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The manner in which Donald Trump consumes all the extremely important and confidential information he needs to know has been the subject of much controversy and ridicule. Because Trump appears to have the reading comprehension level of a milk cap, his daily briefings largely rely on oral presentations, “lots of graphics,” and probably Apprentice episodes dubbed over with crucial intelligence for the day.




Breaking With Tradition, President Is Illiterate Donald Trump’s entire political life has been dominated by what the media love to refer to as his… Read more

Enter: “The Book.”

According to Axios, “The Book” is the briefing binder aides have compiled that features all the information they’re trying to cram in to the president’s head in the most efficient way possible. Only, it’s not really a book:

With President Trump, “The Book” is sometime a notebook, sometimes a stack of papers with a big clip, and sometimes a stack of folders.


Trump “may flip” through this book during “Executive Time,” which is what they call the Fox & Friends-to-Trump’s-Twitter human centipede conveyor belt every morning. While The Book does contain his schedules, events, and information on policy, it also contains news clippings meant to counteract all the bad press he gets on television—that is, the news reporting on the things he does—to “grab his attention.” It “can even include screen grabs of cable news chyrons,” Axios says. Sigh.

Apparently Trump straight-up ignored former national security advisor H. R. McMaster, who attempted to give the president briefings with a text-heavy Power Point:

“He used complete sentences!” said one person who saw the briefings, and knows better about how Trump likes his information.

Trump demands his briefings be so concise and heavily edited that according to one source, the bullet points are “basically slogans.”

Nothing to see here! Just the president continuing to lack the mental capacity to play a round of Go Fish, let alone lead the country.

