Trump’s press secretary started the new administration by giving the press a damn good scolding, and then lying about the inauguration. They’re not wasting any time steering the ship onto the rocks.

President Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, on Saturday used his first media briefing to angrily lambaste the press for its coverage of the new administration, claiming reporters had deliberately sought to minimize the “enormous” crowd at Trump’s swearing-in on Friday.

“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period — both in person and around the globe,” Spicer said. “These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong.”

Of course, that’s not true, or even close to true.

In a highly unusual move, Spicer left the briefing without taking questions, ignoring reporters who shouted questions at him about the massive crowd in town for the Women’s March on Washington, which was designed to protest Trump’s presidency.

Spicer’s comments on crowd size echoed those of his boss a couple of hours earlier, when Trump appeared at the CIA headquarters in Virginia. Trump said that the “dishonest” media had underreported a crowd that, from the dais, he said “looked like a million, a million and a half people.”

Which of course he knows how to tell. From the dais.

And he said that more people used the Metro system in Washington for Trump’s inaugural than for Obama’s 2013 swearing-in. That conflicted with information released Saturday by Metro.

The agency said 570,557 people took trips in the system between its early 4 a .m. Friday opening through midnight closing. That compared with 1.1 million trips for Obama’s 2009  inaugural and 782,000 in 2013, according to Metro.

But he gets to make up the numbers, because he works for the prezzydent. It’s force majeure, or something. Crème Brûlée. Volte face. One of those things.

Maybe it’s all been a big joke, and he’s going home on Monday.