Trump skips reading daily report, instead relies on oral briefing

For much of the past year, President Donald Trump has declined to participate in a practice followed by the past seven of his predecessors: He rarely if ever reads the President’s Daily Brief, a document that lays out the most pressing information collected by U.S. intelligence agencies from hot spots around the world.

Trump has opted to rely on an oral briefing of select intelligence issues in the Oval Office rather than reviewing the full written document each day, according to three people familiar with his briefings.

But by not reading the briefing, Trump could hamper his ability to respond to crises in the most effective manner, experts warned.

Administration officials defended Trump’s reliance on oral sessions and said he gets full intelligence briefings,noting that presidents have historically sought to receive information in different ways. Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said Trump “is an avid consumer of intelligence, appreciates the hard work of his briefers and of the entire intelligence community and looks forward every day to the give and take of his intelligence briefings.”

Several intelligence experts said Trump’s aversion to diving deeper into written intelligence details makes both him and the country more vulnerable.

President George W. Bush faced a political firestorm over how closely his administration was paying attention to the briefing after it was discovered that a month before the 9/11 attacks, his briefing book had included a warning that Osama bin Laden was “determined” to attack U.S. targets using airplanes.