‘Too smart’ for intelligence
Donald Trump says he’s smarter than your average president — so he doesn’t need daily intelligence briefings.
“I get it when I need it,” Trump told “Fox News Sunday,” explaining that he refuses the opportunity to be briefed daily by security professionals on classified threats the way President Obama is.
“I’m, like, a smart person,” Trump said. “I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years — could be eight years. I don’t need that.”
The boastful Trump — who once said he knows more than the US generals about fighting ISIS — said he trusts the three generals he has nominated for his Cabinet and Vice Presidentelect Mike Pence, who receive intelligence briefings regularly.
Trump is opting for weekly updates and says intelligence officials can always contact him if a situation has worsened.
“But I do say, ‘If something should change, let us know,’ ” Trump said.
In a rare extended interview, Trump also said he is not “bound” to the “One China” policy unless China makes a new deal with him on trade, currency devaluation, North Korea and China’s island building in the South China Sea.
“I fully understand the One China policy,” Trump said of the longstanding US practice of following mainland China’s lead in describing itself as the only true nation of China, which the president-elect disrupted by taking a phone call from Taiwan’s president, “but I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things.”
The New York billionaire is in the midst of trying to separate himself from his vast international business empire and leaving his namesake organization to his adult children.
“I am turning down billions of dollars of deals,” Trump said of his current involvement. “I turned down seven deals with one big player, great player, last week, because I thought it could be perceived as a conflict of interest.”
But he dismissed criticism that world governments are trying to curry favor with him through his businesses, such as by having foreign diplomats stay at Trump’s hotel in Washington, DC.
“When I ran, everybody knew that I was a very big owner of real estate all over the world,” he said.