Trump?s ?fact-free? approach caused briefing challenges, CIA report says

Donald Trump's "fact-free" approach to the presidency created unprecedented challenges for intelligence officials responsible for briefing him, according to a newly released account from the CIA.

The 45th president's chaotic and freewheeling style, and his disinclination to read anything put in front of him, resulted in the presidential daily briefing, or PDB - a crucial security update including information about potential threats to the US - being delivered more regularly to Vice-President Mike Pence instead, the report states.

By the middle of Trump's term in office, his briefings were reduced to two weekly sessions of 45 minutes each. Briefings were discontinued altogether after the deadly insurrection of 6 January, which was sparked by Trump urging his supporters to march on the US Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.

The analysis comes in a 40-page unclassified update to the CIA's Getting to Know the President, a publication that chronicles efforts to brief presidents-elect through transition periods and into office for every administration since 1952.

"For the intelligence community (IC), the Trump transition was far and away the most difficult in its historical experience with briefing new presidents," the new chapter, posted to the CIA website, concludes.

"Trump was like [Richard] Nixon, suspicious and insecure about the intelligence process, but unlike Nixon in the way he reacted. Rather than shut the IC out, Trump engaged with it but attacked it publicly."

Nixon, who resigned in 1974 after the Watergate scandal, refused to accept any intelligence from the CIA and received briefings instead from trusted insiders such as his national security adviser and later secretary of state, Henry Kissinger.