The Russia connectionRussia-related intelligence information left out of Trump's daily briefings for fear it would upset him

White House and national security officials have said that they purposefully leave intelligence information on Russian ongoing hacking and disinformation activities against the United States out of President Donald Trump’s daily briefings for fear such intelligence information will upset him.

If the information cannot be left out, it is usually placed toward the end of the briefing in order to prevent a situation in which the president would refuse to listen to or discuss the rest of the PDB (Presidential Daily Brief).

More than fifty current and former administration officials who were interviewed by the Washington Post, many of them with first-hand experience in preparing the PDB for previous presidents or for Trump, told the newspaper that they frequently plan the PDB around the president’s likely emotional reactions. Any information about Russia and its persistent attempts, in the past and currently, to interfere in the American political system, is among the most likely topic to set him off.  

“If you talk about Russia, meddling, interference – that takes the PDB off the rails,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told the Post.

This is the reason, the officials said, why they occasionally avoid putting new information about Russia in the oral briefing, placing it toward the end of the written briefing notes instead. The officials said that another approach they have found to work was to place Russia-related information at strategic times throughout the briefing to keep the president from flying off the handle.

The Post quoted National Security Council officials who said that even the NSC does not raise the issue of Russian interference outside the NSC’s own, lower-level staff for fear of angering the president.

Brian Hale, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), did not directly quarrel with or deny these accounts, but told the Post that the intelligence community “always provides objective intelligence – including on Russia – to the president and his staff.”

The U.S. intelligence community unanimously concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on the orders of President Vladimir Putin. These conclusions were based on voluminous and incontrovertible forensic evidence, national technical means, and human sources.

The Russian government’s broad disinformation and hacking campaign to help Trump win the 2016 election was similar in scope and method to campaigns Russian government hackers and disinformation specialists conducted in support of populist, far-right, and racist parties and politicians in Germany, France, and the Netherland, and in support of Brexit, and Catalonian and Scottish independence. In all cases, Russia’s goal was to weaken the targeted countries by helping extremist and polarizing movements and politicians. Moreover, in all cases Russia saw these movements and politicians as contributing to the weakening of the West and the post-Second World War system of defense alliance and economic treaties.

Trump has repeatedly and publicly rejected the findings of the U.S. intelligence community as “politically motivated,” and said he believes Putin’s denial of Russian interference.

The Post notes that the more than fifty current and former U.S. officials interviewed by the newspaper offered different explanations for the president’s stubborn refusal to listen to or accept information about Russia’s ongoing hacking and disinformation campaigns. Some said Trump fears that acknowledging Russian meddling would give credibility to allegations that his campaign colluded with Moscow.

Other say that the president appears to believe that any insinuation that Russia helped him win the November 2016 election would be a threat to his ego, and may make his election victory appear less legitimate.

Moreover, the president appears to be driven by the notion that if he accepts that there is an ongoing Russian hacking and disinformation activity against the United States and other Western democracies, then, by implication, it would mean that there was such activity in 2015 and 2016 – as the U.S. intelligence community has established – which means that he would be forced to accept the fact that Russia conducted a broad and successful hacking and disinformation campaign on his behalf.

“If you say ‘Russian interference,’ to him it’s all about him,” a senior Republican strategist said. “He judges everything as about him.”