McEnany on the PDB: ‘The president does read’
At a press briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said President Trump reads the President’s Daily Brief, and added that he is “the most informed person on planet earth when it comes to the threats that we face.”
Video Transcript
- Just to follow on that, I think there's two points. One, I would say that press secretaries in the past have disclosed in certain instances what was in the PDB. But secondly, I mean, this is a relevant issue, because-- and I think critics have already seized on this and said well, if the president isn't reading his PDB, he might not know that there are these policy decisions to be made, right?
If a president was presented with this information, it's unverified. He could be alarmed, change his posture towards Russia, conceivably ask intelligence officials to work harder to determine whether or not this was true, make a series of judgments. And so I guess more broadly, I would re-ask the question of whether it was in his material, but ask you maybe to defend why the president isn't necessarily reading his PDB when there are these types of issues that could arise.
KAYLEIGH MCENANY: The president does read. And he also consumes intelligence verbally. This president, I'll tell you, is the most informed person on planet Earth when it comes to the threats that we face. You have Ambassador O'Brien, who sees him in person twice a day, who sometimes takes the upwards of half a dozen calls with this president. He's constantly being informed and briefed on intelligence matters.
But I'm not going to allow "The New York Times" to dictate when we give top-secret information and don't give top-secret information.
- I mean, just for the--
KAYLEIGH MCENANY: That's not a tenable proposition.
