The Conversation (0)
Louis Dor
Feb 21, 2017
Picture:
Andrew Harrer - Pool/Getty Images
Donald Trump recently appointed Lieutenant General H R McMaster as his national security adviser, following the resignation of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn.
Flynn's resignation was accepted after just three weeks and three days in the job for reportedly misleading Vice-President Mike Pence over his discussions with Russia about US sanctions prior to entering office.
The appointment has won plaudits - McMaster has no clear ties to Moscow and often questions authority, most aptly demonstrated during his criticism of the joint chiefs for not standing up to sitting president during the Vietnam War in his book, Dereliction of Duty.
The choice has also won praise from frequent critics of Trump.
However, it's not clear how much Donald Trump will actually hear from him.
Recently, MotherJones reported that a classified memo demonstrated intelligence analysts were purposefully keeping Donald Trump's briefings short so he can process them more easily - to the extent that they contain a quarter of the information of Barack Obama's briefings.
Trump himself told Axios, prior to taking office:
I like bullets or I like as little as possible. I don't need, you know, 200-page reports on something that can be handled on a page. That I can tell you.
Now, Tommy Christopher, a senior writer for ShareBlue and the White House correspondent and reporter for AOL, The Daily Banter, and Mediaite, reports that Donald Trump has not taken an intelligence briefing since the resignation of Michael Flynn, as public daily schedules show:
So where does Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America, get his information on the world?
Well we know he watches Fox News religiously, as he referred to a fictitious terrorist attack in Sweden in a speech:
Look at what's happening last night in Sweden.
Trump later clarified that he was referencing a Fox News report on rising crime rates in Sweden, which the report linked to immigration - which is itself a highly contestable viewpoint.
National Security. Who needs it?
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