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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Open Thread: Intelligence — Trump’s Not A Fan

Open Thread: Intelligence — Trump’s Not A Fan

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… A team of intelligence analysts has been prepared to deliver daily briefings on global developments and security threats to Trump in the two weeks since he won. Vice President-elect Mike Pence, by contrast, has set aside time for intelligence briefings almost every day since the election, officials said…

Trump has yet to meet with Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. or other top intelligence officials — aside from an unofficial meeting with embattled Adm. Mike Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, who is rumored to be a top candidate to replace Clapper. Trump has greeted a parade of other officials auditioning for Cabinet positions, but also met with Indian business partners, television news anchors and figures in the entertainment industry.

President-Elect Smallgloves is busy with the latest installment of his (un) reality show, while the man known to his Repub colleagues as ‘Mike Dense’ tries to bone up on the difference between all those ferrn places and their leaders. As Betty would remind us: Not Normal.

Of course, if Trump’s suffering from the familial Alzheimers that took his father, it’s probably just as well he’s avoiding (his kids are steering him away from) any information he might inadvertently repeat at the wrong time. Which makes me feel so much better, if you know what I mean.

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  1. 1.

    Corner Stone

    He doesn’t want to know. That way he can lie and just say whatever pops into his brainpan at any time, depending on the audience.
    Not that knowing would stop him from lying. But being scared enough to shit your pants when confronted with the actual info in a PDB may slow even this sociopath down a bit.

  2. 2.

    Kryptik

    Said it on Twitter, but Trump refusing intelligence is a succinct summary of this whole thing conception to election.

  3. 3.

    Corner Stone

    The man is simply not mentally capable of holding a concurrent succession of thoughts in his brain.

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I’m not sure which is more distressing: that Trump isn’t receiving security briefings, or that Pence is.

  7. 7.

    Major Major Major Major

    What terrifies me, among other things, is that it only takes one attack for Trump to go full Reichstag fire, and that with the level of competence they’re displaying another attack is inevitable.

  8. 8.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    He doesn’t want to get any briefings because he thinks he already knows everything he needs to know. He has a great brain. He has great instincts. Learning all this shit that these pointy heads want to tell him about won’t do him any good. He doesn’t need that shit. He’s so much smarter than everybody else. Listening to a bunch of nerds spout off about who knows what is a waste of his time.

    Holy fuck. We still have two more whole months before this loser is sworn in and I’m already sick of this fucking administration. Jesus Christ…

  9. 9.

    Zinsky

    Watch another 9-11 happen under this dickhead. Bush was warned and warned and warned about impending aircraft hijackings and did nothing. Absolutely. Nothing. The worst part will be that Trump will likely suffer no ill effects from another terrorist attack happening on his watch and the Democrats will likely lose more Congressional seats, as a result. Republicans never, ever are held accountable for thier negligence!

  10. 10.

    Elie

    What is worse is that he is metastasizing his incompetence and insanity through his appointments. Even if he is somehow removed from office the cancer of his appointments and their control over our major government agencies will persist. We have to be ready for radical surgery and many courses of aggressive chemotherapy to have a chance to truly live again. Let’s face what we have rather than pretending that we can just restructure the messaging of the Democrats. We have to be ready for major surgery

  11. 11.

    Kyle

    @Zinsky:

    Republicans benefit from government failure — terrorist attacks, poor education, crime, budget crises — which is why it will happen over and over under their maladministration.

    I know guys like Trump — they know everything, and they can’t shut up telling you about it. Everything revolves around their personal whims, you can’t teach them anything and they can’t be bothered processing any information they don’t like. Horrifying traits in a powerful person who can isolate themselves in a bubble of sycophants, security and immunity.

  12. 12.

    Elie

    @Zinsky:
    And think about the next FEMA event and the incompetent hacks he is salting into the agencies. Hate is not nearly strong enough to describe what I feel for the white suicide monsters who destroyed us with their racist fantasies. The Chinese are shaking their heads that the fates could be so kind to them as to confer the self destruction of its strongest opponent.

  13. 13.

    Tim C.

    @Zinsky: Bush had something that Trump isn’t going to get and never will have. There was a general attitude that Bush From about 2001-2005) was functionally competent. Not by us, but by the country at large. Trump isn’t getting that. Ever. He will *NEVER* go above 50% approval. Ever. Not only that, Obama’s basic competence (and successful strike on Osama Bin Laden) give a strong contrast between the last eight years and the shitshow to come. Have faith, have hope.

  15. 15.

    ChrisGrrr

    @Corner Stone: It’s clear enough why those, uh, closest to him wouldn’t confirm any such troubles.
    I don’t wish anything like Alzheimer’s on anybody. The possibility of acceptance that keeping crucial confidences quiet is a real challenge had not occurred to me before.
    It’s rather easy to find evidence supporting a theory (the abundant behaviors of chronic narcissism, for example)… and daunting that indisputable proof might not even be enough to get the right people to act.

  19. 19.

    Elie

    @Tim C.:
    It’s not Trump. He is one thing. It’s his appointments, the Congress and his monstrous supporters made up of racists, white nationalists and yes, I guess a few so called “decent ” people too stupid not to poison all of us as they drink their cyanide Kool Aid

  21. 21.

    Elie

    @Major Major Major Major:
    Except the level of evident incompetence will not support even a brief period of support. He will probably be most focused on suppressing criticism than actually dealing with any emergency through effective management. If we have a catastrophe we will need to save ourselves best we can

  26. 26.

    The Dangerman

    @Major Major Major Major:

    ….another attack is inevitable.

    Feature, not bug.

    ….to go full Reichstag fire.

    Feature, not bug (especially if Trump can personally profit from building all of the internment camps).

  27. 27.

    RandomMonster

    He doesn’t need intelligence briefings — his Russian advisors will tell him what his foreign policy goals should be.

  28. 28.

    Helen

    Oh yea. My clothes are dry but super wrinkled. I have to iron sheets??? OH HEY NO. I DON’T THINK SO!!!

  32. 32.

    Lizzy L

    From a post by Erik Loomis on LGM:

    Very bad people are taking power. They have no intention on ever giving up power again if they can help it. It’s now when we have to stand up, as well as when, after a terrorist attack from a Muslim, the Sessions Department of Justice orders concentration camps for American Muslims.

    I have no doubt he’d go there. Remember Guantanamo.

  33. 33.

    SenyorDave

    It seems to me at one point some reporter should commit an act of journalism and ask the predator-in-chief about his recent compliments of Obama after 8 years of questioning his citizenship, implying he is an affirmative action president, and generally calling him the worst president in history. Just the fact that Obama hasn’t reached across a table and strangled the POS indicated to me that Obama is the most controlled person imaginable.

  38. 38.

    ET

    Given all that has gone on, it occurs to me that the flashy, press and PR related aspects are Trump’s to take care of everything is on Pence’s plate. Neither is ideal or even good.

  39. 39.

    SenyorDave

    @ChrisGrrr: I don’t wish anything like Alzheimer’s on anybody.

    I wouldn’t either but it certainly would not keep me up at night. He is going to make millions of people’s lives worse, and they will be the most vulnerable. The disabled and their families, the poor including the working poor, Muslims who will be officially “undesirables” based on his appointees, and countless others. And not accidentally, he is a malevolent person. I think the idea of Ivanka Trump having to wipe Donald clean might be karma.

  41. 41.

    Lizzy L

    @SenyorDave: Assumes fact not in evidence, namely that T gives a good goddam about his inconsistencies, or that he would be embarrassed by such a question. He Does Not Care. His positions are simply negotiating points, to be changed and amended depending on how it would benefit him. Do not look for logic, consistency, a philosophy of governance, or clarity from this man: it’s not there. It will not be there.

  42. 42.

    Lurking Canadian

    He doesn’t even listen to the briefings? I get not listening to their advice–he is after all the smartest smarty-pants who ever smarted–but if he doesn’t even listen to the information, how is he going to decide whom to bomb? Hang a Mercator projection on the wall and start throwing darts?

    I have no doubt he’d go there. Remember Guantanamo.

    On that cheery subject, I have this persistent low-grade fear that he’ll order Obama’a arrest immediately after he swears the oath. He’s still got the Patriot Act, and he’s already said he thinks Obama founded ISIS, so…

  44. 44.

    BBA

    I expect Trump to ask to be declared incompetent under the 25th Amendment. This will let him be President without having to do any of that nasty boring presidenting.

  45. 45.

    Poopyman

    From Digby, a piece called “Survival Advice for the New Reality”:

    I posted a piece the other day called “Him” by Timothy Snyder, a professor of History at Yale. If you missed it, I urge you to read it.

    Snyder has posted this on his Facebook page that is equally evocative and important:
    Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. Now is a good time to do so. Here are twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adapted to the circumstances of today.

    Go here and read them all.

  46. 46.

    PsiFighter37

    What an idiot. This is the only thing I am glad Pence is doing – presumably he is not stupid enough to let an attack happen.

    Or he is. I don’t know.

    Happy Thanksgiving

  47. 47.

    germy

    An updated Thanksgiving prayer

    To David Bowie in hope he is still alive.
    Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2016.

    Thanks for McRib and artisanal burgers, destined to be shat out through wholesome American guts.

    Thanks for a constitution to litigate and dismantle.

    Thanks for the internet to provide a modicum of anger and abuse.

    Thanks for fake news to shill and spin, leaving the truth to rot.

    Thanks for euphemisms for white supremacy.

    Thanks for the American dream, vulgarized and falsified until the bare lies shone through.

    Thanks again for the KKK, for militarized police still feelin’ their notches.

    For congressional Republicans, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.

    Thanks for “All Lives Matter” stickers.

    Thanks for ignoring AIDS until it was too late.

    Thanks for rendition and domestic surveillance.

    Thanks for a country where everyone’s always checking their tweets.

    Thanks for a media that stinks.

    Yes, thanks for all the memories — hands up, don’t shoot!

    You’re still a headache, and you’re still at war.

    Thanks for Donald Trump.

    Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

  48. 48.

    Mikefromarlington

    Hey Helen. I’m a yankee in Ireland too! Dublin county.

    I miss having a good dryer too so I can feel your pain.

  50. 50.

    ChrisGrrr

    @SenyorDave: Understood. Agreed.
    There are just too many GOP power-mongers willing to say or do anything to find the undoing of any one person to be, er, a game changer.
    I don’t know how we fill the Legislature with enough actual public servants, but we have to plug away at it…

  51. 51.

    germy

    An older one from the Rude Pundit

    So I watch briefly and I get pissed and then I just feel broken again. Hell, it’s better than the nausea I get, triggered by Trump’s voice. I’m guessing that it comes from the helplessness of the situation, the feeling that we can’t change this, along with the feeling that we did this to ourselves. I knew the nation was racist and dumb. I just didn’t know how racist and how dumb. Now I do.

    I have thought about how ridiculously wrong so many of us had been, we who blog and pontificate and punditize, rudely or cleanly. And I was especially angry at myself for not listening to an especially wise person. That’d be me back in 2008, when I said one reason that I was supporting Barack Obama over Clinton was because “somewhere in some cellar in some Little Rock or DC mansion, there’s a machine that’s been whirring its gears on low for the last seven years that’s getting greased up and ready to kick into full speed once more, and it’s aching to chew up Clinton, ready to get sticky with her blood and bones, for once it’s really chugging, that fucker needs to be fed, ready to spew once again to willing, slavering media dogs who lap up that anti-Clinton vomit like it’s kibble from Walter Cronkite’s ass.” I knew exactly what would happen. But I let myself think that it wouldn’t. And I don’t blame Clinton. I blame pretty much everyone except her.

  53. 53.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    Speaking of intelligence and making the world a better and safer and more transparent place, hey, Assange, you planning on doing any of that crack investigation work you’re so well known for, and releasing the dirt on Trump and his administration? You’ve already got some issues and suspects to look in on…

    Julian?…

    You there?….

  55. 55.

    Mike J

    Mom update. Echo showed pericardial effusion. Going to cath lab in the next hour to reenact the scene from Pulp Fiction.

  57. 57.

    JPL

    @Corner Stone: Trump wants to work with Syria and Russia, and the intelligence briefings, might suggest a different path to take.
    I definitely agree with your comment also.

  58. 58.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @Mike J:

    Best wishes… I “enjoyed” Thanksgiving solo in a Sacramento hospital 20 years ago while my father underwent open-heart surgery. He came through with flying colors, and I hope your mum does, too.

    Ah, pressed turkey loaf, reconstituted mashed potatoes and cranberry-flavored foodstuff… Good times.

  59. 59.

    germy

    Love is the sweetest thing
    What else on earth could ever bring
    Such happiness to ev’rything
    As Love’s old story.

    Love is the strangest thing
    No song of birds upon the wing
    Shall in our hearts more sweetly sing
    Than Love’s old story.

    Whatever heart may desire
    Whatever fate may send
    This is the tale that never will tire.
    This is the song without end.

    Love is the greatest thing
    The oldest yet, the latest thing
    I only hope that fate may bring
    Love’s story to you.

    Ray Noble

  64. 64.

    Keith P

    Seems pretty obvious what’s going on (and I don’t recall Pence ever being asked about this): Pence got the Kasich VP deal. He does the actual legwork, while Trump does the glamor stuff.

  65. 65.

    D58826

    So given the names we know and the ones being leaked for open cabinet slots, der Fuhrer is on the way to having a cabinet with the least amount of government experience in modern history.

    And in a nod to the WWC and it’s economic anxiety it will be top heavy with the very people who created that economic anxiety. And are dedicated to increasing it going forward. After all the Sec. Of ED. is on the record as opposed to the minimum wage and thinks working in a coal mine would be good for poor kids. The irony burns.

    Only real question is do we continue to talk about the economic anxiety of the White Working Class (never mind the anxiety of the non-white working class) or just the racial anxiety of the White Class. I suspect we all know thew answer to that one

  72. 72.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    @D58826:

    Spot on…

    Let’s all form a circle to discuss the very real concerns of the WWC (and totally not their totally non-existent bigotry). And let’s have the liberals reach out to the Trumpistas, because they just voted according to their very real worries. It’s up to the majority (by two million voters) to make amends and seek comity.

  73. 73.

    Peale

    @D58826: somehow, someone convinced a bunch of people on our side that if Hillary lost, their side won. Yet her loss seems not to have made a dent in neoliberalism nor belligerent foreign policy. I’m so confused by that.

  74. 74.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Daesh, which is busy losing on its home turf, is going to strike, if only to get precisely the reaction they want from the Drumpf and Dense dipshits.

  76. 76.

    Jeffro

    I dunno…with all the folks here recognizing that this isn’t going to work, perhaps we should settle on some actions that could be taken, in the hopes that we could draw to an inside straight here and get the Electoral College to do its job? As in, vote to avoid this impending nightmare of moron-ish-ness?

  78. 78.

    fuckwit

    @PsiFighter37: Are you kidding? It’d usher in the Rapture! The ultimate battle at Armageddon that will usher in the second coming! He’s been waiting for this all his life!

  80. 80.

    Vor

    @D58826: as another example, Bush43 delegated dealing with the Bin Ladin threat to Cheney. Who then didn’t hold any meetings and didn’t even schedule any meetings for several months. Hell, the morning of 9/11 Condi Rice was scheduled to give a speech about our serious security issues – missle defense in Eastern Europe.

  82. 82.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @D58826:

    Only real question is do we continue to talk about the economic anxiety of the White Working Class (never mind the anxiety of the non-white working class) or just the racial anxiety of the White Class. I suspect we all know thew answer to that one

    I think this is victory of the anxiety of the shut ins who watch to much TV to be honest. This is all to stupid for even mere racism. This is like living an episode of that Ancient Aliens show “What if, the president was a reality tv show host with mental illness,…?”

  85. 85.

    elaine frances hansen

    This is the media’s new meme

    Obama had only received one intel briefing by this point

  86. 86.

    artem1s

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Bush’s aura of competence was entirely due to 9/11. Trump will get the same deference should something happen.

    depends on where the attack or disaster happens. If it’s NY again, no amount of singing God Bless America is going to save his venal ass. Also, a lot of the media deference post 9/11 was related to the anthrax attacks. Remember most of the targets were major media people. whether it was intended by the attacker or not, I think that also helped pave the way for eroding surveillance laws. The media didn’t care and wanted the FBI and NSA eavesdropping on everyone’s emails and cell phone calls.

  87. 87.

    Tehanu

    @Mike J:

    Best of luck to you and your mom. Cardiology is so advanced today. My dad had an emergency double bypass in ’87 and lived 25 more years in great health and was more active afterward than before, so I have great faith in what medicine can do, and hope the same or better for your mom.

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