Conway: Crowd Size at Trump's Inauguration 'Was Historic,' Considering Projections and Rain

— -- Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway said the issue of crowd size at Donald Trump's inauguration on Friday compared with previous inaugurations is "not so important."

Her comments came the morning after Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, blasted the media at the administration’s first press conference, accusing news organizations of intentionally framing photographs to "minimize the [president's] enormous support" and claiming the Jan. 20 ceremony had the "largest audience ever."

Conway toed a similar line Sunday on ABC News' "This Week," arguing that the crowd "was historic, based on the projections that were given and certainly based on the fact that we, for the first time, have a nonpolitician in the White House."

Screengrabs of video footage of Trump’s swearing-in ceremony appear to show fewer people on the National Mall compared to President Obama’s 2009 inaugural ceremony. The footage of both inaugurations was taken at roughly the same time from the top of the Washington Monument.

After touting a historic crowd, Conway blamed the inclement weather for discouraging more attendees, saying, "First of all, there was rain — the downpour that was reported — and I think it deterred many people from coming."

"But there were hundreds of thousands of people here," she told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos. "And more importantly, 31 million people watched this inaugural [on TV] ... according to Nielsen. That is far above the 20.5 million that watched President Obama's second inauguration."

There is no official crowd count of the inauguration.

Nielsen ratings reported that 30,600,000 people watched Trump's inauguration on television — more than the 20,552,000 who viewed Obama's inauguration in 2013 but fewer than the 37,793,000 who watched Obama taking the oath of office in 2009. All of those fell short of the record 41,800,260 viewers of President Ronald Reagan's first inauguration in 1981.

Editor’s note: In an earlier version of this story we said that the photos of the crowd were “aerial” images. This has been amended to reflect that the photos are screengrabs of press pool video shot from the top of the Washington Monument.