Trump busted for skipping vital meetings: 'Indifference to intelligence is a problem'
President Donald Trump is more or less flying blind in his second term, according to a new analysis.
The president infamously skipped nearly all of his intelligence briefings during his 2016 transition process and had little patience for them during his first term, saying he didn't need them because he was "like, a smart person." MSNBC's Steve Benen wrote that he's even less interested the second time around in hearing the information he needs to guide his decision making.
"It’s worth emphasizing that different presidents have approached these briefings in different ways," Benen wrote. "George W. Bush received intelligence briefings on a nearly daily basis. Barack Obama received briefings roughly every other day, but he was known to be a voracious reader of the written President’s Daily Brief (often referred to as the PDB). Joe Biden received an in-person briefing once or twice a week, but like Obama, he was also known to read the PDB briefing book."
Trump reportedly doesn't read the PDB and gets an in-person briefing about once every 10 days.
"Broadly speaking, a couple of angles are worth keeping in mind in response to reporting like this," Benen wrote. "The first is probably obvious: Trump is dealing with serious national security challenges — war in Ukraine, a crisis in the Middle East, China expanding its global influence, domestic security threats, et al. — and the United States is being led by an incurious former television personality who desperately needs — but apparently isn’t getting — valuable information that would lead to better decision-making."
"Less obvious, however, is the pattern: The problem isn’t just that Trump is avoiding intelligence he needs; the problem is made worse by the fact that Trump has always avoided intelligence he needs," the columnist added.
That's what caused him to miss the early alarms on the Covid-19 pandemic, because he rarely read the PDB and had "little patience" for in-person summaries of the intelligence, and he instead reportedly interrupted those meetings with gossip or off-topic tangents while relying on conservative media and his own friends for information.
"It was an extraordinary revelation to consider: A sitting American president, in a time of multiple and dangerous crises, was so resistant to learning about security threats that his own country’s intelligence officials have sought outside help to figure out how to get him to listen and focus," Benen wrote.
"Or, put another way, Trump’s indifference to intelligence is a problem, but it’s not a new problem," he added.