If Donald Trump refuses to attend daily intelligence briefings, America is going to have a serious problem, according to Michael Moore.
On Tuesday, the “Bowling For Columbine” director penned a brutal takedown of Trump in a lengthy essay posted on Facebook titled “Donald Trump Is Gonna Get Us Killed,” comparing the president-elect to former President George W. Bush.
In Moore’s eyes, regular briefings on the state of U.S. national security are a crucial component to running our country given the very real threats facing the nation. Bush and his administration, he claims, dismissed the very same kind of reports Trump says he doesn’t have time for, which indicated that Osama bin Laden was planning a terrorist attack on American soil.
As a keen observer of politics, Moore warned us that history is repeating itself.
“We had a president like him before. He, too, lost the popular vote, a majority of Americans saying they didn’t want him in the Oval Office. But his governor/brother and his ex-CIA chief/dad’s appointees to the Supreme Court put an end to that, and he was installed as Commander-in-Chief,” Moore wrote.
“On August 6, 2001, he was on a month-long vacation at his ranch in Texas. That morning, the White House Counsel handed him his daily national security briefing. He glanced at it, set it aside and then went fishing for the rest of the day. Below is the photo of that moment which I showed the world in ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’. The headline on the security briefing reads: BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO STRIKE INSIDE U.S. On the top page it tells how bin Laden will do this: with planes. George W. Bush didn’t leave the ranch to go back to work for the next four weeks. In the fifth week, bin Laden attacked the U.S. with planes on September 11th.”
Former President Bush made the briefing Moore mentions public in 2004, during the 9/11 commission’s investigation of the attacks — something Trump himself brought up on Oct. 20, 2015, during the second Republican presidential debate.
During an interview with Fox News Sunday, Trump revealed that he doesn’t need daily updates about national security, because he’s “a smart person.” According to reports, he instead reviews intelligence about once a week.
“I don’t have to be told ― you know, I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day,” Trump said.
Moore, of course, vehemently disagrees with this position, writing that it’s the president’s “job to pay attention,” and not to waste time “tweeting and defending Putin.”
“To you, Mr. Trump, I say this: When this next terrorist attack takes place, it is YOU who will be charged by the American people with a gross dereliction of duty,” Moore continued. “It was YOUR job to pay attention, to protect the country. But you were too busy tweeting and defending Putin and appointing cabinet members to dismantle the government. You didn’t have time for the daily national security briefing. Don’t think we’re going to let you use a modern-day burning of the Reichstag as your excuse to eliminate our civil liberties and our democracy.”
“We will remember that while the plot to kill Americans was being hatched, your time was consumed by whom you saw as the real threat to America: Alec Baldwin in a wig,” Moore concluded.
Read his full essay below.
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