President Trump’s alleged unwillingness to hear intelligence warnings related to Russia led his national security team to brief him less on the threats verbally, according to a new report.
Multiple former Trump administration officials who briefed Trump, who were present for his briefings, and who prepared the intelligence documents told CNN that Trump would often become angry when negative information about Russia was discussed and often questioned the intelligence behind the reports.
“The president has created an environment that dissuades, if not prohibits, the mentioning of any intelligence that isn’t favorable to Russia,” a former senior member of Trump’s national security staff said.
That led the briefers to reduce the amount of Russia-related intelligence mentioned during the oral briefings. Instead, it was usually included in the presidential daily brief, a document compiled every day by the intelligence community that explains the most pressing issues around the world. The president and other senior administration officials receive the top-secret document each day, and a briefer then sits down with the president to go over the information.
But briefers learned that Trump often did not read the daily document, leaving him less informed about the threats around the world. Trump’s attention also drifted in and out during the briefings, leading his briefers to save oral briefings on threats until they were most severe.
“It creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where he hears less and less of what he doesn’t want to hear and, therefore, starts to believe more and more that the Russians aren’t doing anything bad,” the former national security official said.
It’s been long reported that Trump rarely reads the daily brief, but his reluctance to take in intelligence has come under renewed focus amid reports that Russia’s military intelligence paid the Taliban bounties to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The White House has defended Trump against accusations that he did not pursue the intelligence, and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has insisted Trump does read.
“The president does read, and he also consumes intelligence verbally,” she told reporters earlier this week, adding that Trump was not “personally briefed” on the intelligence. She would not say whether the information was given to the president in his daily written briefing.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told CNN it’s “totally false” that Trump is unwilling to hear intelligence warnings about Russia.
National security adviser Robert O’Brien said Trump was not told of the Russian bounties because the intelligence had not been corroborated.
“The president was not briefed because, at the time of these allegations, they were uncorroborated,” O’Brien said. “The president’s career CIA briefer decided not to brief him because it was unverified intelligence … and knowing all the facts I know, I certainly support her decision.”
“We brief him on everything he needs to know to keep the country safe. So any thought that we wouldn’t brief him on something because it would anger him, I don’t even know how to respond to that question,” he said.
Trump’s reluctance to confront Russia over its malign behavior goes back to his reported fear that the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 election on his behalf makes him an illegitimate president. The U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russia interfered to help Trump beat Hillary Clinton, an assessment that has been backed by the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee. However, special counsel Robert Mueller found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia in his nearly two-year investigation into the election interference.
CNN reported earlier this week that Trump has stunned administration officials over his lack of preparation for calls with world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. In some of his calls with Putin, Trump trashed his predecessors and fished for compliments from his Russian counterpart.
A high-level administration official said Putin “just outplays” Trump during their conversations. The official compared Putin to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an occasional player of checkers.
