National security organizations usually tell presidential candidates about important problems they might have to deal with if they win the election. However, former President Donald Trump said this week that he would not be going to these usual intelligence meetings for candidates.
And the reason is really quite smart. He gave an explanation for his choice by saying that he was afraid Democrats would leak secret information and then try to blame him for the leaks.
To put it another way, Trump thinks he was in for a surprise.
“First, I don’t want them because I know what’s going on.” He told the Daily Mail, “It’s very clear what’s going on. The leader we have is not good at what they do, and we have two bad leaders. It looks like a Marxist is running for president. This country is not ready for a Marxist or communist president, which is what she is. The United States is not ready for what she did to San Francisco and California.”
Trump went on, “So, I don’t want the briefings because they’ll say I leaked them as soon as I get one. If you want to handle that well, you should skip the lecture. They come in, tell you, and then leak it two days later and say you were to blame.”
He also said, “Not taking the meeting is the only way to solve that situation. I don’t want it, got it? When I get back in, I’ll have a lot of them.”
Trump said these things after giving a big speech in Asheboro, North Carolina, in which he spelled out his plans for national security and called for the resignation of officials involved in the chaotic pullout from Afghanistan.
President Harry Truman started giving intelligence briefings to people who are running for president in the early 1950s.
Their purpose is to help people get ready for office and make sure that the change of power goes smoothly.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is in charge of the meetings.
And unlike the president’s daily report, where the commander in chief learns about threats to the country and other news every morning, these meetings are usually one-time events that happen when they need to.
It is also customary to keep former leaders up to date on changes in national security by giving them updates.
For Trump’s claimed “erratic behavior,” President Biden stopped former President Trump from getting national security briefings in 2021. People said that this move was unfair because other former leaders, like Obama, Clinton, Bush, and Carter, continued to get the same kinds of briefings.
After two years, the Biden administration falsely accused Trump of mishandling secret papers. Last month, those charges were dropped. But it was found that Joe Biden had messed up with secret information. He wasn’t really punished, though, because Special Counsel Robert Hur thought that Biden could be framed as an old man with a bad memory, so he didn’t think he would be found guilty.
Author: Scott Dowdy
