Obama to Trump: 'It doesn't matter how smart you are' over intelligence briefings

Outgoing President says US spies are 'hard-working, patriotic and knowledgeable experts'

Mr Obama said the President-elect would be 'flying blind' (Comedy Central)

President Barack Obama has warned Donald Trump that "it doesn't matter how smart you are" when it comes to briefings from US intelligence agencies.

Mr Trump said earlier this week that he was "like a smart person" who did not need "the same thing in the same words every single day" when asked why he received only one briefing per week

"I get it when I need it," the President-elect told Fox News. "These are very good people that are giving me the briefings. And I say, 'If something should change from this point, immediately call me. I'm available on one minute's notice.'"

But Mr Obama warned his successor that it "doesn't matter how smart you are if you have to have the best information possible to make the best decisions possible."

"My experience with our intelligence agencies is that they are not perfect, they'd be the first to acknowledge that, but they are full of extraordinarily hard-working, patriotic and knowledgeable experts," he told The Daily Show's, Trevor Noah. "And if you're not getting their perspective - their detailed perspective - then you are flying blind."

Recalling how Mr Trump invited the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's emails to "confirm conspiracy theories", President Obama also pointed to the relationships between the tycoon's new team and senior figures both close to Vladimir Putin's government.

"You had what were very clear relationships between members of the president-elect’s campaign team and Russians, and a professed shared view on a bunch of issues," he said. "Going forward, I worry that we don’t spend enough time on self-reflection about how our democracy’s working, how our campaign’s working, and how all of us have to do a better job at talking about what’s at stake."

Mr Trump's transition team has dismissed the CIA’s reported findings that Russia intervened in the US election in an attempt to ensure his victory, comparing them to investigations into Iraq’s non-existence weapons of mass destruction.