President Obama, who recently sounded the warning about slickly packaged fake news, sat down for an interview with comedian Trevor Noah, host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.”
In the interview, which aired Monday night, the president persisted in his habit of criticizing his successor, taking issue with Donald Trump’s suggestion that he didn’t require daily intelligence briefings because he’s a smart person and doesn’t need to be told the same thing every day.
Obama gives Trevor Noah a measured response on Trump not taking intel briefings. But emphasizes that without them you're "flying blind." pic.twitter.com/4JgHZR582I
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) December 13, 2016
On Trump saying he doesn't need daily intell briefings,.@POTUS says without them, "then you are flying blind."
— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) December 13, 2016
@markknoller Well, @POTUS should know… He skipped half of them and clearly America has been flying blind.
— ongle (@ongle) December 13, 2016
Of course, President Obama himself wasn’t above flying blind every now and then, choosing the day after the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi to fly to Las Vegas for a campaign fundraiser rather than attend an intelligence briefing.
@markknoller @POTUS Obama skipped 60% of briefings????https://t.co/Ohi92oNf5D
— Anthony (@VileStyle) December 13, 2016
Marc Thiessen of the Washington Post reported at the time that Obama hadn’t attended his daily intelligence meeting since Sept. 5, and had missed 62 percent of his daily in-person intel briefings in 2011 and 2012. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor informed him that the Presidential Daily Brief was delivered to the president’s residence every morning for him to read at his convenience.
“This president, you see, does not need briefers. He can forgo his daily intelligence meeting because he is, in Vietor’s words, ‘among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet,'” Thiessen noted. In short, he was a smart person and didn’t need to be told the same thing day after day.
@markknoller how come Obama did not receive intel briefing every day?
— Judy Campbell (@jcmoontx) December 13, 2016
@markknoller 'Flying Blind', kind of like learning about government wrongdoing in the newspaper.
— Breitbart is Here (@mumubobby1) December 13, 2016
@markknoller @POTUS I guess Obama was flying blind when he called #ISIS the "JV Team" huh
— Sal (@SundevilSal) December 13, 2016
It’s worth noting also that the president’s own choice of successor, Hillary Clinton, slept through the president’s daily brief when the president finally was ready to talk about Benghazi, four days after the attack.
