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Posted: 2020-07-02T22:47:36Z | Updated: 2020-07-02T22:47:36Z

WASHINGTON Even as taxpayers spend many tens of billions of dollars each year so that thousands of analysts can produce a detailed intelligence report each morning for the president, Donald Trump appears less and less interested in receiving it.

In June, as border clashes between nuclear powers India and China flared, Trump who keeps the lightest work schedule going back to at least Ronald Reagan and possibly Dwight Eisenhower scheduled just seven daily intelligence briefings. In April, when North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un disappeared for days, Trump had only eight.

And in February, as the coronavirus jumped to Italy and Iran and began spreading unnoticed in the United States, Trump had just three fewer than the four days he spent golfing in South Florida or the five days he staged campaign rallies.

Through the first half of this year, Trump has had only 41 intelligence briefings, according to a HuffPost review of his daily schedules, an average of 1 per week.

When Trump took office, he scheduled an intelligence briefing nearly every weekday. But that grew more sporadic as the year passed, down to where he had only 13 in October 2017 and 12 in January 2018. On Feb. 6, 2018, the phrase intelligence briefing began to replace daily intelligence briefing in the public schedule until, by mid-April 2018, the daily part had vanished for good.

And though the written distillation of the briefing material is available to him early each morning in the Presidents Daily Brief (PDB), Trump does not like to read, particularly information that he finds boring, such as intelligence analyses, according to former White House aides, including ex-national security adviser John Bolton.

Hes just not receptive to new facts, Bolton told CBS News on Wednesday. The intelligence briefings dont communicate as much information as they should. We tried to think of ways to change that. I think it was probably a doomed effort.

Ned Price, a former CIA analyst and a spokesman for the National Security Council under former President Barack Obama , said Trumps unwillingness to pay attention puts the intelligence community in a bind. It makes it virtually impossible for the president to be an informed participant in the discussion of policy responses, he said.

A senior White House aide called HuffPosts tally inaccurate and said the public schedule does not reflect all of Trumps intelligence briefings. The president receives extensive intelligence briefings by his career CIA briefer several times a week, the aide said on condition of anonymity. Hes also routinely briefed on critical intelligence matters throughout the day if they rise to the level of the president of the United States by his national security adviser and chief of staff.

But the aide would not respond to follow-up questions asking why the White House would put some intelligence briefings on the public schedule but not others. The aide also would not provide examples of intelligence briefings Trump has had that were not on the public schedule.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany did not respond to a HuffPost query asking why Trump takes so few intelligence briefings. During a news conference on Tuesday, she claimed that Trump does, in fact, read. This president, Ill tell you, is the most informed person on planet Earth when it comes to the threats that we face, she said.

Trumps lack of interest in intelligence is under scrutiny for the second time this year, with news outlets, starting with The New York Times, revealing that U.S. intelligence had learned Russia had been paying rewards to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan for murdering American soldiers but Trump had done nothing about it.

Previously, it was disclosed that Trumps PDB informed him of the grave threat posed by the coronavirus in the first days of January . Trump, though, was at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach on a golf vacation and did not have his first intelligence briefing of the year until Jan. 6, and then only nine all that month .

Former Vice President Joe Biden , the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, posted a five-word critique of the situation to Twitter on Wednesday: Ill read my daily briefings.

Laziest President In Modern Times

The renewed attention on Trumps intelligence briefings also casts more light on his work habits.

Republican George W. Bush was typically in the Oval Office by 6:45 each morning, when he received his intelligence briefing, although he often took a break later in the day for exercise.

Obama received the PDB on his iPad at 6 each morning, where he read it before starting his day with a workout and getting to the West Wing by 9.