Donald Trump is receiving the President’s Daily Brief on Wednesday even as his practice for frequently skipping the PDB is coming under fire amid heightened global tensions and terror attacks.
Bucking precedent, Trump is averaging about one PDB a week since he began receiving the briefings after becoming President-elect, CNN has learned.
Trump has also received briefings on additional subjects such as North Korea, and has requested briefings on other specific topics.
By contrast, President Barack Obama and other key national security policymakers currently receive the brief six days a week, according to the CIA website. And Vice President-elect Mike Pence has been receiving briefings on a daily basis.
Trump has an intelligence officer available directly to him on a full-time basis, and has participated in multiple PDBs in some weeks, CNN has learned. And the transition team said last week Trump would be increasing his PDB participation to three times a week.
Trump is scheduled to meet his national security adviser, Lt. Gen Michael Flynn, on Wednesday in Florida. They plan to discuss events around the world, as well as staffing isses, according to a source familiar with the transition. That meeting was scheduled before the attacks this week in Germany and Turkey.
Transition spokesman Jason Miller said Wednesday that the President-elect is “receiving numerous briefings, whether it’s from his national security team, with General Flynn and others, as well as the formal PDB, so he’s very much up to speed on what’s going on and fully ready to be sworn in next month and take over the role as commander-in-chief.”
Wednesday is expected to be the last big day for meetings for Trump before Christmas.
Trump has attracted some criticism for not regularly participating in national security briefings as have past leaders preparing to occupy the White House.
Experts say that rapid changes in the world’s security situations require the incoming American leader to be as up to date as possible. And those concerns have been amplified in the wake of international crises in Turkey, where the Russian ambassador was assassinated on Monday over the ongoing disaster in Aleppo, and Germany, where a terrorist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 9.
“The pace at which he’s getting them is below the norm,” said David Priess, author of “The President’s Book of Secrets,” a history of the PDB. “Most Presidents-elect, once they’ve chosen to get them, have chosen to get daily or near daily sessions, reading the daily brief and discussing it with briefers.”