America is a failed state

President Trump has blamed many others for his administration’s flawed response to the coronavirus: China, governors, the Obama administration, the World Health Organization. In recent weeks, he has also faulted the information he received from an obscure analyst who delivers his intelligence briefings.

  NYT

Everybody but him. The buck doesn't stop here.

Mr. Trump has insisted that the intelligence agencies gave him inadequate warnings about the threat of the virus, describing it as “not a big deal.” Intelligence officials have publicly backed him, acknowledging that Beth Sanner, the analyst who regularly briefs the president, underplayed the dangers when she first mentioned the virus to him on Jan. 23.

Perhaps because she was well aware of his treatment of women and the fact that he doesn't want to hear bad news. Or maybe the public backing by intel officers is BS.

“It’s hard for me to imagine her saying something like ‘not so deadly,’” said Greg Treverton, a former National Intelligence Council chairman who worked with Ms. Sanner. “But it is conceivable that is what Trump heard and it wasn’t exactly said.”

Possibly. Also possibly he's lying.

Mr. Trump, who has mounted a yearslong attack on the intelligence agencies, is particularly difficult to brief on critical national security matters, according to interviews with 10 current and former intelligence officials familiar with his intelligence briefings.

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 he hears from the former casino magnate Steve Wynn, the retired golfer Gary Player or Christopher Ruddy, the conservative media executive.

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.

TV lights cameras?

Mr. Trump does not appear to read the [intelligence briefing] document or to otherwise prepare beyond bringing in information he picked up from personal sources.

“How do you know?” is Mr. Trump’s common refrain during his 30- to 50-minute briefings two or three times a week. He counters with his own statistics on issues where he has strong views, like trade or NATO. Directly challenging him, even when his numbers are wrong, appears to erode Mr. Trump’s trust, according to former officials, and ultimately he stops listening.

[...]

Intelligence briefings are among the most important entries on a president’s calendar. The briefer, always a top C.I.A. analyst, delivers the latest secrets and best insights from the 17 intelligence agencies. The oral briefings to Mr. Trump are based on the President’s Daily Brief, the crown jewels of intelligence reports, which draws from spywork to make sophisticated analytic predictions about longstanding adversaries, unfolding plots and emerging crises around the world.

But getting Mr. Trump to remember information, even if he seems to be listening, can be all but impossible, especially if it runs counter to his worldview, former officials said.

[...]



H.R. McMaster, the former national security adviser, would sometimes interject during intelligence briefings to correct Mr. Trump, but the president would ignore him. The corrections contributed to the president’s growing irritation with Mr. McMaster, according to people familiar with the briefings. Mr. McMaster, who was replaced in 2018 after 13 months in the post, declined to comment.

[...]

Working to keep Mr. Trump’s interest exhausted and burned out his first briefer, Ted Gistaro, two former officials said. Mr. Gistaro did not always know what to expect and would sometimes have to brief an erratic and angry president upset over news reports, the officials said.

Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, said that the idea that Mr. Trump was difficult in intelligence briefings was “flat wrong.”

Richard Grenell knows on which side his bread is buttered.

“When you are there, you see a president questioning the assumptions and using the opportunity to broaden the discussion to include real-world perspectives,” Mr. Grenell said.

Is Richard Grenell a Madison Avenue alumnus?

“The president is laser-focused on the issues at hand and asks probing questions throughout the briefings — it reminds me of appearing before a well-prepared appellate judge and defending the case,” Robert C. O’Brien, the national security adviser, said in response to a request for comment.

Mr. O'Brien would also like to keep his job.

Mr. Trump has long harbored a suspicion of the intelligence agencies, viewing them as part of the so-called deep state intent on undermining his victory in 2016 by revealing that Russia developed a preference for his campaign as it interfered in the election. His distrust has persisted; he publicly belittled his intelligence chiefs last year after a congressional hearing where they offered assessments at odds with the White House, directing them to “go back to school.”

[...]

Think of Mr. Trump as a performer who is always on, even in the confines of a classified briefing, Joseph Maguire, the former acting director of national intelligence, has advised other officials. Mr. Maguire has told briefers they need to know their audience and understand that Mr. Trump honed his style on reality television.

And there is nothing real about reality television.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.