President Donald Trump heads into high-stakes meetings with world leaders carrying a risky habit, White House insiders told his biographer.
In a Saturday episode of “Inside Trump’s Head,” Michael Wolff said that Trump refuses to read his briefing books before summits and told co-host Joanna Coles about the pattern while breaking down Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit.
“I’ve had this described to me by White House people of what happens when he goes into these meetings,” Wolff said. Summits normally demand “really hard work,” with briefing books and input from every corner of government that has “issues that they want on the table,” Wolff explained.
“It’s a difficult moment for any president because, I mean, you’re the guy and you got to know what you’re talking about,” Wolff said. “If you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re giving away the store.”
The stakes, he stressed, go well beyond pageantry.
“It’s a matter of security,” Wolff said. “The world turns on these kinds of meetings. Not with Trump.”
Trump “refuses to look at the briefing books” and “refuses to have extensive conversations about the issues at hand,” according to Wolff.
“Doesn’t care, I suppose. Doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Wolff said. “He is always saying, ‘I’m really good with this.’ And then he goes into these meetings, and all it is is flattery.”
That flattery flows in both directions, with foreign counterparts “very clearly” understanding “what they can get by this,” Wolff said.
“I’m trying to circumvent using the word buffoon,” he added, “but I think that’s what they see him as. They’re like, ‘Oh my God.’”
Coles asked who would traditionally prepare the president, suggesting Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Wolff said the job requires “weeks of preparation,” so aides boil it down instead.
“They give him two points. You got to do this and this,” Wolff said. “And even that usually doesn’t register with him.”
Wolff said the reality is difficult to convey to voters, and even to White House staff, who fall back on the idea that “he’s been elected twice” and “must know what he’s doing.”
“The president of the United States does not know what he’s talking about in these situations,” Wolff said.
He warned that the consequences will soon come into view.
“Years from now, or not even years from now, I think we will start to see the effects of this,” Wolff said.
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