Mike Pompeo is the guy who gives President Trump bad news daily.

As director of the CIA, Mr. Pompeo travels most mornings from the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, to the White House to present Mr. Trump with a classified report of global hot spots and national-security emergencies known as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB.

The highly sensitive briefings take place in the Oval Office in late morning, normally for 30 or 40 minutes. Usually in attendance are national security adviser H.R. McMaster, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Vice President Mike Pence and another CIA officer.

Mr. Trump prefers a spoken presentation to a written report, and so it’s normally Mr. Pompeo’s responsibility to give the president the summary of bad things that happened overnight and other problems that are brewing around the world.