US intel started seeing signs of an epidemic in China in late November. That threat began showing up in Trump's intelligence packet in early January.

That month:

- Trump had no intel briefing until Jan. 6
- Only 9 all month
- 6 days of golf
- 5 rallies https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-virus-briefings_n_5e90db2dc5b60a1f31132ff8

On Jan. 18, when his Health and Human Services secretary finally managed to reach Trump on a Florida golf weekend to discuss the threat, Trump had no scheduled intelligence briefing.

Nor was there one on his schedule for Jan. 22, the day Trump famously told CNBC that the virus posed no danger and was limited to a single person who had come in from China.

Trump himself acknowledged that he did not appreciate the severity of the danger until just before he imposed travel restrictions on foreigners who had recently been in China on Jan. 31.

“When I learned about the gravity of it was sometime just prior to closing the country to China,” he said Wednesday, after being asked specifically when he learned of the intelligence regarding the coronavirus. “So, I don’t know exactly, but I’d like to see the information.”

White House officials argue that just because no intelligence briefing was on the schedule does not mean that he failed to receive one that day. They did not, however, explain why briefings would be listed on the public schedule on some days but not others.

Of course, even if Trump had received a briefing detailing the coronavirus threat, there is no guarantee he would have taken it seriously.

Trump has long claimed subject matter expertise — he claimed he knew more about the terror group ISIS than “the generals,” and only recently claimed he knew “more about South Korea than anybody” — in areas where he does not appear to have any.

What’s more, he has distrusted the U.S. intelligence community since it revealed that Russia had worked to get him elected. At a joint news conference with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in 2018, Trump said he believed Putin’s denial on that matter.

In addition to Trump’s tendency to disbelieve intelligence information presented to him is his lack of interest in digesting it. The PDB prepared for the president is contained each day in a thick binder of both summaries and backup material.

Previous presidents began each day with that presentation, either verbally with a briefing or — like former President Barack Obama — with his reading of the material on an iPad followed by a question-and-answer session.

Trump and his people love to say how hard he works.

This is ridiculous.

Trump has kept the lightest work schedule of any president going to at at least Reagan.

As a result:

Trump, in contrast, spends most of his mornings in the White House residence watching television and posting tweets about what he has just seen. He rarely gets to the West Wing much before noon, and his intelligence briefings have typically taken place in the afternoons.

In January, only one of his nine scheduled briefings was set before noon — on Jan. 16, at 11:45 a.m. Another was scheduled for noon, and two others for 12:15 p.m. The rest were all at 2 p.m. and later.

As to the briefings themselves, Trump does not like to read and is easily distracted, forcing his briefers to come up with ways to hold his attention, such as charts and graphics, according to those familiar with some of the sessions.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-virus-briefings_n_5e90db2dc5b60a1f31132ff8