He hasn’t even read the books his ghostwriters write for him and he loves nothing more than himself. So why would he read something as dull and boring as the PDB?
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Monday claimed Trump hadn’t been briefed on the intelligence that Russia placed bounties on U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But when pressed on whether the intel appeared in Trump’s written President’s Daily Brief, or PDB, she declined to directly respond.
There appears to be a reason for that. The Washington Post and others have confirmed that the information has indeed appeared in the PDB. The Post reports that two sources say “the intelligence was considered significant and credible enough that it was included in the President’s Daily Brief.” The New York Times is also reporting that information appeared in the PDB in late February. The Associated Press reported that it appeared in the PDB as far back as early 2019. And GOP lawmakers who were briefed Monday at the White House also appeared to grant that the info was probably in the PDB. “I believe it may have been,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) told NBC News.
The first thing to note here is the semantic game the White House appears to be playing. They’re suggesting that the President’s Daily Brief document doesn’t itself constitute a “briefing” — despite having “brief” in its name — but that a briefing must be done orally.
That’s quite the parse. And as longtime Times national security reporter David Sanger notes, it’s not how this works.
But aside from that, it’s worth distilling the White House’s apparent defense down to its basest form, which is that Trump may have actually been provided the intelligence, but he didn’t actually consume it.
And that makes complete sense, given everything we know about Trump and his approach to both detailed intelligence and — more importantly in this moment — to intel about Russia specifically.
The Post reported in early 2018 that Trump doesn’t read the PDBs
Trump reads twitter ad that’s it. And half the time it seems that he only reads half of the posts he re-tweets. And he already knows everything anyway so what’s the point?
Still, this seems like an odd defense. If the best they can do is say that the president doesn’t read his daily briefing so it isn’t his fault if he doesn’t know what’s in it, well …