Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:49 pm
Donald Trump likes his intelligence briefings short and in bullet form. Super short, one page if it’s in writing.
“Trump said he likes his briefings short, ideally one-page if it’s in writing. ‘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. That I can tell you,'” Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei reported in Axios, based on an interview with president-elect Donald Trump that took place in Trump Tower on Tuesday.
Noting that Trump seemed “unusually subdued” after what an a top adviser told them was a “bumpy few days inside Trump Tower” as he was “lowering expectations,” they noted that Trump seemed “humbled” by the security briefings.
“I’ve had a lot of briefings that are very … I don’t want to say ‘scary,’ because I’ll solve the problems,” Trump told Axios. “But … we have some big enemies out there in this country and we have some very big enemies — very big and, in some cases, strong enemies.”
In late November, NBC discovered that that Trump was skipping intel briefings, “President-elect Donald Trump has had only two intelligence briefings since he won the election more than two weeks ago, intelligence sources told NBC News on Wednesday – a much lower number than his predecessors had and fewer even than Vice President-elect Mike Pence.”
This alarmed Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who in early December said on CBS’s Face the Nation (reported by The Hill) that a president needs daily briefings, “So that you have an understanding as to … what’s happening in the world, what are the crises you have to pay attention to, and what steps do you have to take in order to deal with those crises.”
Then in mid December, Trump said he didn’t need intelligence briefings because he is “a smart person.” He said in an interview on Fox News that he only needed an intel briefing once a week, really he only wanted to be bothered if something has changed.
“I say, ‘If something should change from this point, immediately call me. I’m available on one-minute’s notice,’” the president-elect said on Fox News, reported by Time. “I don’t have to be told—you know, I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.”
Josh Zeitz writing in Politico reminded everyone of that time “When Daily Intelligence Briefings Prevented a Nuclear War.”
Zietz concluded that the person in the highest office in the land needs to pay attention to detail, to be engaged and armed with sufficient knowledge and context to ask the right questions. It is not a job that can be delegated, he wrote. “Trump—who will be the least-experienced president in modern history—has surrounded himself by retired generals and foreign policy hawks. That’s his prerogative. But Americans require a commander in chief who is informed, astute and engaged—armed with sufficient knowledge and context to ask the right questions and provide the right pushback. There is no delegating this job to a vice president or senior White House aide. As John Kennedy learned the hard way, only one individual bears responsibility.
There is no way intelligence briefings can be put into bullet form, and no, intelligent people do not require information to be condensed thusly. In fact, the more intelligent a person is the more nuance and complexity their mind can handle. And an intelligence briefing is nothing if not complex.
Donald Trump is known for his short attention span and inability to stay focused. Politico Magazine reported that his lack of preparation has hurt business deals and depositions, according to people who have worked with him.
In the same article in Politico Magazine, saying this doesn’t mean Trump isn’t smart, but he isn’t at his best when asked to dwell on a topic, Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio said, “I think he’s definitely got attention deficit disorder.”
Is Trump cunning? No doubt. But we haven’t seen evidence of the kind of intelligence that can even identify nuance, and this is reinforced by his dismay over the discovery that the intelligence briefings are scary because we have big enemies. Why does he think other politicians don’t run around shooting their mouth off with inflammatory rhetoric? Or how about asking why he never investigated why every modern day president who takes office seems humbled and a bit overwhelmed in the beginning. A smart person would have gathered that information before running for office and concluded that, at the very least, there is some heavy business going on.
A bullet point list is not going to cut it and a smart person wouldn’t want an intelligence briefing condensed in such a form because the nuance would be lost. The detail that averted a nuclear war could well be lost in a bullet point list.
This is our next President. Wants his intelligence briefings in bullet form condensed to one page if possible, and has just figured out that there is some very serious, scary business to be done in this job.
Intelligence briefings for dummies, 101, please. ‘Cuz that’s how to Make America Great Again.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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