Importance of Intelligence Briefings And Transitions Of Power

Didn't see GMA so I'm not sure exactly what they said, but this is from a few days ago:

The presidential race was hovering in limbo in 2000 when outgoing President Bill Clinton decided to let then-Gov. George W. Bush read the ultra-secret daily brief of the nation’s most sensitive intelligence.

Clinton was a Democrat and his vice president, Al Gore, was running against Republican Bush. Gore had been reading the so-called President’s Daily Brief for eight years; Clinton decided to bring Bush into the fold in case he won — and he did.

https://apnews.com/article/election...re-elections-50d7b2d7186c448e3a8f741bd8152aaf

 

Bush had the intelligence and war making segments of his government firmly on his side, especially in the aftermath of 9/11.

Trump didn’t have that (thankfully), which constrained his ability to wreak havoc on the global stage the way the Bush admin did. (Though it’s hard to estimate the long term damage of Trump’s politics at this point.)

This doesn’t make Trump any better on a moral level than Bush, IMO. As flawed as Bush was, there was some humanity there that Trump doesn’t possess.

 

Umm, Trump didn't just ignore his PDB's during transition - in 4 years in office, he also hasn't read his PDB's.

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-looks-at-charts-in-intelligence-briefings-2020-5

 

You know it contains information about *everything*, not just military issues/threats, right?

Might have been nice if he had read the parts about, say, trade wars and emerging viruses and such.

 

He gets all what he needs on Fox News and Morning Joe (for balance...)

 

Trump got by just fine without Daily Briefings, so Biden should be fine.

 

Trump's foreign policy has been a disaster. I don't know how anyone can say with a straight face Trump's is better than anyone's. Set Afghanistan aside (which most of the world and both party leaders feel the US leaving is a huge mistake), Trump has gutted most of our relationships and we have seen the US lose the lead on nearly every international issue. The US sphere of influence has shrunk to basically sanctions in Iran and getting raped by China on bad deals.

 

I find your thoughts on Bush are pretty common among conservatives now. I've heard it so much that it made me wonder why this is the case. I think one possibility is that the country as a whole gradually drifts to the left. Moderate Republicans look like old Democrats, Democrats look like old progressives, progressives look like socialists. Bush's views on war, same sex marriage etc were once classic conservative view points. Now, many conservatives are to the left of W on most of his policies. I'm even seeing a lot of pro choice Republicans.

 

I never said a word about Bush, sorry.

 

I'll have that conversation here in a minute, if you're still interested.

 

Not sure what you mean here

I think you may be thinking of someone else...but either way, your post spurred the observation which I thought was worth posting, mainly to see if any older posters have noticed the same thing. I don't necessarily keep up with everyone's specific politics in this section, just commenting what I think.

 

Wasn't it yesterday?

Anyway, 400K Americans died during WWII - does that make it a foreign policy disaster?

I get the desire for Republicans to ride Trump's jock strap, but the guy was a disaster as a president and had no idea what he was doing outside of feeding red meat to his base.