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President Trump used his first full day in office to wage war on the media, accusing news organizations of lying about the size of his inauguration crowd as Saturdays huge protests served notice that a vocal and resolute opposition would be a hallmark of his presidency.

With Americans taking to the streets in red and blue states alike to emphatically decry a president they consider reprehensible and, even, illegitimate, Trump visited the Central Intelligence Agency for a stream-of-consciousness airing of grievances including against journalists, whom he called the most dishonest human beings on Earth.

Shortly thereafter, press secretary Sean Spicer addressed the media for the first time from the White House, where he yelled at the assembled press corps and charged it with sowing division with deliberately false reporting of Trumps inauguration crowd.

Trump claimed that the crowd for his swearing-in stretched down the Mall to the Washington Monument. It did not. Trump accused television networks of showing an empty field and reporting that he drew just 250,000 people to witness Fridays ceremony.

It looked like a million, a million and a half people, Trump said. Its a lie. We caught [the media]. We caught them in a beauty.

(Thomas Johnson/The Washington Post)

During his 2009 inaugural address, President Obamas crowd extended that far, and a side-by-side comparison of aerial photos from both inaugurations clearly shows that Obamas crowd was much larger than Trumps.

[Trump, in CIA visit, attacks media for coverage of his inaugural crowds]

Spicer echoed his bosss assertion about the inauguration, insisting from behind the podium at the White House press briefing room that more than 700,000 people stretched down the Mall to the Washington Monument.

This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period both in person and around the globe, Spicer said, less than a minute after declaring that no one had numbers because the National Park Service, which controls the Mall, does not release crowd estimates.

One verifiable number that Spicer offered was that ridership on Washingtons subway system on Friday was higher than for Obamas inauguration four years ago. Spicer said that 420,000 people rode Metro on Friday, while only 317,000 did so for Obama in 2013. Both of these numbers are inaccurate. Nearly 571,000 people rode on Friday, and 782,000 rode on Inauguration Day four years ago, according to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

Spicer warned journalists that they are in for more sparring with the new administration. Theres been a lot of talk in the media about the responsibility to hold Donald Trump accountable, and Im here to tell you that it goes two ways, he said. Were going to hold the press accountable as well.

In a highly unusual move, Spicer left the briefing room without answering questions from reporters, including one shouted at him about Saturdays Womens March on Washington.

Trump and Spicer also lambasted a member of the White House press pool who reported Friday that Trump had removed a bust of civil rights icon the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office.

The bust remains in the Oval Office, but pool reporter Zeke Miller of Time magazine did not see it during a brief visit to witness Trump signing an executive order on health care. Miller corrected his pool report and tweet Friday evening and publicly apologized for the mistake. In response, Spicer tweeted, Apology accepted.

Nonetheless, Trump called the episode an example of how dishonest the media is.

Trump visited the CIAs headquarters in Langley, Va., to express his gratitude for the intelligence community, which he had repeatedly railed against during the transition period and recently likened to Nazis.

What the newly inaugurated president delivered before some 400 career intelligence officers in one of the governments most hallowed settings the wall of carved stars memorializing officers who died in the line of duty was a disjointed, campaign-style monologue. He complained about the Senate delaying confirmation of his nominees; critics questioning whether he is smart and vigorous; and journalists reporting on the size of his inauguration crowd.

I have a running war with the media, Trump declared. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth, right?

Many in the crowd which was composed of agency employees who had signed up to see him speak as well as some of Trumps White House aides applauded. At one point, Trump claimed that most of the people in the room had voted for him.

John Brennan, who resigned Friday as CIA director at the conclusion of Obamas presidency, said through a spokesman that he was angry about Trumps speech.

Former CIA Director Brennan is deeply saddened and angered at Donald Trumps despicable display of self-aggrandizement in front of CIAs Memorial Wall of Agency heroes, Nick Shapiro, a former deputy chief of staff to Brennan, said in a statement. Brennan says that Trump should be ashamed of himself.

The presidents performance was jarring to some current intelligence officials as well.

That was one of the more disconcerting speeches Ive seen, said one senior U.S. intelligence official who was not present for the speech but watched it on video. He could have kept it very simple and said, Im here to build some bridges. But he spent 10seconds on that, and the rest was on the crowd size.

The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said Trumps use of the CIA memorial wall as a backdrop was offensive.

In his visit the first of what aides said would be many to federal departments and agencies Trump tried to express solidarity with the CIA and blamed the media for creating distrust.

They sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community, he said. I just want to let you know, the reason youre the number one stop is it is exactly the opposite.

He added, I know maybe sometimes you havent gotten the backing that youve wanted, and youre going to get so much backing. Maybe youre going to say, Please, dont give us so much backing. Mr. President, please, we dont need so much backing.

In fact, Trump repeatedly vilified the intelligence community throughout much of his transition in an attempt to push back against what he saw as politically charged conclusions by the CIA and other agencies about Russias hacking of Democratic Party emails to interfere with the 2016 election.

At a Jan.11 news conference, Trump accused U.S. intelligence officials of being behind a Nazi-like smear campaign against him. He has put quotation marks around the word intelligence in referring to such officials. And last weekend, he attacked Brennan in a pair of tweets, suggesting he was the leaker of Fake News.

[The director of the CIA just went off on Donald Trump. It was a long time coming.]

In his remarks at Langley, Trump vowed to lead the fight against the Islamic State: We have not used the real abilities that we have. He added, Radical Islamic terrorism and I said it yesterday has to be eradicated, just off the face of the Earth. This is evil.

Trump also delved into the Iraq War, repeating his oft-stated belief that the United States bungled its exit from the country by not taking Iraqs oil, which he said was how the Islamic State made its money.

The old expression, to the victor belong the spoils, he said, adding: We shouldve kept the oil. But, okay, maybe well have another chance.

At the White House, where the chants of a huge crowd on the Mall for the Womens March on Washington could be heard for much of the day, Trumps advisers grappled with this difficult reality: There will be no honeymoon for the 45th president.

The 44th president, Barack Obama, had urged Americans to give his successor a chance. But the activists who stirred the masses on Saturday vowed to obstruct Trumps agenda on such issues as health care, climate change, criminal justice, gay rights and access to abortion and birth control.

As the images from coast to coast were being broadcast on cable news, Trump spent the morning at an interfaith prayer service choreographed to promote national unity. The service at Washington National Cathedral featured a diverse array of religious readings and patriotic hymns, including a Muslim call to prayer from Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society Center in Sterling, Va.

[Womens marches: Millions of protesters vow to resist President Trump]

But the prayer service appeared to do little to quiet the resistance.

This is likely to be a feature of the entire presidency, said Steve Schmidt, a veteran Republican strategist who criticized Trumps candidacy. If you look back to the rise of the tea party over 2009 and 2010 the revolt that took place at the town hall meetings, the protests thats starting with this president at an earlier hour and in numbers that are by orders of magnitude greater.

David Axelrod, one of Obamas closest advisers and an architect of his campaign strategies, said it is incumbent upon Trumps opponents to do more than march.

This is an impressive display today. But if it isnt channeled into organizing in a focused way, then it is cathartic but not in the long run meaningful, he said. Thats the challenge for the progressive community.

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Trump wages war against the media as demonstrators protest his presidency - Washington Post