WATCH: Counterterrorism Requires More Than ‘Eh, Tell Me If It Changes’


On Sunday, President-elect Donald Trump told Fox News’ Chris Wallace that he doesn’t need to see his intelligence briefings every day because he’s “like, a smart person.” The intelligence community and counterterrorism experts are coming out to say, in essence, “That’s not how any of this works.”

This Has Nothing To Do With ‘How Smart He Is’

Does Trump think that an intelligence briefing is something smart people don’t need?

CNN’s Chris Cuomo sat down with author and former CIA officer David Priess as well as counterterrorism analyst Philip Mudd to discuss Trump’s complete dereliction of duty in dismissing his daily intelligence brief.

Priess stressed the fact that intelligence briefings include information that doesn’t exist “in isolation,” but rather that they build upon each other each day in order to provide a bigger picture:

“It’s a steady stream that updates him on situations with new and different information. Not about how smart he is. It’s about getting the information he needs to make those decisions.”

And Philip Mudd added to that, saying it’s “worrisome” that Trump both dismisses the briefings and lambasts the intelligence community as a whole:

“What CIA professionals are saying is, in a city where information is power — just as money is power in New York, information is power — we do not have access to the individual who makes decisions for the executive branch. This is huge, especially after 15 years of President Obama and, formerly, President Bush, who gave great access to the CIA.”

Mudd also made the point that we’ve all been making — that being smart is not the same thing as being informed. Trump’s dismissal of these briefings is frightening.

Later on, Priess made the point that smart people “know what they don’t know.”

A subtle jab at the President-elect, perhaps?

Watch the entire discussion here:

Featured image via screenshots from YouTube video

Carrie is a progressive mom and wife living in the upper Midwest.