No One Showed Up to Donald Trump's Inauguration, So He Stole a Photo From President Obama's Instead

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The country wrapped up ten weeks of breathless speculation and hasty apocalypse prep on Friday afternoon when Donald Trump finally took the presidential oath of office and became the 45th President of the United States. This would be a banner day for almost anyone else, but it's hard to imagine that the notoriously attention-hungry Trump is not absolutely seething at how few people actually cared to show up and watch it happen. In the scheme of National Mall crowds, one of these things looks like a presidential inauguration, and the other looks like a low-turnout day at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

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This leaves the newly installed president in a unique bind as he adjusts his Twitter presence to reflect his new job. A sweet shot of the adoring masses euphorically cheering his inaugural address would make for a killer banner photo, but what do you do when those crowds don't exist? The answer, it turns out, is "use a photo from President Obama's inauguration instead."

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Sure enough! Here it is, with the caption automatically provided by Getty intact:

The inauguration of President Barack Obama, January 20th 2009. Unrecognizable crowds in the Washington Mall.

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The best and/or saddest part, though, is that this image appears to be cropped very neatly around the online watermark, which means that whoever put this together was desperate enough to steal a shot of the crowds who turned out for President Trump's predecessor, but not desperate enough to pay Getty Images the $575 license fee for using their photo.

It was quietly swapped out less than an hour later, but President Trump, let this be your first lesson: the Internet never forgets.

After today, I'm guessing some fresh-faced new hire on the new White House social media team will find themselves polishing their résumé much sooner than they expected.

[h/t Madison]

UPDATE: Hehe, he did it again.


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