Saturday, March 3, 2018

Trump ‘rarely if ever’ reads his daily intelligence briefing

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-rarely-if-ever-reads-his-daily-intelligence-briefing
"Intelligence professionals have gone to great lengths to accommodate the president’s toddler-like attention span, preparing reports “with lots of graphics and maps.” National Security Council officials have even learned that Trump is likely to stop reading important materials unless he sees his name, so they include his name in “as many paragraphs” as possible. It’s against this backdrop that the Washington Post had this remarkable report this morning: For much of the past year, President Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors: He rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world. Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings. Sometimes, a report can be both important and not surprising in the least. The article added that he made clear months ago that he’s “not interested in reviewing a personal copy of the written intelligence report known as the PDB, a highly classified summary prepared before dawn to provide the president with the best update on the world’s events.” The president’s reluctance to read the intelligence materials, the article went on to say, “could hamper his ability to respond to crises in the most effective manner, intelligence experts warned.” Well, yes, that makes sense. The trouble is, Trump has a lot of cable news to watch and golf to play, so we’ll all have to adjust our expectations accordingly."