But it wasn't on Fox!!

It's well known he doesn't pay any attention to his briefings, and has the attention span of a wombat in a tsunami, so he may well believe he wasn't briefed, just because he doesn't listen to anything that doesn't interest him or conflicts with his preconceived notions. Or that he just plain doesn't want to hear.

@Paul4747 This story is in Fox but they add the White House disclaimer every time they mention it.

@barjoe Here's the explanation, in today's Post: "President" Trump is the first out of the past 7 presidents who doesn't actually read the President's Daily Brief. [washingtonpost.com]

The first thing to note here is the semantic game the White House appears to be playing. They’re suggesting the President’s Daily Brief document doesn’t itself constitute a “briefing” — despite having “brief” in its name — but that a briefing must be done orally. That’s quite the parse. And as longtime Times national security reporter David Sanger notes, it’s not how this works.

David Sanger@SangerNY·9h
I’ve covered national security over four presidencies. This is the first in which a written intelligence product sent to the President didn’t constitute a “briefing.”
Quote Tweet
Jim Sciutto
@jimsciutto
· 20h
Several intelligence veterans have advised me to beware administration officials parsing the word “briefed”, as in whether they mean orally briefed or contained in briefing documents.

But aside from that, it’s worth distilling the White House’s apparent defense down to its basest form, which is Trump may have actually been provided the intelligence, but he didn’t actually consume it. That makes complete sense, given everything we know about Trump and his approach to both detailed intelligence and — more importantly in this moment — to intel about Russia specifically.

Current and former officials said that his daily intelligence update — known as the president’s daily brief, or PDB — is often structured to avoid upsetting him. Russia-related intelligence that might draw Trump’s ire is in some cases included only in the written assessment and not raised orally, said a former senior intelligence official familiar with the matter. In other cases, Trump’s main briefer — a veteran CIA analyst — adjusts the order of his presentation and text, aiming to soften the impact. “If you talk about Russia, meddling, interference — that takes the PDB off the rails,” said a second former senior U.S. intelligence official. “If you say ‘Russian interference,’ to him it’s all about him,” said a senior Republican strategist who has discussed the matter with Trump’s confidants. “He judges everything as about him.”

So it sounds like I guessed right, essentially. Briefing the President and "briefing" the "president" now mean two different things.

@Paul4747 I had a dream shortly after Trump took office. I was driving up a bridge I live near. Uniformed people were pulling people out of their cars. This isn't far from reality now.