Trump’s ‘fact-free’ approach poses briefing challenges, CIA report says | Donald Trump

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Donald Trump’s “fact-free” approach to the presidency has created unprecedented challenges for the intelligence officials responsible for briefing him, according to a newly released account from the CIA.

The 45th president’s chaotic and freewheeling style, and his reluctance to read anything put in front of him, resulted in the presidential daily briefing, or PDB-an important security update including information about potential threat to the US- which is more regularly delivered to Vice- Instead, President Mike Pence, according to the report.

In the middle of Trump’s term in office, his briefings were reduced to two weekly sessions of 45 minutes each. The briefings were completely halted after the deadly Jan. 6 uprising, initiated by Trump urging his supporters to march on the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to undo his defeat by Joe Biden.

The review comes in a 40-page unclassified update to the CIA’s Getting to Know the President, a publication that chronicles efforts to give president-elects brief time through transition periods and in office for each administration. since 1952.

“For the intelligence community (IC), Trump’s move is by far and most difficult in its historical experience of briefing new presidents,” concludes the new chapter, posted on the CIA website.

“It looks like Trump [Richard] Nixon, suspicious and uncertain about the intelligence process, but not like Nixon in the way he reacted. Instead of closing the IC, Trump contacted it but attacked it in public. “

Nixon, who resigned in 1974 after the Watergate scandal, refused to receive any intelligence from the CIA and received briefings instead from trusted insiders such as his national security adviser and later secretary of state, Henry Kissinger.

Trump regularly lashed out at intelligence officials and popularly chose to believe Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, in agencies including the CIA that concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

The author of the CIA report, retired career intelligence officer John L Helgerson, said the briefers achieved “only limited success” in their mission to deliver timely and relevant intelligence to Trump and establish a working relationship with him.

Pence, on the other hand, is “an avid, six -day -a -week reader” who strives to try to keep Trump focused. The vice president encouraged briefers to “lean on maps” in graphics-heavy presentations that were shorter than those shown in Trump’s predecessors, and “sometimes ask top questions” in joint sessions with Trump “for the president to hear his concerns”.

Pence’s efforts have been more unsuccessful, Helgerson suggests. James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence, said Trump was “easy to fly on tangents”, according to the CIA report, and said “there may be [only] eight or nine minutes of real intelligence in an hour of discussion ”.

Additionally, Clapper said, while “the IC works on evidence, Trump is ‘absurd – it doesn’t cut the evidence on him’.”

Helgerson wrote: “Trump prefers the briefer to take the lead and summarize key points and important points from the days since they last had a session. The PDB is published daily, but because Trump receives a briefing only two or three times a week, he relies on the briefer to orally summarize the importance of the most important issues.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the topics of Trump’s focus are China and developments involving Russia and Ukraine. The first of the former president’s two impeachments was for pressing Ukraine to investigate Biden, then his likely opponent in the 2020 elections. He was also investigated for alleged complicity with Russia.

“Some subjects and places in the world are notable in their relative absence,” the CIA report said. “As for Europe, only the budget issues of NATO, Turkey and the approaching elections in France and Germany have sparked a lot of discussion. Latin America, Africa, and southeast Asia have largely gone unnoticed.”

Overall, Helgerson believes, the briefing process barely survived Trump’s presidency.

“[He] publicly criticized the outgoing directors of national intelligence and the CIA, and despised the important work and integrity of the intelligence agencies. In the beginning, it was clear that the IC was in a difficult time.

“The system works, but it’s hard.”

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