I ran a trapline when I was a kid and managed to get reasonably proficient at snagging clever critters like raccoons and even foxes. The key to trapping a clever animal is to present a situation where they feel comfortable – and to use a bait that they can’t resist. You want to entice them in – a safe, normal surrounding, and a bait that smells good enough that they don’t smell the steel beneath.
Donald Trump is pretty clever himself, and when the subject of national security briefings came up after his Asheville, North Carolina rally on Monday, he indicated that he smelled the bait and, evidently, the steel beneath the bait, because he’s declining the briefings.
U.S. spy agencies offer briefings to presidential candidates once they have secured their party’s nomination to prepare them for life as commander in chief.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, the former president said he could now get the briefings if he wanted them but sensed a trap.
‘I don’t want them, because, number one, I know what’s happening. It’s very easy to see what’s happening,’ he said.
At this point, that’s probably a smart outlook. But it’s a hell of a pass we’ve come to as a nation, when a presidential candidate, one of the nominees of a major political party, feels he needs to forgo national security briefings because he’s worried – justifiably – about Democrats trying to trip him up somehow.
‘So the best way to handle that situation is, I don’t need that briefing. They come in, they give you a briefing, and then two days later, they leak it, and then they say You leaked it.
I’ll have plenty of them when I get in.’
In essence, former President Trump is saying he doesn’t trust the Democrats in charge of the national security apparatus to not try some shenanigans.