Donald Trump had to have briefing notes dumbed-down when he was US president.
Donald Trump had to have his security briefings dumbed-down
The controversial politician often brags of his "stable genius" but Miles Taylor - who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during his presidency - says he had to simplify national security reports so Trump could grasp what was going on.
Taylor told podcast host Brett Meiselas: "This fifty-page memo that we would normally give to any other president about what his options are is something Trump literally can't read. The man doesn't read. We've gotta boil this down into a one-pager in his voice.
"And so I had to write this incandescently stupid memo called something like, 'Afghanistan, How to Put America First and Win.' And then bullet by bullet, I summed up this highly classified memo into Trump's sort of bombastic language because it was the only way he was gonna understand."
He continued: "I mean, I literally said in there, 'You know, if we leave Afghanistan too fast, the terrorists will call us losers. But if we wanna be seen as winners, we need to make sure the Afghan forces have the strength to push back against these criminals.'
"I mean, it was that dumb and that's how you had to talk to him."
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