Trump slams "dishonest" media over size of inauguration crowd

US President Donald Trump has come down hard on the media, accusing it of deliberately misreporting the facts regarding the size of the crowd that attended his inauguration on Friday.

Addressing a gathering during his visit to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters on Saturday, Trump denied any feud with the intelligence agency and reiterated his resolve to "eradicate" terrorism "from the face of the earth."

"We have to get rid of ISIS (Daesh). We have no choice," he said.

TRT World's Kevin McAleese reports from Washington.

The US president claimed that the crowd had reached as far as the Washington Monument in contradiction to the photographic evidence.

He accused the media of lying, and labelled journalists as being "among the most dishonest human beings on earth."

Later, White House press secretary Sean Spicer in his first press briefing said "this was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration. Period."

The outrage over crowd size came on a day that as many as two million people flooded the streets of cities across the United States in peaceful but passionate women-led protests against the new commander in chief.

At the main "Women's March on Washington," organisers put the projected turnout at half a million.