Trump Has Dropped Most Intel Briefings From Schedule

The Huffington Post reports:

President Donald Trump’s interest in taking intelligence briefings has been declining steadily since his first months in office and has dropped to near zero in recent weeks, according to a HuffPost review of all of his daily schedules.

Trump went from a high of 4.1 briefings per week on average in March 2017 to 0.7 per week since July 1, shortly after it became public that he had ignored intelligence reports about Russia offering bounties to the Taliban for each American soldier killed in Afghanistan.

Briefings from intelligence community officials are based on a package of report summaries from around the world prepared in the pre-dawn hours each morning specifically for the president. The sessions are among the few responsibilities in the modern presidency that cannot be delegated to others.

Obama and George W. Bush were known to read their briefings every morning before 7AM. Trump spends his mornings watching Fox News and rage-tweeting, rarely appearing in the West Wing before noon.