nsc staff were accustomed to producing long-winded classified memos. but if the aim was to educate this new commander in chief they couldn t submit a 50-page report entitled ent grated national strategy for endo pacific partnership and defense and expect him to read it and then discuss it. that would be like speaking aramaic to trump through a pillow. even if he tried very hard to pay attention, which he didn t, he wouldn t be able to understand what the hell he was hearing. it took a lot of trial and error for west wing stands to realize there needed to be a change. until that happened staffers would walk out of briefings frustrated. quote, he is the most distracted person i ve ever met, one of the president s security lieutenants confessed. quote, he has no effing clue what we are talking about. more changes were ordered to cater to trump s peculeilarities. documents were dramatically downsized and position papers became sound bites. as a result complex proposals were reduced to a si