President Barack Obama knocked President-elect Donald Trump’s rejection of daily intelligence briefings, saying any president who refuses them would be “flying blind.”
During an appearance Monday night on “The Daily Show,” Obama told host Trevor Noah that Trump’s assertion that he doesn’t need daily briefings because he’s “a smart person” is a mistake.
“It doesn’t matter how smart you are,” Obama said. “You have to make the best information possible to make the best decisions possible.”
“If you’re not getting their perspective their detailed perspective, then you are flying blind,” he continued.
Obama held out a little bit of hope that Trump would opt into the briefings once he takes office.
“I think the President-elect may say one thing and do another once he’s here,” Obama said.
The President also discussed the CIA’s recent allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. election as well as his call for intelligence agencies to draft a report of their findings on the topic. Though Trump has laughed off the CIA’s allegations, Obama said the report will help to inform government agencies and the media about how to move forward should such hacking happen again in the future.
“The president-elect in some of his political events, specifically said to the Russians, ‘Hack Hillary’s emails so that we can finally find out what’s going on and confirm our conspiracy theories,’” Obama said. “The real question that I think we all have to reflect on is what’s happened to our political system where some emails that were hacked and released ended up being the overwhelming story and the constant source of coverage, breathless coverage that was depicted as somehow damning in all sorts of ways — when the truth of the matter was it was fairly routine stuff.”
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