By any fair measure, Donald Trump’s second term has been challenging for U.S. intelligence agencies. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, for example, recently fired the leaders of the National Intelligence Council because it dared to produce accurate information the president didn’t like.
That coincided with reports of a Trump appointee trying to politicize intelligence, the White House moving forward with a “major downsizing” at U.S. intelligence agencies, and the president’s recent decision to fire the leadership of the National Security Agency, a key intelligence gathering department, as well as the National Security Council’s director for intelligence.
But perhaps most important is the fact that Trump tends to ignore intelligence briefings and reports, as NBC News reported that Gabbard is exploring new ways to “revamp” his intelligence briefings in order to bring them in line with “how he likes to consume information.” From the report:
One idea that’s been discussed is possibly creating a video version of the PDB that’s made to look and feel like a Fox News broadcast, four of the people with direct knowledge of the discussions said. … One idea that has been discussed is to transform the PDB so it mirrors a Fox News broadcast, according to four of the people with direct knowledge of the discussions. Under that concept as it has been discussed, the national intelligence director’s office could hire a Fox News producer to produce it and one of the network’s personalities to present it; Trump, an avid Fox News viewer, could then watch the broadcast PDB whenever he wanted.
I can appreciate why this might seem amusing, but NBC News wasn’t kidding.
The same report noted that one insider envisioned a new presidential daily briefing that would include “maps with animated representations of exploding bombs, similar to a video game,” apparently in the hopes of capturing the president’s attention.
“The problem with Trump is that he doesn’t read,” said one person with direct knowledge of the PDB discussions.
Of course, that’s only part of the problem. Not only does the Republican avoid reading briefing materials, he also doesn’t want to receive in-person, oral presentations of intelligence, either. Politico reported last month that Trump, during his second term, “has sat for just 12 presentations from intelligence officials of the President’s Daily Brief,” which represents “a significant drop” compared with the Republican’s first term, and a vastly smaller number than the presentations for recent Democratic presidents.
Time will tell whether Gabbard’s creative solutions are implemented — how intelligence officials would give a Fox News producer the necessary security clearance would be an interesting challenge — but hanging overheard is the inconvenient fact that Trump doesn’t seem to want intelligence briefings.
His record on this is long and unambiguous. During his transition process in 2016, for example, Trump skipped nearly all of his intelligence briefings. Asked why, the Republican told Fox News in December 2016, “Well, I get it when I need it. … I don’t have to be told — you know, I’m, like, a smart person.”
As his inauguration drew closer, Trump acknowledged that he likes very short intelligence briefings. “I like bullets, or I like as little as possible,” he explained in January 2017. Around the same time, he added, “I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page.”
Things did not improve once he was in power. In early 2017, intelligence professionals went to great lengths to try to accommodate the president’s toddler-like attention span, preparing reports “with lots of graphics and maps.” National Security Council officials eventually learned that Trump was likely to stop reading important materials unless he saw his own name, so they included his name in “as many paragraphs” as possible.
In August 2017, The Washington Post had a piece on then-White House National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, who struggled to “hold the attention of the president” during briefings on Afghanistan. The article noted, “[E]ven a single page of bullet points on the country seemed to tax the president’s attention span on the subject.” A Trump confidant said at the time, “I call the president the two-minute man. The president has patience for a half-page.” In February 2018, the Post reported that Trump “rarely, if ever” read the PDB prepared for him. Months later, the Post had a separate report noting that the CIA and other agencies devoted enormous “time, energy and resources” to ensuring that Trump received key intelligence, but “his seeming imperviousness to such material often renders ‘all of that a waste.’” In early 2020, the Post reported that Trump missed the early alarms on the Covid threat in part because he “routinely skips reading the PDB” and had “little patience” for oral summaries of the intelligence. Exactly five years ago next week, The New York Times had a related report: The president veers off on tangents and getting him back on topic is difficult, they said. He has a short attention span and rarely, if ever, reads intelligence reports, relying instead on conservative media and his friends for information. He is unashamed to interrupt intelligence officers and riff based on tips or gossip. … Mr. Trump rarely absorbs information that he disagrees with or that runs counter to his worldview, the officials said. Briefing him has been so great a challenge compared with his predecessors that the intelligence agencies have hired outside consultants to study how better to present information to him. 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 sought outside help to figure out how to get him to listen and focus. Will Gabbard figure out a way to get Trump to care about information he doesn’t want to receive? There’s reason for skepticism. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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