Since 1952, the custom has been to give major-party presidential nominees access to top-secret security briefing material.
The idea has been to keep these individuals in the loop on pressing issues involving the safety of the nation. The 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, got the information from the Obama administration as he ran against Barack Obama; four years earlier, the Bush administration provided the briefings to Sens. Obama and John McCain while they ran against each other. That’s been the norm dating back to the days of the Truman administration.
Consider, then, that in just a few weeks the next Republican Party presidential nominee is going to receive these briefings and will be privy to some highly sensitive material.
Yes, that means Donald J. Trump is going to peek under the national security tent and know much of what the president and his military and intelligence staffers know about the dangers that threaten us.
I am not sure what is more frightening: the material to which Trump will have access or that he’ll actually be given that information in the first place.
This is the guy who this past year told “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd that he derives his national security “expertise” by watching “the shows” on Sunday morning, meaning the news talk shows presented on several of the broadcast and cable news networks.
TrumpĀ most recently said that former GOP rival Ted Cruz’s father might have been complicit in the murder of President Kennedy. His source for that disclosure? The National Enquirer.
The real estate mogul alsoĀ said he wouldn’t have any problems with South Korea and (gulp!) Japan developing nuclear arsenals to deter the idiot/madman who runs North Korea.
President Obama will make the final call on the classification level of the information to be disseminated to the major-party nominees. There’s no law that mandates any of this. It’s strictly a judgment call. The president cannot let one nominee see more than the other, however, which means that Trump and probable Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton will get the same information.
I mentioned all this briefly last night to my wife, that Trump is going to get these national security briefings the moment he becomes the GOP presidential nominee.
Her response? “Oh … my.”
Exactly, my dear.