President Donald Trump is getting very few intelligence briefings. The President was asked by reporters Monday about the state of his National Security Advisor’s health. Robert O’Brien was just diagnosed with coronavirus.
“I haven’t seen him lately,” was Trump’s very typical response, distancing himself from anyone with the virus.
Given that Trump hasn’t seen his National Security Advisor lately, NCRM took the opportunity to once again go through the President’s official public calendar, and once again it reveals a President who has countless hours to tweet (36 tweets or retweets Monday morning alone) but little time for what are generally expected to be daily intelligence briefings.
Trump has claimed he doesn’t need to receive the President’s daily intelligence briefing, because he’s a “smart person.”
Trump has had just three “daily” intelligence briefings during the month of July. The last one was five days ago on Wednesday, July 22. He also had scheduled an intelligence briefing on July 7 and July 16.
(Note: these are scheduled. There is no way to know if Trump canceled any or all of them.)
In the month of June Trump had a mere seven intelligence briefings scheduled, on the 2nd, 4th, 10th, 16th, 19th, 26th, and 30th.
Trump also had seven intelligence briefings scheduled in May, on the 1st, the 6th, the 12th, the 15th, the 20th, the 22nd, and the 29th.
For April Trump had eight intelligence briefings scheduled: on the 1st, 3rd, 8th, 14th, 17th, 22nd, 24th, and 28th.