Democrats on Wednesday night were dumping on President Trump’s invitation to be briefed on the White House grounds about the North Korea threat, by saying the White House provided no new information that they and the public didn’t already know.
“I seriously felt like I could have gotten all that information by reading a newspaper,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., said on CNN. “I did not see any new information coming out of that briefing at all.
“It felt more like a dog and pony show to me more than anything else,” she added.
.@SenDuckworth on WH North Korea briefing: "I could've gotten all that information by reading a newspaper" https://t.co/12MhmzH2iT— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) April 27, 2017
When asked why Trump would bother with the briefing, she said, “I guess it has something to do with this 100 days in office.”
Another Democrat, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., agreed with Duckworth that the event seemed designed to elevate the issue in the public’s mind, but not to provide any new information.
“Complete optics, of giving him a chance to say he considers it important enough to summon us to the White House,” he said on CNN. He also repeated Duckworth’s line about how the public already knows everything that was said at the briefing today.
“We learned nothing you couldn’t read in the newspaper,” he said.
"We learned nothing you couldn't read in the newspaper" @SenJeffMerkley on N. Korea briefing https://t.co/Yiee5V20O2 https://t.co/jyWuyg69GV— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) April 27, 2017
Democrats seemed prepared from the start to criticize the meeting. Even as they made their way to the White House, another Democrat, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., dismissed the event as a “photo op.”
“On board the bus to the 100 days photo op/North Korea briefing,” he tweeted.
