It’s Sunday, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your espresso, croissant, and crossword puzzle in the fetal position, clinging to your very last soupçon of vanishing hope.
Oh, Time has a nightmare story about Donald Trump’s willful, harrowing ignorance that’s bound to frighten you even more than his uneven skin tone.
Seems that members of the U.S. intelligence community are coming forward with their concerns after Trump broke with them once again last week, tweeting that they should go “back to school.”
Citing multiple in-person episodes, these intelligence officials say Trump displays what one called “willful ignorance” when presented with analyses generated by America’s $81 billion-a-year intelligence services. The officials, who include analysts who prepare Trump’s briefs and the briefers themselves, describe futile attempts to keep his attention by using visual aids, confining some briefing points to two or three sentences, and repeating his name and title as frequently as possible.
I mean, this is like having an 8-year-old Egyptian pharaoh ruling over us, right? Maybe those intelligence officials should use hieroglyphics. Those are pictures, aren’t they?
Oh, and it gets worse. What? You thought it couldn’t get worse? You adorable naïf.
What is most troubling, say these officials and others in government and on Capitol Hill who have been briefed on the episodes, are Trump’s angry reactions when he is given information that contradicts positions he has taken or beliefs he holds. Two intelligence officers even reported that they have been warned to avoid giving the President intelligence assessments that contradict stances he has taken in public.
Yup, that’s what we need. Someone who is so married to his own worldview that new information simply doesn’t register.
Time’s report is based on interviews with several officials with firsthand knowledge as well as others who have been briefed on the incidents.
The officials also describe an incident in which Trump was briefed on the British territory of Diego Garcia, which is home to a U.S. Naval support facility that’s key to our efforts in Afghanistan.
What did Trump ask the briefers?
You guessed it: “Are the people nice, and are the beaches good?”
And then there’s this. Oh, we’re fucked. So, so, so remarkably fucked.
In another briefing on South Asia, Trump’s advisors brought a map of the region from Afghanistan to Bangladesh, according to intelligence officers with knowledge of the meeting and congressional officials who were briefed on it. Trump, they said, pointed at the map and said he knew that Nepal was part of India, only to be told that it is an independent nation. When said he was familiar with Bhutan and knew it, too, was part of India, his briefers told him that Bhutan was an independent kingdom.
Enjoy your Sunday, future charcoal briquettes!
And live every day to the fullest. Now more than ever.
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Yo! Dear F*cking Lunatic: 101 Obscenely Rude Letters to Donald Trump by Aldous J. Pennyfarthing is now available at Amazon! Buy there (or at one of the other fine online retailers carrying it), or be square.
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