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This remarkable story about the president giving up on his intelligence briefings sort of slipped by over the weekend amid election news—but I think it's worth re-highlighting for three particularly worrisome reasons: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/30/us/politics/trump-intelligence-briefings.html?action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage
1) It is *bonkers* that the President has not had a regular intelligence briefing in over a MONTH. That should set off all kinds of alarm bells. We spend $60 billion a year to ensure the President is the smartest person in every room he's in. Trump has turned all of that aside.
2) Separately, the fact that he is now only getting briefings from John Ratcliffe—a man so unqualified for his job that Congress literally wrote a law to keep people like him away from becoming ODNI, but the GOP confirmed him anyway—is super troubling. https://www.wired.com/story/john-ratcliffe-director-of-national-intelligence/
One of the nation's former highest-ranking intel leaders said to me last week about Ratcliffe: "He’s either a bum or an idiot—it hardly matters which one, because the effect is the same." He's made clear he'll partisan-ize intel, which is very dangerous: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/22/democrats-election-trump-ratcliffe-iran/
3) One of the key NYT sources in the story is Cliff Sims, a man who *already* wrote a tell-all bestseller TEAM OF VIPERS about working in the White House—but the bench of talent willing to work for Trump is soooo thin he's already *back* working for ODNI: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/02/cliff-sims-white-house-odni-425579
If they've already brought back Sims—a guy who told-all and ended up in a lawsuit against Trump—think of how thin the bench of talent for a second Trump term would be. This first term was the most competent and capable people they could find. And look at where we are already.
This NYT story is a microcosm of why we should be terrified of an ongoing Trump presidency. He's always been poorly staffed & poor at the basic job of being president. Now he's clearly given up on even *pretending* to be president. That sets the nation on a new dangerous course.
