Trump’s daily briefing is a 2-minute video — and even his inner circle is worried

President Donald Trump's daily briefing is leaving some of his allies concerned he's not getting a full picture about what's happening on the ground in Iran.

NBC News reported Wednesday that the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) is a two-minute-long montage video that can keep Trump's notoriously short attention span.

Politico reported in May 2025 that Trump had only done 12 daily briefings in four months.

"The low number of briefings this time around is troubling to many in and around the intelligence community, who were already concerned about Trump’s act-first-evaluate-after approach to governing," Politico wrote at the time.

Now Trump is doing the briefings, but they're only two minutes long. Trump's favorite song, "YMCA," lasts longer than the daily intelligence briefings at 3:49. The videos essentially show “stuff blowing up.”

Three current and a former U.S. official told NBC News they have concerns that the videos are clouding his judgment, which explains why Trump's statements have so many mixed messages.

Trump allies fear that he's not getting the full picture of what's really going on in Iran. Trump stated that the U.S. already won the war, though he's deploying about 1,000 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne to the Middle East.

The bombing video clips that Trump is shown also fuel his "frustration with news coverage of the war. Trump has pointed to the success depicted in the daily videos to privately question why his administration can’t better influence the public narrative, asking aides why the news media doesn’t emphasize what he’s seeing," the NBC report said, citing one of the current and former officials.

NBC cited White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said Trump gets a full briefing.

“That’s an absolutely false assertion coming from someone who has not been present in the room,” she said in a statement. “Anyone who has been present for conversations with President Trump knows he actively seeks and solicits the opinions of everyone in the room and expects full-throated honesty from all of his top advisors.”

Chief Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell called Trump's war "an overwhelming success." He added that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Trump are "in constant communication."

While his briefing videos give him an emotional boost, one official said Trump is taking calls with friends and other advisors who might be giving him the public opinion polls that have turned against him.

NBC recalled previous wars, "from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan," in which military leaders were alleged to be running by "groupthink," briefing the president while omitting "inconvenient facts and refusing to recognize signs that their strategy was failing."

One current official said that there simply isn't time to brief Trump on everything.

“We can’t tell him every single thing that happens,” the current U.S. official told NBC. Aides give feedback on the briefing when they focus on "U.S. victories." Overall, Trump's briefings focus on those successes.

It explains why Trump is saying one thing on television while Americans watch another thing unfolding in real time. Last week, Trump told the press, “Their anti-aircraft equipment is gone... nobody is shooting at us." He made the comment after a U.S. F-35 was hit by Iranian fire and the soldier was forced to make an emergency landing.

Another incident came this month when five U.S. Air Force refueling plans were struck at an air base in Saudi Arabia. Trump wasn't briefed on the strikes, NBC reported. He only learned about it from the media. When he asked officials, he was told the planes weren't damaged that badly.

Behind the scenes, the official said Trump reacted angrily as he watched the story unfold on national television. He concluded on Truth Social that the media was lying and that they want the U.S. "to lose the war."

The officials said that the "constrained flow of information" increases concern that "Trump may not be equipped to make critical decisions about options he’s presented with for possible next steps in the war if he’s not receiving a full scope of information about the status of the conflict," two of the officials said.

Meanwhile, other aides are desperately trying to give Trump context of what is actually unfolding. One person familiar with the situation said that aides tried to bring Trump new polls showing how much his numbers had dropped since the war began.

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