“Do your job!” These three words supposedly sum up the work ethos of Bill Belichick.

On the eve of the 2016 presidential election, Belichick sent candidate Trump a letter that stated, “Your leadership is amazing. I have always had tremendous respect for you, but the toughness and perseverance you have displayed over the last year is remarkable.”

But does the “Do your job!” mantra apply to Trump?

The most important reading a president should do is the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB). It is a distillation of America’s most pressing national security threats as assembled by our intelligence agencies. We know that this president does not immerse himself in this most essential document. Instead, he has demanded that a Cliffs Notes version be read to him, and he sometimes skips these sessions. By contrast, President Obama was known to take the PDB to bed in order to be better prepared for the next day’s briefing.

Perhaps if the president had done his job, he would have known that back in January and February, the PDB noted more than a dozen times that the coronavirus was a national security threat! Perhaps if he’d taken his job seriously, he would have known in February that Russian intelligence had put bounties on our military personnel in Afghanistan!

Reading lapses extend beyond the president. Upon exiting the White House, the Obama administration left the Trump administration a 69 page pandemic playbook. It, like the PDB, gathered dust.

I wonder if Bill Belichick has buyer’s remorse? And the same applies to his boss, Robert Kraft, who donated $1 million dollars to the Trump inauguration.

“Do your job!” is a tragically empty slogan when applied to our president.

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