“
Word came down from the White House in mid-2017 to stop providing the president with lengthy documents. If there was a staple in it, the briefing paper was probably too long and needed to be cut. Fifteen page updates on complex issues were chopped down to one: bold fonts, simple words, and pictures. "Know your audience," they say, and the “audience of one,” as we called the president, had the temperament of a child, albeit a child with a finger lingering over the nuclear button. We were forced to dumb down life and death decisions.
”
”