CIA Director Mike Pompeo: Trump is 'incredibly demanding' of the intelligence community

pulse

June 24, 2017 4:31 PM

Pompeo said Trump is an "avid consumer" of intelligence product and asks "great questions" to intelligence community leaders.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo told MSNBC's Hugh Hewitt that President Donald Trump is "incredibly demanding" of the intelligence community during an interview that aired Saturday morning.

Pompeo said he spends over 40 minutes a day talking to Trump, and that the president is a "serious consumer" of the intelligence community's product.

"I appreciate that because I think it informs how he thinks about the world," Pompeo added. The CIA director also drew a distinction between the way Trump and former president Barack Obama consume their intelligence, saying that his predecessor, former CIA director John Brennan, "wasn't there very often" and that Obama "consumed his intelligence in a different way."

"President Trump is incredibly demanding of the intelligence community, he asks us incredibly difficult questions," Pompeo said. "And then counts on myself and other leaders in the [intelligence community] to deliver those answer for him."

Hewitt touched on previous reports which suggested that Trump is not interested in being briefed in the same way former presidents have been. Pompeo told The Washington Post last month that Trump prefers visuals and "killer graphics" as opposed to denser reading material. "

I cannot imagine a statement that is anymore false than the one that would attribute President Trump not being interested in intelligence and facts when it comes to national security."

"He’s an avid consumer of the products we provide, thinks about them and comes back and asks great questions and then, perhaps most importantly, relies upon that information," Pompeo said.