The president veers off on tangents and getting him back on topic is difficult, they said. He has a short attention span and rarely, if ever, reads intelligence reports, relying instead on conservative media and his friends for information. He is unashamed to interrupt intelligence officers and riff based on tips or gossip he hears from the former casino magnate Steve Wynn, the retired golfer Gary Player or Christopher Ruddy, the conservative media executive.

Mr. Trump rarely absorbs information that he disagrees with or that runs counter to his worldview, the officials said. Briefing him has been so great a challenge compared with his predecessors that the intelligence agencies have hired outside consultants to study how better to present information to him.

Yeesh. And not at all surprising.

A lot of our problems could be solved if we just created a new elected position: the glorified national spokesman. Then people like Trump can run against people like Mark Cuban and Oprah Winfrey for a position that has no power but satiates the public’s need to settle arguments via a national election.

And then the rest of us can vote for some boring person who can handle the job of running the executive branch, preferably a governor or a general, or someone with actual experience governing.

Thank you BC

I have a new thread up for Mitchell Robinson’s three-point prowess!

Did any of you vote for Clinton…. quite a flawed fellow but a fine POTUS.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/i-thought-juanita-broaddrick-wasnt-credible-i-was-wrong/2018/10/22/fd1b9764-d62f-11e8-aeb7-ddcad4a0a54e_story.html

The NBC Dateline interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug7diBO3XYY

(It’s also ironic that you point to economic growth and relative world peace because Bill Clinton got impeached by the Fox News crowd despite having both boxes checked, himself).

Newt Gingrich was pretty honest about the fact that Bill Clinton committed the greatest political sin of all: not being a Republican.

“The president veers off on tangents and getting him back on topic is difficult, they said. He has a short attention span and rarely, if ever, reads intelligence reports, relying instead on conservative media and his friends for information. He is unashamed to interrupt intelligence officers and riff based on tips or gossip he hears from the former casino magnate Steve Wynn, the retired golfer Gary Player or Christopher Ruddy, the conservative media executive.”

So is there some weird feedback loop going on here where Trump gets his news from OAN and Fox and they get their stories of the day from whatever he tweets, ad infinitum and ad nauseum? Except, of course, for the hot tips on foreign affairs from retired golfer Gary Player.

(quote is from Jowles’ NYT link)

Warren G Harding presided over a period of great economic growth and enjoyed minimal foreign entanglements. Yet he’s universally considered one of the worst presidents ever because he was a corrupt, morally imbalanced man whose economic policies couldn’t be sustained and ended in a Great Depression.

(It’s also ironic that you point to economic growth and relative world peace because Bill Clinton got impeached by the Fox News crowd despite having both boxes checked, himself).