Page 14 - John Walcott News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

I'm not counting woodrow wilson when he was physically incapacitated. i'm talking about physically capable presidents who spent as much lecture time as donald trump. >> no, nothing like it. even ronald reagan, who was famously detached as president, would show up at 9:00 sharp in the oval office every day, and he would hilt his marks. as long as he had a good director like jim baker around. so it's unprecedented. both of these stories, john's story on the sbel briefings, the story of donald trump unbelievable, quote, unquote, executive time, might have been something we knew each other for a w...

Also seen it on the outside. he tends to reject opinions and analysis that conflicts with his own opinions and beliefs. >> chris whipple, you've spoken to people in the trump white house as well as the obama white house. i think in your experience it's impossible to compare donald trump's ignorance to any other president who has preceded him. >> no, it's true. he's in a class of his own, as we know. and, you know, we've had three white house chiefs of staff under donald trump who were all of them unable to tell the president what he did not want to hear. and now, according to john in his terri...

John whipple literally wrote the book called "the gatekeepers: how the chiefs of staff define intelligence." and we have years of intelligence on the intelligence committee of the house of representatives. john walcott, i want to start with you, and the sources you're using here are people who -- some of them are people who have actually been in the room briefing the president, is that correct? >> that is correct. >> and they are telling you that among other things they have to try to reduce it to a couple of sentences, that there is an attention spani issue? what other challenges did they fac...

At the cia, it's really only the intelligence community that can give him that raw data and that analysis that he needs to understand the world. >> and, john walcott, your reporting follows a week in which the president publicly attacked the leaders and presumably everyone working within the intelligence community, saying that they are wrong -- those are his words after they testified publicly about the threat assessment worldwide to the united states. he also said they should go back to school and that that was apparently aimed at everyone in the intelligence community. you then presented thi...

We're learning a lot more about those as well. not all of it good. according to "time" magazine, and we quote, "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 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. what is most troubling, say these officials, and others in government and on capitol hill who have been briefed on the...