the president is putting america s security in danger. time magazine reports that agency officials say president trump displaced willful ignorance and report thath officials who include analyst who is prepared trump s briefs and the briefers themselves described futile attempts by using visual aids and repeating his name and title as frequently as possible. i m not making that up. this is a report from time magazine. there have been similar reports. former deputy adviser in the obama administration who is a political contributor. thank you for being with us. this is alarming at a different level. people consume information differently and talked to a briefer who said clinton and obama like to read their stuff a lot and others like to get it in
office without deep experience in foreign policy. that brings us to the third difference, which is the stubborn disregard for anything he disagrees with. we ve seen that in the intelligence briefings and we ve also seen it on the outside. he tends to reject opinions and analysis that conflicts with his own opinions and beliefs. chris whipple, you ve spoken to people in the trump white house as well as the obama white house. i think in your experience it s impossible to compare donald trump s ignorance to any other president who has preceded him. no, it s true. he s in a class of his own, as we know. and, you know, we ve had three white house chiefs of staff under donald trump who were all of them unable to tell the president what he did not want to hear. and now, according to john in his terrific story, it s the intelligence briefers. and in a way, that s even more disturbing than it is with the
to bring them in. you have to rely on what your braef briefers and intelligence agencies say. without that, that s a huge problem. my problem with w. when he was president, george w. bush, he didn t like the nerds, the pencil necks. then he gets to be president and surrounds himself with the nerdy guys. he had no chance of resisting them, like cheney and the bench of them and then he went along with the stupid war. the intelligence community should know how to fashion their intelligence briefing for presidents. some people like barack obama are readers. others are not so. so you figure out ways to get them do you think trump s a reader? anyway, in their testimony last
intelligence briefings in case one of them wins so they understand what s going on in the world. what you see in trump is he s not been interested in understanding the way the world works. he does not ask follow-up questions about the consequences of the course of action he s going to take, and so you see the world not reacting in the way that he wants to this world that he is trying to invent. and john walcott, you have briefers telling you that they have been warned, as you report. they ve been warned against giving the president intelligence assessments that contradict stances he has taken in public. what do those briefers, then, do when they have information that contradicts the president? well, they have a very difficult decision to make. the warning is that if you tell him things that he s publicly disagreed with or taken a different stance on, you re in danger of losing your access to him. he doesn t want to hear from you anymore. so the tough decision that all these people
also seen it on the outside. he tends to reject opinions and analysis that conflicts with his own opinions and beliefs. chris whipple, you ve spoken to people in the trump white house as well as the obama white house. i think in your experience it s impossible to compare donald trump s ignorance to any other president who has preceded him. no, it s true. he s in a class of his own, as we know. and, you know, we ve had three white house chiefs of staff under donald trump who were all of them unable to tell the president what he did not want to hear. and now, according to john in his terrific story, it s the intelligence briefers. and in a way, that s even more disturbing than it is with the white house chiefs. because you think about it, these guys are the last line of defense. they are the thin line between the president and his own delusions and really his own fantasyland.