Donald Trump doesn’t want the job, has begun refusing his daily intelligence briefings

| 4:28 pm EST November 24, 2016
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In the sixteen days since Donald Trump has been claiming the title of “president-elect” he’s done little to suggest that he actually wants the job. He’s been hiding out in Trump Tower in New York instead of working in Washington DC. He’s refused to hold a press conference. He’s spent most of his time picking fights on his infamous Twitter account and complaining about what he’s been watching on television. But in a sign that Trump may truly not want the job, he’s been refusing his daily intelligence briefings.

To be clear, it’s not that Donald Trump has been refusing to take his daily intelligence briefings seriously. It’s that, according to the Washington Post, he’s been refusing to take the briefings at all. Trump has simply been turning his briefers away each day, having only allowed them to brief him on two of the sixteen days since the election. These briefings are supposed to provide him with the classified information and world developments he needs in order to hit the ground running with foreign policy once he’s sworn in. But he’s simply refusing.

This serves to further the increasingly popular belief that Donald Trump either had no expectation of winning the election and never wanted the job, or that he’s changed his mind now that he’s realized just how thankless and labor-intensive the job truly is. In any case it may help explain why, even as he complains about everything from the New York Times to Saturday Night Live on his infamous Twitter account, he has yet to start complaining about the three impending state recounts which seek to take the job away from him before he can even be sworn in.

Recounts are likely to get underway soon in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, thanks to the ongoing efforts of third party candidate Jill Stein, who is demanding (and funding) those recounts. In the unlikely event that Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania all swing to Hillary Clinton after the recounts, she would become President. In such case Trump would certainly have more time on his hands to watch television.