Reading Is Important
It turns out reading is important, especially when you are the most powerful chief executive and government official on earth. Turning a national security briefing (the “President’s Daily Brief (PDB)”) into a video sounds like a Saturday Night Live skit, not a real current event. Yet another clear sign we are in trouble for the long haul as a nation.
“At the end of May, Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee, Gordon Lubold, Dan De Luce, and Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner of NBC News reported that Gabbard was considering turning the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) into a video that looked like a broadcast from the Fox News Channel to try to capture Trump’s attention. At the time, he had taken only 14 PDBs, or fewer than one a week (in the same number of days, President Joe Biden took 90). One person with direct knowledge of the discussions said: “The problem with Trump is that he doesn’t read.””
For more see Heather Cox Richardson‘s update from 22 June 2025:
AI sidenote: ChatGPT refused to create this image for me, although it initially started and was doing a fantastic job. The error message said:
“I wasn't able to generate that image because the request violates our content policies. If you'd like, I can help create a different cartoon-style visualization on a related or completely different topic. Just let me know what you'd like to try next!”
As a result, I used Ideogram.ai to generate the attached image. Ideogram.ai is, from what I’ve read, Chinese owned. An ironic footnote in the breadcrumbs of my antifascist work.
