Donald Trump does, apparently. The press is scandalized by Trump’s suggestion that as president, he won’t want an intelligence briefing every day. “I get it when I need it,” Trump said. “I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.”
President Obama took to the Democrats’ favorite venue, Comedy Central, to slam Trump for questioning the need for a daily briefing:
President Barack Obama says any president who shuns daily intelligence briefings would be “flying blind” on national security matters, a stiff push-back against Donald Trump’s suggestion that that he doesn’t need daily read-ins to fulfill his campaign pledge to “make America safe again.”
“I think the president-elect may say one thing and do another once he’s here” in the White House,” Obama said late Monday on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”
Intelligence agencies, Obama said, “are not perfect, they would be the first to acknowledge that. If you’re not getting their perspective, their detailed perspective, then you are flying blind.”
So has Obama gotten a daily intelligence briefing for the last eight years? No. The Associated Press and Comedy Central may have forgotten, but in the middle of his administration, Obama was criticized for generally forgoing a daily intelligence briefing. The Washington Free Beacon headlined: “Obama Skipped 62.5 Percent of Intelligence Briefings this Year,” based on a report by the Government Accountability Institute.
It takes a lot of nerve for President Obama to go on Comedy Central to attack Donald Trump for proposing to do the same thing that Obama did himself. But then, chutzpah has always been one of Obama’s defining characteristics.
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