What did Donald Trump do today?

He slashed the staff that provides him with the intelligence and foreign policy briefings he doesn't read.

This afternoon, Trump fired a large portion of the staff of the National Security Council. Dozens of analysts were dismissed in what are being called "massive" cuts to the organization.

The NSC is the main source of advice and coordination for the executive branch on matters of national security and foreign policy. Many agencies deal with those matters, but the function of the NSC is to ensure coordination between them, and to make sure that senior White House officials—including and especially the president—are given clear and up-to-date information as situations develop across the world.

The purge comes not long after news broke that Trump's National Security Advisor, Tulsi Gabbard, had pressured intelligence analysts to change their conclusions when they contradicted Trump's preferred, but false, narrative about the supposed threat to the United States posed by street gangs in Venezuela.

Gabbard then fired the analysts who reached the "wrong" conclusions and publicly mocked them.  

It's not clear how much this will affect Trump, who has a deep aversion to actually listening to intelligence briefings. They are prepared daily, but through his first 100 days, Trump sat in on only 12 of them. This was a problem during his first term as well, when analysts were instructed to "jazz them up" with pictures and charts to help keep Trump's attention.

Why does this matter?

• Expert knowledge and advice is supposed to inform the president's decisions, not the other way around.
  

• Breaking the United States' foreign policy and intelligence services only helps the United States' enemies.
  

• A president who can't focus on the task at hand unless it's entertaining isn't fit to serve.