For decades, the National Park Service released official crowd counts for events on the National Mall, but Congress forced them to stop in the 1990s.
The decision to stop official crowd counting aimed to keep the National Park Service out of political debates, particularly over the size of crowds.
The controversy over crowd size resurfaced during Trump's inauguration, where he claimed it was the largest audience ever, despite no official count.
The problem with crowd size assessments was highlighted during the Million Man March in 1995, when similar debates erupted over attendance figures.
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