Trump 29: Divider In Chief or Liar In Chief? WHY NOT BOTH?

[Rosalie]

Ok, maybe I’m completely stupid, when did Trump become leader of The Republican Party? During his lunch with the russians?

[apple1]

3 minutes ago, CTRLZero said:

@LeftCoastLurker - thanks for transcribing that survey.  I'd get out my red crayon, make a few pertinent comments, and send it on back.

On the topic of abuser Rob Porter, how the heck did he get by that background check?  Apparently he didn't have a security clearance (whatever that terminology means in the White House).  Another total loser [formerly] on Trump's staff. 

Anyway, I was looking at his job description.  Is Was he in charge of reducing all documents to one page, with bullet points, adding Trump's name, and illustrations?   That might actually be a pretty demanding job, dumbing it down to the presidunce's comprehension level and hoping it distracts him from Fox & Friends, parade planning and tweeting. 

From CNN:

When John Kelly replaced Reince Priebus as White House chief of staff, Porter's role expanded. Kelly -- looking to correct an issue that plagued the White House under Priebus -- imposed a strict system of information flow to the President, elevating the importance of Porter's task in managing the documents, news clippings and briefing books that entered the Oval Office.

My anger at the whole Porter situation is extreme and continuing to grow.

The domestic violence in and of itself.

The ability for Hicks to control the narrative.

The excuse-making by Hatch.

Kelly and Sanders' lies.

The fact that someone who fails to be able to get a security clearance can have access to the most sensitive of information (Addendum: Apparently Jared Kushner still falls into this particular category. Sebastian Gorka, when present, also sat on the Security Committee while not being able to get a security clearance. How many more?)

The fact that this horrible person (along with Stephen Miller, I am sure) had large input into the writing of the SOTU address.

The fact that this horrible person has spent months and months manipulating the information that has been presented to Trump.

The fact that this horrible person was in place as far back as when Priebus was chief of staff, and in spite of not being able to qualify for a security clearance, with the associated reasons well documented and communicated, was promoted to a higher level by Kelly.

The fact that he isn't out even now for his lack of security clearance, nor for his domestic violence, but rather for "poor optics". Only after it became obvious that the WH was failing at manipulating the "optics" (I hate that excuse word) to their advantage.

The fact that this could have been expected long ago. Not at all convinced that this guy is any different from his grab-em-by-the-pussy boss.

I could probably go on and on. 

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Guess who's coming to breakfast?

Yep. The Russians!

Big Russian delegation anticipated for prayer breakfast in Washington

 

As to this "National Prayer Breakfast" (political event, actually) - and as a person who self-identifies as a Christian I have this to say:

Matthew chapter 6 (KJV translation):

Quote

Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:

That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

This quoted passage is a deeply-held personal value for me. The manipulation of so-called prayer into a political event, and for the purpose of being seen by others, angers me.

[smittykins]

1 hour ago, Audrey2 said:

@formergothardite, I need to read your posts more carefully. While not paying careful attention, I read 15 and 16 as Trump's Whining Agenda.

Well, I wouldn't say you were necessarily wrong...

[laPapessaGiovanna]

3 hours ago, LeftCoastLurker said:

President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, and Members of Congress and candidates for office should embrace his Winning Agenda.

All hail Chairman Mao Trump!

3 hours ago, Workingmom said:

Not even a little bit envious. The healthcare ( and its easy access & and the monthly costs of my insurance) in my country are among the best in the world. My son has  (diagnosed) ASD and a heartproblem . I never had to worry about bills or access to doctors or therapy . So, not even a little bit green with envie.

Despite all the problems of our NHS system I too feel zero envy.

Then I take a look at stats about patients outcome in Western countries and I actually feel a lot of compassion. I am really sorry for every American who needs care and cannot afford it thanks to a perverse system.

[Cartmann99]

3 hours ago, Rosalie said:

Ok, maybe I’m completely stupid, when did Trump become leader of The Republican Party? During his lunch with the russians?

Heh, good one!

On a serious note, since Trump is a Republican and is the president, he is considered the leader of the Republican party. The same went for Obama and the Democrats when he was our president.

[GrumpyGran]

It's hard to get away from this tool. I should have avoided the TV. Three damn days and...

Wife-beating staffer who has no security clearance and is defended by other vile staffers until the pictures come out.

Blames the Stock Market for being bad.

Demands a parade. Yeah, because that's how hard-working military members want to spend their Saturday. I read the speculation about what it would look like and I think the thing he would want the most would be missiles. I amuse myself by imagining the look on Mattis' face when Dump tells him to make sure the military cheerleaders are in the parade. And that he wants to inspect their uniforms beforehand.

Oh, and casually announcing that he'd like a shut-down.

I do think if he gets his parade he will show up in some kind of uniform. So will Melania. And I don't doubt that he will start demanding that he be awarded medals. He'll have Mattis give him a "Greatest Military Leader" award. He'll get Tillerson to give him the "Smartest World Leader" award. Someone will have to give him the "Most Successful President" award. Maybe Ivanka can give him the "Creepiest Hair" award.

[fraurosena]

Cheer up, @GrumpyGran it's not that bad. Here's a recap of what happened in the past six weeks:

Don't forget to tune in to tomorrow's grand week finale! Which cliffhanger will the presidunce leave us with before a weekend of golfing at Mar-a-Lago? Will he make a jaw-dropping statement? What will the presidunce tweet next? Which White House staffer is at the nexus of another eye-popping scandal?
Make sure you watch the next edition of Extreme US Makeover, Trump-edition, to find out!

[Howl]

53 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

It's hard to get away from this tool. I should have avoided the TV. Three damn days and...

1. Wife-beating staffer who has no security clearance and is defended by other vile staffers until the pictures come out.
2. Blames the Stock Market for being bad.
3. Demands a parade. 
4. Oh, and casually announcing that he'd like a shut-down.

Tammy Duckworth (D- Real War Hero) will make sure he's awarded the Outstanding Cadet Bone Spurs award....

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Vanity Fair: "“He Was F---ing Pissed”: With Rob Porter Gone, the Heat on John Kelly Is Increasing"

Spoiler

A day after White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter resigned amid allegations he physically abused his ex-wives, the Trump administration is still struggling to contain the fallout. The question of who knew what, and when, is being hotly debated in the West Wing. Chief of Staff John Kelly, whose relationship with Trump has been strained in recent weeks, is taking the lion’s share of the blame, as I reported yesterday. On Wednesday night, Donald Trump vented to advisers that Kelly had not fully briefed him on Porter’s issues with women until recently, two sources told me. Trump was also not aware of the severity of the alleged abuse until yesterday, when Ivanka walked into the Oval Office and showed her father a photo published in the Daily Mail of Porter’s ex-wife with a black eye. “He was fucking pissed,” said one Republican briefed on the conversation. According to a source, Ivanka and Jared Kushner have been discussing possible chief-of-staff replacements. The problem is there’s not an obvious candidate waiting in the wings.

West Wing staffers continue to wonder why Kelly would keep the Porter allegations from the president, and why he defended Porter so aggressively when presented with allegations by the Mail. Porter’s history with women had been known to Kelly for months, a source familiar with the matter said. (Porter has been working with a temporary security clearance because the allegations surfaced in an F.B.I. background interview.) According to a source, Kelly at first pushed back when White House officials wanted him to issue a second statement walking back his initial strong defense of Kelly. Kelly ultimately wrote that he was “shocked by the new allegations.”

The crisis also raises questions about Hope Hicks’s decision-making, and whether her romantic relationship with Porter clouded her judgment. According to a source, Hicks did not get a sign off from Trump for the White House’s initial statement defending Porter, in which Kelly was quoted calling Porter a “man of true integrity.” She drafted the statement with her close friend, Kushner’s White House spokesman Josh Raffel, whom she’s known since their days working for Manhattan P.R. strategist Matthew Hiltzik. This morning, Hicks continued to defend Porter in private, a source said, telling people she thinks the allegations aren’t true. In recent weeks, Trump has been angry at Hicks for her role in approving interviews with Michael Wolff, a Republican close to the White House told me. (The White House did not respond to requests for comment.)

There is a sense that the Porter situation may finally push Trump to move against Kelly, according to several Republicans close to the White House. Last night, a source said, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski called Trump and urged him to fire Kelly.

Hicks’s job, meanwhile, seems safe, even if the president is angry with her. As Trump’s gatekeeper, she’s one of the most powerful people in the White House, protected by Trump almost like a member of the Trump family.

Well, my dear Dumpy, if you surround yourself with sycophantic idiots, you shouldn't be surprised when everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

[Destiny]

Ok, maybe I’m completely stupid, when did Trump become leader of The Republican Party? During his lunch with the russians?

I’m catching up, but as President he is in fact the leader of the party. SAD!

[Rosalie]

3 minutes ago, Destiny said:

I’m catching up, but as President he is in fact the leader of the party. SAD!

No wonder I find US politics confusing. So the leader/chairman of the party (ms. McDaniel) is not the leader after all?

[Howl]

Quote

The crisis also raises questions about Hope Hicks’s decision-making, and whether her romantic relationship with Porter clouded her judgment. 

Lewandowsky and now Porter?  What the heck?  Is this like West Wing Peyton Place?

[Cartmann99]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

The crisis also raises questions about Hope Hicks’s decision-making, and whether her romantic relationship with Porter clouded her judgment. According to a source, Hicks did not get a sign off from Trump for the White House’s initial statement defending Porter, in which Kelly was quoted calling Porter a “man of true integrity.” She drafted the statement with her close friend, Kushner’s White House spokesman Josh Raffel, whom she’s known since their days working for Manhattan P.R. strategist Matthew Hiltzik. This morning, Hicks continued to defend Porter in private, a source said, telling people she thinks the allegations aren’t true.

This is the second guy Hope's been involved with in this administration who is violent towards women. She's in complete denial about this guy, and this won't end well. 

2 hours ago, Rosalie said:

No wonder I find US politics confusing. So the leader/chairman of the party (ms. McDaniel) is not the leader after all?

As the chairwoman of the RNC, she does have power, but Trump has more.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

10 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

This is the second guy Hope's been involved with in this administration who is violent towards women. She's in complete denial about this guy, and this won't end well. 

I'd say three, if you count abusive bully Trump.  She only kneels to steam Trump's pants, but still. 

ETA to add this: What I wouldn't give to see the texts between those two star crossed lovers.  Please, Dear Rufus, You Twelve Point Buck, I implore you. I will lay a 50-pound bag of deer corn at your cloven feet if you will just make sure the hot texts transmitted on government issued devices are subpoenaed and released for the public to enjoy.  And if it's not too much to ask, evidence of sexting would satisfy the deeply prurient interests of the American public would be important to helping us understand the nature of their relationship. 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love Aunt Crabby:

[Alisamer]

Trump reminds me more of Veruca Salt every day. "I want a parade!" "Um, that's a waste of money." "But I WAAAAAAANT it!!!"

Also, healthcare. I apparently have "really good" dental insurance, despite the fact that they until a few months ago refused to pay for x-rays more than every other year, resulting in me needing two crowns that are going to cost me over $3000 out of pocket AFTER my "really good" insurance pays their part. I'm off to start selling a few things, and praying the nearly-bald tires on my car last another few months.

[GrumpyGran]

We've got a horse race! Will it be Kelly or little Hopey? Or no one.

HLN talkers are speculating. Apparently either he or someone is really angry at Hopey for coloring outside the lines. She got a bit too independent.

But Kelly is the ball-and-chain. Life for Dumpy would be easier. Firing Kelly is less dangerous for him, Kelly isn't going to talk, it wouldn't look good for him. 

Hopey might talk which gives her the edge here. Perhaps best to keep her in the fold and happy?

But there is speculation that the potential employee pool for the WH is pretty shallow, so Dump may just have to stick with the status quo and get over it.

One of Porter's ex-wives says Hopey needs to back away from him now because the stress won't sit well with him and when he's not happy, he's violent..

[GreyhoundFan]

"Breaking with tradition, Trump skips president’s written intelligence report and relies on oral briefings"

Spoiler

For much of the past year, President Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors: He rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world.

Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings. 

Reading the traditionally dense intelligence book is not Trump’s preferred “style of learning,” according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

The arrangement underscores Trump’s impatience with exhaustive classified documents that go to the commander in chief — material that he has said he prefers condensed as much as possible. But by not reading the daily briefing, the president could hamper his ability to respond to crises in the most effective manner, intelligence experts warned.

Soon after Trump took office, analysts sought to tailor their intelligence sessions for a president with a famously short attention span, who is known for taking in much of his information from the conservative Fox News Channel. The oral briefings were augmented with photos, videos and graphics.

After several months, Trump made clear he was not interested in reviewing a personal copy of the written intelligence report known as the PDB, a highly classified summary prepared before dawn to provide the president with the best update on the world’s events, according to people with knowledge of the situation.  

Administration officials defended Trump’s reliance on oral sessions and said he gets full intelligence briefings, noting that presidents have historically sought to receive the information in different ways.

Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Trump “is an avid consumer of intelligence, appreciates the hard work of his briefers and of the entire intelligence community and looks forward every day to the give and take of his intelligence briefings.”

Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement that “any notion that President Trump is not fully engaged in the PDB or does not read the briefing materials is pure fiction and is clearly not based on firsthand knowledge of the process.”

He added that Trump’s routine sessions with senior intelligence advisers “demonstrate his interest in and appreciation for the value of the intelligence provided. In fact, President Trump engages for significantly longer periods than I understand many previous presidents have done.”

The PDB, which has been described as a newspaper with the smallest circulation in the world, is drawn from material provided by U.S. spies, satellites and surveillance technology, as well as news sources and foreign intelligence agencies.

Several intelligence experts said that the president’s aversion to diving deeper into written intelligence details — the “homework” that past presidents have done to familiarize themselves with foreign policy and national security — makes both him and the country more vulnerable.

Leon Panetta, a former CIA director and defense secretary for President Barack Obama, said Trump could miss important context and nuance if he is relying solely on an oral briefing. The arrangement also increases pressure on the president’s national security team, which cannot entirely replace a well-informed commander in chief, he said.

“Something will be missed,” Panetta said. “If for some reason his instincts on what should be done are not backed up by the intelligence because he hasn’t taken the time to read that intel, it increases the risk that he will make a mistake.”

“You can have the smartest people around you — in the end it still comes down to his decision,” he added.

The top-secret intelligence report, which dates in its current form to the Johnson administration, is made up of individual “articles” written by career analysts, mostly from the CIA. The PDB is so tightly controlled that intelligence officials maintain a log to record when the briefers provide a copy of the document to a principal and when they retrieve it, several officials said.

Mark Lowenthal, a career intelligence officer who served as a CIA assistant director from 2002 to 2005, said Trump does not have to read the PDB if he is getting an extensive oral briefing. He warned, however, that a short briefing on a few select items would leave the president ill-equipped for major decisions over the long term.

“Then he’s really not getting a full intelligence briefing,” Lowenthal said. “You need to get immersed in a story over its entire course. You can’t just jump into an issue and come up to speed on the actors and the implications. The odds are pretty good that something will arise later on for which he has no intelligence basis for helping him work through it.” 

The document, while traditionally lengthy and dense, contains key insights that can create a cumulative body of knowledge — and foreshadow looming threats, intelligence professionals said. 

President George W. Bush faced a political firestorm over how closely his administration was paying attention to the PDB after it was discovered that a month before the 9/11 attacks, his briefing book had included a warning that Osama bin Laden was “determined” to attack U.S. targets using airplanes.

In the current administration, versions of the president’s written intelligence briefing are provided to at least a dozen top officials, including national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, according to people familiar with the dissemination.

Aides say Trump receives his in-person intelligence briefing nearly every day, although his publicly released schedules indicate that the sessions have been taking place about every two to three days on average in recent months, typically around 11 a.m.

One senior White House official described the Oval Office briefing as a distilled version of the sessions that senior administration officials receive earlier in the day. CIA Director Mike Pompeo usually attends the session, as does Coats.

During Trump’s briefing, a veteran intelligence official typically describes intelligence highlights contained in a shortened, written version of the PDB. Trump has rarely, if ever, requested that the document be left behind for him to read, according to people familiar with the meetings. 

Pompeo has said the president is briefed on current developments, as well as upcoming events — such as visits by foreign leaders — and longer-term strategic issues.

“The president asks hard questions,” he said in public remarks last month. “He’s deeply engaged. We'll have a rambunctious back-and-forth, all aimed at making sure we’re delivering him the truth as best we understand it.” 

Trump’s admirers say he has a unique ability to cut through conventional foreign policy wisdom and ask questions that others have long taken for granted. “Why are we even in Somalia?” or “Why can’t I just pull out of Afghanistan?” he will ask, according to officials. 

The president asks “edge” questions, said one senior administration official, meaning that he pushes his staff to question long-held assumptions about U.S. interests in the world.

Another person familiar with the briefing process said that, at times, Trump has been dismissive of his briefers. He has shaken his head, frowned and complained that the briefers were “talking down to him,” this person said.

Trump has at times demonstrated a deep distrust of the intelligence community. He has accused Obama-era intelligence chiefs of rooting against his election and exaggerating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in an effort to delegitimize his presidency.

The Washington Post reported last year that intelligence officials in some cases have included Russia-related intelligence only in the president’s daily written assessment, steering clear of it in the oral briefing in order not to upset Trump.

The last U.S. president who is believed not to have regularly reviewed the PDB was Richard Nixon. The historical record contains no references to him having read the document, although Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, received a copy each day, according to David Priess, a former CIA briefer and author of “The President’s Book of Secrets.” 

“It is not unprecedented for someone to get only an oral briefing of the PDB,” Priess said. “But it is the exception rather than the rule. And a rare exception.” 

The intelligence community prides itself on tailoring the briefing document and the oral briefing to each president’s style. Obama preferred to received the PDB on a secure iPad to review before asking questions of his briefers.  

President George W. Bush typically read the PDB first thing in the morning, with his briefer present to review the highlights and answer questions, according to former officials who briefed him.

Neither Obama nor Bush reviewed the briefing book every day, and at times they skipped a session, especially when traveling

President Ronald Reagan read the PDB every day but chose not to have a briefing from a CIA officer, said John Poindexter, who served as Reagan’s national security adviser. Reagan often discussed the briefing document in morning Oval Office meetings with his top advisers, Poindexter said. 

Trump indicated early on that he had little interest in immersing himself in detailed intelligence documents. 

“I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page,” he told Axios shortly before taking office.

During the transition, the CIA offered to give Trump the same daily intelligence briefing that Obama received, a tradition for presidents-elect. But Trump declined a daily update, opting for less frequent briefings.

“You know, I’m, like, a smart person,” Trump said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview in December 2016. “I don’t have to be told the same thing and the same words every single day for the next eight years. It could be eight years — but eight years. I don’t need that.”

At the time, Obama warned it was never wise to skip insights from intelligence professionals. 

“If you’re not getting their perspective — their detailed perspective — then you are flying blind,” he said in an interview on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

During the first year of Trump’s presidency, the format of his intelligence briefings changed.

In the early days, he received the traditional briefing sometime between 9 and 10:30 a.m., according to his publicly released schedules. Within a few months, his intelligence advisers began augmenting the sessions with maps, charts, pictures and videos, as well as “killer graphics,” as Pompeo put it at the time. 

“That’s our task, right? To deliver the material in a way that he can best understand the information we’re trying to communicate,” Pompeo told The Post in May.

The early briefing sessions had a more freewheeling quality, according to current and former administration officials. Five or more White House aides might join Trump for the briefing, in addition to his briefer and intelligence officials.

The meetings were often dominated by whatever topic most interested the president that day. Trump would discuss the news of the day or a tweet he sent about North Korea or the border wall — or anything else on his mind, two people familiar with the briefings said. 

On such days, there would only be a few minutes left — and the briefers would have barely broached the topics they came to discuss, one senior U.S. official said.

“He often goes off on tangents during the briefing and you’d have to rein him back in,” one official said.

After he joined the administration in July, Chief of Staff John F. Kelly slashed the number of people who could attend the intelligence briefings in an effort to exert more discipline over how the president consumes information, current and former officials said. 

This is what happens when the president is functionally illiterate.

[GrumpyGran]

48 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Breaking with tradition, Trump skips president’s written intelligence report and relies on oral briefings"

  Reveal hidden contents

For much of the past year, President Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors: He rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world.

Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than getting the full written document delivered to review separately each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings. 

Reading the traditionally dense intelligence book is not Trump’s preferred “style of learning,” according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

The arrangement underscores Trump’s impatience with exhaustive classified documents that go to the commander in chief — material that he has said he prefers condensed as much as possible. But by not reading the daily briefing, the president could hamper his ability to respond to crises in the most effective manner, intelligence experts warned.

Soon after Trump took office, analysts sought to tailor their intelligence sessions for a president with a famously short attention span, who is known for taking in much of his information from the conservative Fox News Channel. The oral briefings were augmented with photos, videos and graphics.

After several months, Trump made clear he was not interested in reviewing a personal copy of the written intelligence report known as the PDB, a highly classified summary prepared before dawn to provide the president with the best update on the world’s events, according to people with knowledge of the situation.  

Administration officials defended Trump’s reliance on oral sessions and said he gets full intelligence briefings, noting that presidents have historically sought to receive the information in different ways.

Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Trump “is an avid consumer of intelligence, appreciates the hard work of his briefers and of the entire intelligence community and looks forward every day to the give and take of his intelligence briefings.”

Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement that “any notion that President Trump is not fully engaged in the PDB or does not read the briefing materials is pure fiction and is clearly not based on firsthand knowledge of the process.”

He added that Trump’s routine sessions with senior intelligence advisers “demonstrate his interest in and appreciation for the value of the intelligence provided. In fact, President Trump engages for significantly longer periods than I understand many previous presidents have done.”

The PDB, which has been described as a newspaper with the smallest circulation in the world, is drawn from material provided by U.S. spies, satellites and surveillance technology, as well as news sources and foreign intelligence agencies.

Several intelligence experts said that the president’s aversion to diving deeper into written intelligence details — the “homework” that past presidents have done to familiarize themselves with foreign policy and national security — makes both him and the country more vulnerable.

Leon Panetta, a former CIA director and defense secretary for President Barack Obama, said Trump could miss important context and nuance if he is relying solely on an oral briefing. The arrangement also increases pressure on the president’s national security team, which cannot entirely replace a well-informed commander in chief, he said.

“Something will be missed,” Panetta said. “If for some reason his instincts on what should be done are not backed up by the intelligence because he hasn’t taken the time to read that intel, it increases the risk that he will make a mistake.”

“You can have the smartest people around you — in the end it still comes down to his decision,” he added.

The top-secret intelligence report, which dates in its current form to the Johnson administration, is made up of individual “articles” written by career analysts, mostly from the CIA. The PDB is so tightly controlled that intelligence officials maintain a log to record when the briefers provide a copy of the document to a principal and when they retrieve it, several officials said.

Mark Lowenthal, a career intelligence officer who served as a CIA assistant director from 2002 to 2005, said Trump does not have to read the PDB if he is getting an extensive oral briefing. He warned, however, that a short briefing on a few select items would leave the president ill-equipped for major decisions over the long term.

“Then he’s really not getting a full intelligence briefing,” Lowenthal said. “You need to get immersed in a story over its entire course. You can’t just jump into an issue and come up to speed on the actors and the implications. The odds are pretty good that something will arise later on for which he has no intelligence basis for helping him work through it.” 

The document, while traditionally lengthy and dense, contains key insights that can create a cumulative body of knowledge — and foreshadow looming threats, intelligence professionals said. 

President George W. Bush faced a political firestorm over how closely his administration was paying attention to the PDB after it was discovered that a month before the 9/11 attacks, his briefing book had included a warning that Osama bin Laden was “determined” to attack U.S. targets using airplanes.

In the current administration, versions of the president’s written intelligence briefing are provided to at least a dozen top officials, including national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, according to people familiar with the dissemination.

Aides say Trump receives his in-person intelligence briefing nearly every day, although his publicly released schedules indicate that the sessions have been taking place about every two to three days on average in recent months, typically around 11 a.m.

One senior White House official described the Oval Office briefing as a distilled version of the sessions that senior administration officials receive earlier in the day. CIA Director Mike Pompeo usually attends the session, as does Coats.

During Trump’s briefing, a veteran intelligence official typically describes intelligence highlights contained in a shortened, written version of the PDB. Trump has rarely, if ever, requested that the document be left behind for him to read, according to people familiar with the meetings. 

Pompeo has said the president is briefed on current developments, as well as upcoming events — such as visits by foreign leaders — and longer-term strategic issues.

“The president asks hard questions,” he said in public remarks last month. “He’s deeply engaged. We'll have a rambunctious back-and-forth, all aimed at making sure we’re delivering him the truth as best we understand it.” 

Trump’s admirers say he has a unique ability to cut through conventional foreign policy wisdom and ask questions that others have long taken for granted. “Why are we even in Somalia?” or “Why can’t I just pull out of Afghanistan?” he will ask, according to officials. 

The president asks “edge” questions, said one senior administration official, meaning that he pushes his staff to question long-held assumptions about U.S. interests in the world.

Another person familiar with the briefing process said that, at times, Trump has been dismissive of his briefers. He has shaken his head, frowned and complained that the briefers were “talking down to him,” this person said.

Trump has at times demonstrated a deep distrust of the intelligence community. He has accused Obama-era intelligence chiefs of rooting against his election and exaggerating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in an effort to delegitimize his presidency.

The Washington Post reported last year that intelligence officials in some cases have included Russia-related intelligence only in the president’s daily written assessment, steering clear of it in the oral briefing in order not to upset Trump.

The last U.S. president who is believed not to have regularly reviewed the PDB was Richard Nixon. The historical record contains no references to him having read the document, although Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, received a copy each day, according to David Priess, a former CIA briefer and author of “The President’s Book of Secrets.” 

“It is not unprecedented for someone to get only an oral briefing of the PDB,” Priess said. “But it is the exception rather than the rule. And a rare exception.” 

The intelligence community prides itself on tailoring the briefing document and the oral briefing to each president’s style. Obama preferred to received the PDB on a secure iPad to review before asking questions of his briefers.  

President George W. Bush typically read the PDB first thing in the morning, with his briefer present to review the highlights and answer questions, according to former officials who briefed him.

Neither Obama nor Bush reviewed the briefing book every day, and at times they skipped a session, especially when traveling

President Ronald Reagan read the PDB every day but chose not to have a briefing from a CIA officer, said John Poindexter, who served as Reagan’s national security adviser. Reagan often discussed the briefing document in morning Oval Office meetings with his top advisers, Poindexter said. 

Trump indicated early on that he had little interest in immersing himself in detailed intelligence documents. 

“I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don’t need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page,” he told Axios shortly before taking office.

During the transition, the CIA offered to give Trump the same daily intelligence briefing that Obama received, a tradition for presidents-elect. But Trump declined a daily update, opting for less frequent briefings.

“You know, I’m, like, a smart person,” Trump said in a “Fox News Sunday” interview in December 2016. “I don’t have to be told the same thing and the same words every single day for the next eight years. It could be eight years — but eight years. I don’t need that.”

At the time, Obama warned it was never wise to skip insights from intelligence professionals. 

“If you’re not getting their perspective — their detailed perspective — then you are flying blind,” he said in an interview on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”

During the first year of Trump’s presidency, the format of his intelligence briefings changed.

In the early days, he received the traditional briefing sometime between 9 and 10:30 a.m., according to his publicly released schedules. Within a few months, his intelligence advisers began augmenting the sessions with maps, charts, pictures and videos, as well as “killer graphics,” as Pompeo put it at the time. 

“That’s our task, right? To deliver the material in a way that he can best understand the information we’re trying to communicate,” Pompeo told The Post in May.

The early briefing sessions had a more freewheeling quality, according to current and former administration officials. Five or more White House aides might join Trump for the briefing, in addition to his briefer and intelligence officials.

The meetings were often dominated by whatever topic most interested the president that day. Trump would discuss the news of the day or a tweet he sent about North Korea or the border wall — or anything else on his mind, two people familiar with the briefings said. 

On such days, there would only be a few minutes left — and the briefers would have barely broached the topics they came to discuss, one senior U.S. official said.

“He often goes off on tangents during the briefing and you’d have to rein him back in,” one official said.

After he joined the administration in July, Chief of Staff John F. Kelly slashed the number of people who could attend the intelligence briefings in an effort to exert more discipline over how the president consumes information, current and former officials said. 

This is what happens when the president is functionally illiterate.

This isn't really anything new but it's a reminder. This is it, this is it in a nutshell. This is why we all live under a constant veil of anxiety and anger.

I was going to quote parts of this but the whole thing is horrifying. He's a petulant, inattentive, spoiled child with a short attention span and an inability to comprehend anything other than his own desires. McMasters and Pompeo are the only things that stand between us and annihilation. If something bad is coming quickly we need to hope it happens while he is in "executive" time so he won't interfere with the response. How unbelievable.

[47of74]

This isn't really anything new but it's a reminder. This is it, this is it in a nutshell. This is why we all live under a constant veil of anxiety and anger.

I was going to quote parts of this but the whole thing is horrifying. He's a petulant, inattentive, spoiled child with a short attention span and an inability to comprehend anything other than his own desires. McMasters and Pompeo are the only things that stand between us and annihilation. If something bad is coming quickly we need to hope it happens while he is in "executive" time so he won't interfere with the response. How unbelievable.

 

Maybe his baby sitters advisers should give Fornicate Face a coupon for one free Big Mac every time he reads the briefing document.

[AmazonGrace]

Quote

He added that Trump’s routine sessions with senior intelligence advisers “demonstrate his interest in and appreciation for the value of the intelligence provided. In fact, President Trump engages for significantly longer periods than I understand many previous presidents have done.”

Five bucks says this is because he is not able to comprehend any of it the first time he hears it.

[GrumpyGran]

15 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

Five bucks says this is because he is not able to comprehend any of it the first time he hears it.

No, that's a blatant lie on Coats' part. Notice he says "...than I understand many previous presidents have done." That's right, Dumpy engages for much longer than William Henry Harrison did. James Garfield's engagement in intel info dropped off sharply about four months into his term. Oh, Danny, you clever lettuce-spinner.

[Cartmann99]

3 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

One of Porter's ex-wives says Hopey needs to back away from him now because the stress won't sit well with him and when he's not happy, he's violent..

Sadly, I doubt that Hope is going to listen to those who are trying to warn her of where this is headed. 

Molesters and abusers always look out for each other. 

6 hours ago, Howl said:

I'd say three, if you count abusive bully Trump.  She only kneels to steam Trump's pants, but still. 

Good point, @Howl.

[47of74]

6 hours ago, Howl said:

I'd say three, if you count abusive bully Trump.  She only kneels to steam Trump's pants, but still. 

My question is if she has to get in line behind all the other people who drop on their knees to do Herr Orange a - shall we say  - service every time he unzips his fly?  That's gotta be a big ass long line of women and men.