Biden Boxing With Briefs

I like the fact that President Joseph R. Big Effin Deal Biden recognized that Donald Trump should never be allowed near an intelligence briefing again, ever, period, because he's a damn Russian asset.

President Joe Biden said Friday that Donald Trump should not be allowed to receive classified intelligence briefings, a courtesy that historically has been granted to outgoing presidents.

Asked in an interview with CBS News what he feared if Trump continued to receive the briefings, Biden said he did not want to “speculate out loud” but made clear he did not want Trump to continue getting them.

“I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings,” Biden said. “What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said earlier this week that the issue of granting Trump intelligence briefings was “something that is under review.”

Some Democratic lawmakers, and even some former Trump administration officials, have questioned the wisdom of allowing Trump to continue to briefed.

Susan Gordon, who served as the principal deputy director of national intelligence during the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019, in a Washington Post op-ed last month urged Biden to cut off Trump.

“His post-White House ‘security profile,’ as the professionals like to call it, is daunting,” Gordon wrote days after a pro-Trump mob laid siege to the U.S. Capitol as lawmakers sought to certify his defeat in last November’s election. “Any former president is by definition a target and presents some risks. But a former president Trump, even before the events of last week, might be unusually vulnerable to bad actors with ill intent.”

Whether to give a past president intelligence briefings is solely the current officeholder’s prerogative. Biden voiced his opposition to giving Trump access to briefings as the former Republican president’s second impeachment trial is set to begin next week.

 

I'm glad that Biden is making it clear it's not happening, for America's sake.