m people attended Mr Obama's
2009 inauguration and close to 1m showed up for his second in 2013.
George
W Bush drew some 400,000 in 2005, 300,000 in 2001; Bill Clinton had 800,000 in
1993 then 250,000 in 1997.
Some 140,000 tickets were sold for Ronald Reagan's inauguration
in 1985, but extreme cold forced officials to move the ceremony indoors, says Politifact.
It
says the biggest crowd the National Park Service counted was for Lyndon
Johnson's 1965 swearing-in that drew 1.2m.
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