Donald Trump is set to receive his first intelligence briefing, and many people are upset by that news. Trump will be escorted to the meeting by Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who has ties to Russia. Mr. Trump will also be accompanied by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
On Wednesday, the nominee of the Republican Party, Trump will receive his first national security briefing from staffers in the FBI’s New York Field Office, so will Hillary Clinton.
Many people, including President Barack Obama, are fearful that Trump might accidentally leak the sensitive information via Twitter or while making one of his famous off-the-cuff remarks at a rally.
During a press conference, POTUS was asked to share his thoughts on Trump’s erratic behavior and he did not hold back. He said:
“Set aside the nuclear codes, what I think is scary is a president who doesn’t know their stuff and doesn’t seem to have an interest in learning what they don’t know…basic knowledge about the world or what a nuclear triad is, or where various countries are or, you know, the different between Sunni and Shia in the Muslim world, those are things that he doesn’t know and hasn’t seemed to spend a lot of time trying to find out about.”
Some Democrats are so worried about what the real estate mogul might do with the information he is given, that they are asking Obama to share faux secrets with him. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid explained:
“How would the CIA and the other intelligence agencies brief this guy? How could they do that? I would suggest to the intelligence agencies, if you’re forced to brief this guy, don’t tell him anything, just fake it, because this man is dangerous,” Reid told The Huffington Post last month. “Fake it, pretend you’re doing a briefing, but you can’t give the guy any information.”
Michael Morell, the former Deputy Director and twice Acting Director of the CIA, explained what might occur during the briefings due the fact Trump and Clinton have very different backgrounds. Morell revealed:
“The briefing team will go into the room with the goal of providing the same analytic judgments to both candidates, but I would expect the two briefings to be very different. I would expect the briefing for Secretary Hillary Clinton (the presumptive Democratic nominee) to delve into issues more deeply and to be more of a dialogue than the briefing for Donald Trump (the presumptive Republican nominee), which I would expect to be more of a tutorial, more of a first cut at the issues, with the need to provide the history and background on issues. This is simply because the Secretary is starting at much greater level of understanding based on her experience working these issues, her experience working with the IC, and her knowledge of the IC judgments (she was a daily and engaged consumer of both IC collection and analysis). Trump, most likely, will be starting at square one. No value judgments here; just the reality of the situation.”
Despite the explanation, people are still not reassured, especially knowing that Mr. Flynn will be present. Flynn was paid a considerable amount of money by the Russian state-funded television network to speak at its 10th-anniversary.
