
Last night, in his primetime speech from the Oval Office, Barack Obama emphasized his dedication to keeping the nation safe from terrorism.
“For seven years,” he said about a third of the way in, “I’ve confronted this evolving threat each and every morning in my intelligence briefing.”
His words may have been meant to evoke the image of a military leader standing guard, scanning the horizon while the masses slept peacefully on his watch.
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But it appears the president hasn’t been quite so vigilant as he claimed.
A report from the Government Accountability Institute on his intelligence briefings, or Presidential Daily Briefs, as they are known, reveals that he was present for only 42.43% of them during his first term and 41.26% of them so far in his second term.
But it’s quality, not quantity, that counts, right? Even if he was only there two-fifths of the time but made good use of the information, he deserves some credit.
Except that Steve Hayes of the Weekly Standard tweeted this after last night’s speech:
Obama says he knows threat from daily intel brief. Ex-DIA chief Flynn says Obama ignored reports in PDB that jihadist threat was growing.
— Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) December 7, 2015
And then there was this bombshell back in September:
More than 50 intelligence analysts working out of the U.S. military’s Central Command have formally complained that their reports on ISIS and al Qaeda’s branch in Syria were being inappropriately altered by senior officials, The Daily Beast has learned.
(h/t Weasel Zippers)