President Donald Trump would launch into a rage, blowing up at US intelligence officers every time they tried to tell him about Russia’s malign actions toward the US, CNN reported on Wednesday.
Citing multiple former officials, CNN reported that this created a chilling effect, leading Trump to hear less and less about Russia’s behavior toward the US because he would get angry when presented with intelligence about hostile Russian activity toward the US, including political interference.
They soon learned not to highlight Russia in their briefings, according to the report.
In many cases, oral briefings on Russia would be avoided altogether and left in the president’s lengthy written briefings, which he often did not read, CNN reported.
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It left officials with difficult decisions about how to prioritize the most crucial information, CNN said. A former senior intelligence official said their policy became to “save it for when it matters.”
This led to what a former senior National Security Council official described as “a self-fulfilling prophecy”: The less Trump heard of Russian activity, the less he believed that President Vladimir Putin could mean the US harm.
CNN’s report is also in line with Trump’s well-documented deference toward Putin despite warnings. As one former US ambassador to Russia put it in a tweet on Wednesday, Trump “always sides with Putin.”
The White House did not immediately respond to Daily Boulder’s request for comment.
