Security Briefings

I would assume that the intelligence briefers are smart enough to realize that the President is a busy person and that the PDB should not be repetitive.

You wrote:

I quoted this in my post, too.

You’re over the line with this. Leave personal insults out of it.

Indeed you did. It just does not resemble what you addressed. Saying that people may now have questions is not the same thing as asserting that people have question, or found their costs going up. See, that word “may” that you left out of the quote is quite important.

I am simply stating that Trump is going to be in charge of the nation selling these things, if he wants to state they are far too expensive, buyers may have questions. It is not how you normally expect a businessman to pitch sales.

Isn’t this what Pence is for? :slight_smile:

I am not a native speaker, and would be grateful if you’d explain how it is somehow an insult to point out that out?

So we might end up with Ben Carson deciding the fate of the human race. A man whose religious beliefs embrace the doctrine of Annihilationism*.

*It’s a joke. I’m aware Annihilationism means something else.

At least we’ll have a few hours while he struggles to finish the sentence. And then a few more while he looks for his luggage.

I wouldn’t assume that. Two reasons. 1) if their job is to produce a daily briefing then they’re going to produce a daily briefing. If there’s anything major going on they’ll focus on that, but if there isn’t then they’ll report what they’ve got. 2) most people tend to overvalue the importance and interest of whatever it is that they’re doing.

If you wish to discuss the moderating decision, please feel free to start an ATMB thread. Let’s not derail this thread with that conversation.

I think Trump is being quite reasonable in skipping the briefings if he finds them not helpful. Obsessing over any one part of the job is a bad idea for a senior executive.

That said, if I were doing that job, I would follow Obama’s practice and get them in hardcopy (on an iPad as I understand it) to read every day. There is an advantage to detecting trends by seeing the material each day-if the reports are read critically.

While I neither trust nor respect Trump, in this case I see him acting quite reasonably. He is the President after all, in charge of a lot more than what the intelligence community is interested in.

And lets not forget President Kennedy’s comment about his intelligence briefings (I realize that was a long time ago): he often got just as much current information by reading the N. Y. Times the next day.

This. Many Americans rely on FoxNews or the W.S. Journal telling them what is important. How’s that working out for all y’all? Trump may not watch FoxNews and instead rely on Jared Kushner, Vladimir Putin, Steve Bannon and John Bolton to tell him what’s important. Is that an improvement?

I wouldn’t worry though about Trump coming up to speed in a few minutes when the shooting starts. He’s really really smart, knows more than the generals.

Plus, these briefings probably make him feel stupid. They’d be full of unfamiliar people, places, organizations, and jargon. Not knowing the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah is just the tip of the iceberg.

“Wait…you’re saying Iraq and Iran are two different countries?..I thought it was a typo.”

Again, I would expect that those giving the briefings would be sensitive to the knowledge or the lack thereof in the person they’re briefing, especially early in a presidency and especially in this case where we’ve selected a rank amateur for the job.

There are ways one can discuss these things without making the briefee feel like an idiot.

Unfortunately, the most effective step is to elect someone who isn’t an idiot.