Trump Understands Intelligence Briefings Like A Veteran, CIA Director Mike Pompeo Says

American politician and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Mike Pompeo praised President Donald Trump on Tuesday for his understanding of intelligence briefings, saying the POTUS is as profound as an agency veteran.

During an interview with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., Pompeo told Marc A. Thiessen, “I have seen 25-year intelligence professional receive briefings. I would tell you that President Trump is the kind of recipient of our information at the same level that they are.”

Pompeo also revealed that Trump asks “hard questions” and is “deeply engaged” at the time of his briefings which allow him to lead the conversation with regard to important policy issues, The Hill reported.

He also defended the POTUS and vehemently denied reports of him having trouble in absorbing information. “He has the grounding for him to be able to grasp this information in a way that he can ask sophisticated questions that then lead to important policy discussions,” Pompeo said.

Revealing the president’s daily routine, Pompeo told Thiessen that Trump gets a 30-40 minute briefing almost every single day in accordance with his schedule.

“Each day we try to do something that is of the moment. For instance today, you can imagine we would have talked about what’s taking took place in Afrin … the Turks moving south out of Syria. Then we’ll try also to talk about something that is coming up, so, for instance, preparing the president for his trip to Davos, or a foreign leader who is coming to visit, or provide him with material that we know he is going to confront in the days or weeks ahead,” he said.

Pompeo’s clarification turned fruitful for Trump who has been facing heat regarding his ability to absorb information. According to a report in Washington Post in December, Trump’s daily intelligence briefings were supposedly structured in a way that does not upset him. While a second report claimed that the POTUS “prefers short, single-page memos that include visual aids."

Questions about Trump’s understanding capacity were also raised when National Security Council officials told reporters in May, 2017 that they had to use the president’s name in “as many paragraphs as we can because he keeps reading if he's mentioned” and that they had to use visuals aids to keep the POTUS engaged.

These questions arose again when senior intelligence officials told The Washington Post in December that the president's briefings, often called as PDB, is arranged in a way that would not upset him. “If you talk about Russia, meddling, interference — that takes the PDB off the rails,” one of the agents said.

After winning the presidential elections in 2016, Trump argued during an interview that he did not require a daily intelligence briefing. “You know, I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years … But I do say, ‘If something should change, let us know,’” he said on Fox News Sunday.