Summary
Donald Trump has attended only 12 intelligence briefings in his first 100+ days of his second term, a steep decline from his already infrequent briefing schedule during his first presidency, POLITICO reports.
He began 2025 with just two in-person updates monthly, shifting to weekly in April.
Critics, including Sen. Mark Warner, say Trump’s disengagement endangers national security, as he also avoids reading detailed briefing materials.
His national security team is in turmoil, and recent cuts to CIA DEI programs have sparked fears of institutional regression and increased vulnerability to global threats.
Unironically probably for the best, anything top secret he would learn in those meetings would be in the hands of his autocratic handlers before the meeting was concluded.
Which really runs against the “Everything Trump does is actually Russia!” line that gets posted around here incessantly. There’s nothing Putin would want more than to have access to those briefings, but his useful idiot is too much of an idiot to be useful here. Trump is on Putin’s side, sure, but most of what he does, especially in this term, is the result of home-grown American authoritarianism, not orders from Russia.
Why would Putin need Trump to pass that sort of thing along anymore? That’s literally Tulsi Gabbard’s job, passing along info the Putin.
She was literally a known Russian spy even before the got confirmed.
Honestly, at this point I’d be willing to bet that those officials who actually still give half a shit about national security don’t give Trump anything that isn’t essentially public information already. Or at the very least, largely harmless if it does become public. It’s not like Trump would know or care about the difference.
Remember that multiple sources have said that during his first term, the Presidential Daily Briefings were largely little more than fluff pieces with pretty pictures, easy to understand words, and random references to him just to keep his attention, much like trying to keep a 3 year old occupied with a coloring book and a handful of crayons.
he was like this his first term too.
He’s too demented to understand them anyway. He wouldn’t care even if he could.
That’s optimistic. The handlers are probably still at (or even orchestrating) the briefings.
Not sure, he is probably getting his intelligence from Russia at this point
his krasnov: briefing for the week, is ignore all other intelligence briefing from the us, and allies, and also shout “my putins talking points” once a while to make noise and distract the news.