Obama Has Attended Less Than Half His Presidential Daily Briefings

He showed up for 41%.

And even in the 41% of security briefings he did attend, he spent the most time carpet-putting. (I assume -- but you know I'm right.)

President Pushback is putting out the word that while he may not care about the United States' security to show up for briefings, he reads each report with keen interest, but...

1. That's just him saying that. If he showed up for the actual briefings, we'd have an actual record of his presence. But when he claims "I read the Dickens out of these reports when no one's around," that's just Obama giving you his word that he's awesome.

Anyone still eager to take the word of Barack Obama?

2. The suggestion is made that he is very interested indeed in reading these things. However, when someone is very interested in something, they tend to make additional time for it. Like, say, the time necessary to show up for an hour briefing on the security situation of the United States.

So I don't think he's very interested at all. It seems to be like homework he doesn't want to do.

3. If the president were keenly interested in these matters, he'd want to be physically present for the briefing, so he could ask questions. How confident are you about this prediction? What is this based on? Are there additional possibilities you're not considering?

Obama can't ask such questions of a piece of paper.

I don't believe he asks many questions. (I'll get to that in a second.) Because he doesn't really care.

4. I think Obama's proxies, the guys he makes go to the briefings so that he can watch episodes of Homeland, brief him later, but this is second-hand nonsense, and furthermore, toadying minions will tell the boss what he wants to hear, and avoid telling him what they know he doesn't want to hear, won't they?

I mention that because of fact noted by even arch-liberal Norah O'Donnell, that there is a public paper record of Obama being warned about the rise of ISIS, and yet Obama is simultaneously claiming that he was never so warned, and that other people dropped the ball and let him down.

Well I don't believe a word Obama says, but it should be noted these two claims are in fact reconcilable if you make this assumption:

The intelligence committee did in fact repeatedly warn Obama's minions, attending the briefings and reading the briefings on Obama's behalf, but then his minions, knowing that Obama did not want to deal with any of this and pretty much just wants to go out and do #TheBearIsLoose photo ops with his dwindling number of fans, soft-pedaled it or ignored it entirely.

Obama claims he read this stuff. But going to the briefings would have done something important -- had he attended, he would have been confronted with the information in the briefings.

He would not been able to get a Minion to pipe down about all this IS bother by putting on his Bored Face and then asking "What else you got?" or whatever other signals he uses to indicate that he's got a tee time in 20 minutes.

Being absent from the briefings permits him to cocoon himself from things he doesn't want to think about or deal with, which is of course one of this president's deepest and most dangerous psychological traits.

posted by Ace at 12:32 PM

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