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Meadows told Klain that “no president” received a daily briefing, according to Maggie Haberman’s new book.
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In “Confidence Man,” Haberman explained how Klain asked Biden for a daily intelligence letter.
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“No president ever does that. That never happened,” Meadows said, according to the book.
Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told Biden’s incoming White House chief of staff Ron Klain that “no president” received a daily intelligence briefing after the longtime Democratic aide told his GOP counterpart that the incoming president wanted to be updated on a daily basis, according to a new book by New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman.
The transition process between the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations had already been rocky, as Trump refused to formally admit the race in public and his campaign lawyers continued to find ways to undo the results in countless swing states.
Meadows, a former GOP congressman from North Carolina, and Klain, a longtime confidant of Biden who had previously served as chief of staff to both Al Gore and the then incoming president, were in communication to work together in navigating the transition process.
But Trump’s continued insistence that he had actually won the election complicated the situation, as described in the book Confidence Man.
“I know the president says these things,” Meadows told Klain at the time, according to the book. “We’ll get it done.”
But Biden’s transition workers continued to face problems as they received critical updates from the Pentagon later than desired and experienced delays in setting up COVID-19 vaccinations for incoming Democratic government officials.
However, there was one area where Meadows sought clarification and seemed surprised by the answer – as it pertained to the president’s daily briefing.
In April 2020, The New York Times reported that Trump had generally failed to read the intelligence reports in full, as several former intelligence officials told the paper at the time that the then president had a short attention span and was adept at deviating on various topics.
According to the Times report, Trump often avoided reading detailed reports, but was drawn to images, charts and other data-driven imagery.
In November 2020, after Biden was named president-elect by virtually every major news outlet, Klain Meadows advised Biden to receive the daily intelligence briefing, according to Haberman’s report.
“How many days a week does Vice President Biden want this daily briefing?” Meadows asked, according to the book.
Klain was surprised by the question, telling Meadows that Biden — a former chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during his days in the Senate — would like to receive a daily briefing.
Biden also received daily briefings during his time as vice president under then-President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.
Meadows replied, “No president ever does that. That never happened.”
Haberman wrote that Klain’s request “seemed so outside Meadows’ own experience that he could not understand it.”
Read the original article on Business Insider
