Trump Has Nearly Eliminated Intelligence Briefings From His Schedule Entirely
WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s interest in taking intelligence briefings has been declining steadily since his first months in office and has dropped to near zero in recent weeks, according to a HuffPost review of all of his daily schedules.
Trump went from a high of 4.1 briefings per week on average in March 2017 to 0.7 per week since July 1, shortly after it became public that he had ignored intelligence reports about Russia offering bounties to the Taliban for each American soldier killed in Afghanistan.
Monday’s briefing, in fact, was the first in August and the first since July 22. That month had only three briefings scheduled.
“It’s remarkable that, even at their peak, they never exceeded 20 per month,” said Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and a spokesman for the National Security Council during the Obama administration.
“And now that they are arguably more important than ever, as foreign actors are again interfering in our democracy, tensions with Beijing are swirling, and America’s adversaries and competitors are becoming more emboldened, the president can’t seem to find the time to be briefed,” he added.
Briefings from intelligence community officials are based on a package of report summaries from around the world prepared in the pre-dawn hours each morning specifically for the president. The sessions are among the few responsibilities in the modern presidency that cannot be delegated to others.
Both of Trump’s immediate predecessors took daily briefings in the White House. Republican George W. Bush typically had his shortly after his arrival in the Oval Office at 6:45 a.m. each day. Democrat Barack Obama had the written material, known as the “President’s Daily Brief,” loaded onto his iPad by 6 a.m. each day, when he would read it prior to the in-person session later in the morning.
Trump, by contrast, rarely gets to the West Wing before noon after spending much of each morning watching television and posting...
