Donald Trump, the unbriefable president

[brooklynite]

Washington Post

For decades, the president’s daily briefs (PDBs) have sounded early warnings on everything from enemy troop movements to pandemics to terrorist attacks. Yet under Trump, the president’s intelligence briefings have almost completely broken down. His oral briefings, given daily to most presidents, now take place as rarely as once or twice a week. These sessions often turn into monologues in which the president spitballs woolly conspiracy theories from Breitbart, Fox News and hangers-on at Mar-a-Lago, say intelligence officials who are familiar with his briefings. Convinced that the intelligence community is a “deep state,” honeycombed with traitors, the president rarely believes anything the CIA tells him.

Trump’s first briefer was Ted Gistaro, a widely respected career CIA officer on loan to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), where he oversaw the PDB. Gistaro, who has a calm demeanor and a healthy sense of humor, got almost nowhere — so the briefing team devised a show and tell. Pictures of New York City landmarks, agency briefers thought, might help Trump grasp threats. In an effort to explain the scale of North Korea’s nuclear program, the CIA built a model of the Hermit Kingdom’s underground weapons facility and put a miniature Statue of Liberty inside it.

As a result, those within the administration who might challenge the president’s deeply held views are as rare as coronavirus vaccines. In January 2019, then-DNI Dan Coats made the politically fatal mistake of telling Congress that Tehran was in compliance with the nuclear agreement. Coats, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Gistaro were treated to an Oval Office tongue lashing and a tweet admonishing them to “go back to school.” This from a man who, prior to being elected, did not know the difference between the Quds Force — elite members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard — and the Kurds.

Trump’s current briefer, Beth Sanner, a highly regarded, 30-year CIA veteran, has endured a bumpier ride than Gistaro. When news broke that the alleged Russian bounties were included in the PDB, the Trump administration issued its usual denials and obfuscations. First, the president claimed the so-called reports were fake news. Then, he told Fox News that the intelligence was not credible enough to be in the PDB. Then the story changed again: If the intelligence was in the PDB, the White House said, his briefer didn’t bring it to Trump’s attention.

[soothsayer]

1. Well he has a briefing today

Maybe they can show him a cartoon about it

[mercuryblues]

2. I think I should give the PDRs

I've had 4 kids, I know how to get a bratty child's attention and make them listen and do as told.

My favorite trick was to have them repeat after me. That way they could never say I didn't tell them something or they didn't hear me.

When my kids got older they realized we never had any intention of stopping at Disney. I would tell them on a road trip we were going to stop at Disney, but they are fighting too much.

Then there was the time I took all their Xmas presents away.

[Gothmog]

3. trump is too stupid to brief

[chriscan64]

4. He's a snot nosed brat

that wants to watch TV without doing his homework. When he is dragged kicking and screaming into a briefing, he throws tantrums about the amount or nature of the information if it doesn't fit his narrow world view.

[tanyev]

5. Marking to read later.