Since winning the election, Donald Trump has attended only a handful of intelligence briefings but says it’s no big deal because he’s “like, a smart person.”
But two years ago, the future president-elect once criticized President Barack Obama for the very same thing — by citing a factually incorrect article from now White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon‘s far-right wing media umbrella, of course.
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Back in September 2014, Trump declared that Obama did not read his Daily intelligence Briefings, sharing on Twitter:
Fact–Obama does not read his intelligence briefings nor does he get briefed in person by the CIA or DOD. Too busy I guess!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2014
Well, if Obama was “too busy” running a country, we can only imagine how busy Trump will be running a country AND his businesses vicariously through his children!
Trump’s erroneous claim was based on a report from the conservative Government Accountability Institute — which was co-founded by Bannon.
The report claimed that Obama had attended only 42 percent of his briefings between January 20, 2009 and September 29, 2014, using data from the president’s public schedule as reported by the White House’s website.
Bannon’s alt-right leaning, Trump-supporting news outlet Breitbart called the report “alarming” in a 2014 article, saying it signaled a “lack of engagement and interest” by the president.
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The Breitbart article noted that the Presidential Daily Briefings would “allow the Commander-in-Chief the chance for critical followup [sic], feedback, questions, and the challenging of flawed intelligence assumptions.”
So now that Bannon and Trump are on the other side, we guess they changed their tune about how frequent a president should attend these meetings — as Trump plans on only receiving ONE intelligence briefing per week.
Trump also shared a Washington Post op-ed written by former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen that used the data from the GAI’s report and questioned Obama’s priorities, tweeting:
Priorities–while fundraising and campaigning on our dime, Obama has skipped over 50% of his intel briefings http://t.co/IhiIaKPa
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 11, 2012
The Washington Post‘s fact-checkers later investigated these claims and awarded it “Three Pinocchios” — which means GAI’s data contained significant factual errors and/or obvious contradictions.
After going against yet another one of his vociferous criticisms about his predecessor, it’s looking like Trump becoming the president of contradictions.
[Image via CBS.]
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