Trump Lapped Up White House Intel Briefings Featuring Dirt About World Rivals: Report

As president, Donald Trump had a reputation for being easily bored during White House briefings. But a new report claims he zoned in and lapped up intelligence presentations that dished dirt about rival world leaders he didn’t like.

According to The New York Times,  Trump was also fascinated by information about himself and how his meetings with global leaders were received.

Trump devoured intelligence briefings about his foreign counterparts before and after phone calls with them, sources told the newspaper. Trump also appeared to be particularly attentive to information that he may have believed could help him woo autocratic leaders he admired — such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — as well as provide leverage he could utilize against heads of state he disliked — such as French President Emmanuel Macron .

“He is all about leverage,” Sue Gordon, a former principal deputy director of national intelligence, told the Times. “It is not my experience that he has an ideologically held view about anything. It’s all about what he can use as leverage in this moment.”

The latest report may help to explain why Trump took classified documents from the White House at the end of his term and stashed them in his Mar-a-Lago home.