America Spends Billions To Get The Best Intel In The World But Can’t Make Trump Read It
Even as US taxpayers spend many tens of billions of dollars each year so that thousands of analysts can produce a detailed intelligence report each morning for the president, Donald Trump appears less and less interested in receiving it.
In June, as border clashes between nuclear powers India and China flared, Trump – who keeps the lightest work schedule going back to at least Ronald Reagan and possibly Dwight Eisenhower – scheduled just seven “daily” intelligence briefings. In April, when North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un disappeared for days, Trump had only eight.
And in February, as the coronavirus jumped to Italy and Iran and began spreading unnoticed in the United States, Trump had just three – fewer than the four days he spent golfing in South Florida or the five days he staged campaign rallies.
Through the first half of this year, Trump has had only 41 intelligence briefings, according to a HuffPost review of his daily schedules, an average of 1½ per week.
His laziness cannot be overestimated, but it doesn’t get enough attention.Charles Leerhsen, Trump's ghost writer.
When Trump took office, he scheduled an intelligence briefing nearly every weekday. But that grew more sporadic as the year passed, down to where he had only 13 in October 2017 and 12 in January 2018. On February 6, 2018, the phrase “intelligence briefing” began to replace “daily intelligence briefing” in the public schedule until, by mid-April 2018, the “daily” part had vanished for good.
And though the written distillation of the briefing material is available to him early each morning in the “President’s Daily Brief” (PDB), Trump does not like to read, particularly information that he finds boring, such as intelligence analyses, according to former White House aides, including ex-national security adviser John Bolton.
“He’s just not receptive to new facts,” Bolton told CBS News on Wednesday. “The intelligence briefings don’t communicate as much...
