[zzzeek]

Jeff Bezos is also on this "advisory team" and he's close to a mortal enemy of Trump.

I predict this is no more than a sunshine squad for PR reasons. Trump met with Al Gore for many hours as well, then nominated the most ardent climate change denier as head of the EPA the next day. As long as that kind of thing doesn't change (e.g. Trump literally comes out and says, "OK, I was wrong, I finally believe in climate change"), there's nothing here.

Particularly when it says, “meet with the President frequently to share their specific experience and knowledge as the President implements his economic agenda.” - this is a man too lazy and detached to even be interested in his own intelligence briefings (http://www.npr.org/2016/12/13/505348507/what-exactly-is-the-...). All evidence so far points to him not caring at all what new ideas this panel brings, if even paying attention at all.

[brightball]

While I'm not a Trump fan and don't disagree with a ton of what you say here, people need to stop with this intelligence briefings stuff.

He said he doesn't need to dedicate time to have people tell him the exact same thing everyday, but to let him know when things change. If anything, that's an efficiency gain that a site full of programmers and avid "meetings are the devil" folks should appreciate. Every time that gets cited right now it roughly translates to "person who only reads headlines."

[sigmar]

If Trump was too busy for briefings, it wouldn't be a big deal. But the "I don't want to hear the same thing every day" is likely very telling of how little he cares about details. Details are important and U.S. national security is at risk if the President doesn't want to know the nuances of current events.

[ddw]

Especially since he has time to meet with Kanye West

[KirinDave]

> He said he doesn't need to dedicate time to have people tell him the exact same thing everyday, but to let him know when things change.

I imagine it is somewhat frustrating to hear,

Analyst A: "We have more developments in how the Russian intelligence operation helped in securing your election, sir."

Trump: "I don't believe that happened, next subject!"

Analyst B: "Sir we have more corroboration that the Russians were involved in the election as bad actors."

Trump: "You're fired!"

[audleman]

> He said he doesn't need to dedicate time to have people tell him the exact same thing everyday

I don't believe that every president before Trump simply put up with redundant meetings. This is the busiest job in the world, presidents are intelligent people, somebody would have put an end to daily security briefings if they weren't useful before now.

[mtberatwork]

Things change daily and he's the incoming president. He absolutely needs to dedicate the time. It's not like these are useless staff meetings to plan an upcoming holiday party.

[tuwtuwtuw]

I agree, Twitter is more important right now.

[micheljones]

The guy puts out a tweet daily while dropping a turd in the morning. Are you really trying to drum this up as something special and resource-hogging?

[ulfw]

One a day in the bathroom? uhuh... http://graphics.wsj.com/clinton-trump-twitter/

ONE DAY RECORD: 87 tweets OCT. 18, 2016

AVG. TWEETS PER DAY: 11

[KirinDave]

If being the PEOTUS is half as hard as having a new baby, I can speak from experience: time to poop is at a premium.

If only Trump worked harder, I guess.

[gdulli]

Yeah this feels like an evolution of the "John Barron" strategy. Except this time he's leeching credibility from real people. It's a waste of time. The people who saw through him before will continue to do so, the people who ate it up before will continue to do so.

[ashamedpedant]

It seems he does pay attention to sources which "confirm" the things he already believes. Based on that, I can imagine a few unlikely but positive outcomes from these meetings.

Trump has spent a lifetime fighting contractors and trying to keep projects within budget. Maybe Musk and Bezos can persuade him to expand the use of fixed-price "space act agreements" at NASA (like those previously won by SpaceX and Blue Origin for CCDev) instead of the traditional cost-plus contracts. Trump has recently tweeted about Pentagon projects going over budget; maybe he can be persuaded to push the fixed-price model there as well.

[camus2]

> he's close to a mortal enemy of Trump

He is a business man who takes business decisions. He cares not who is in the white house, provided he has access and he can benefit from this. He certainly will.