Is Donald Trump a Security Risk?

One of the major flaws in the American system is that any boy can grow up to be president, but not every boy can get a security clearance; the nation’s most important secrets are generally entrusted to trustworthy people. But what if, by some fluke of the electoral process, a complete idiot of dubious provenance and no apparent accomplishment becomes commander in chief, fobbed off upon an unsuspecting nation by a coterie of media and party bosses?

That’s already happened, of course. So now that the country’s secrets have long been exposed or hacked, why not shut the barn door, just in case you know who becomes president? The Daily Beast raises the question:

After Donald Trump is formally chosen as the Republican presidential nominee, he’ll be able to receive classified U.S. intelligence briefings, which could include some of the same sensitive information that President Obama is given in the Oval Office.

And that prospect has some spies sweating. Trump, who can’t seem to dam his stream of consciousness on Twitter, and who has lately taken to spreading rumors and conspiracy theories on national television, has never been privy to national secrets. Nor has he ever demonstrated that he’s capable of keeping them.

“My concern with Trump will be that he inadvertently leaks, because as he speaks extemporaneously, he’ll pull something out of his hat that he heard in a briefing and say it,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who has participated in the process of briefing presidential candidates.

Um… is that a giant waddling donkey I see over there in a corner of the room? Why, yes it is:

Unlike his presumed rival, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who would receive the same briefing if she’s the Democratic Party nominee, Trump has never sat across the table from U.S. intelligence analysts and been given updates on the latest machinations of ISIS, or efforts by foreign governments to penetrate American computer networks. He also has selected a team of largely unknown advisers who might have trouble helping him to contextualize what he might hear and know what questions to ask. (Of course, Trump isn’t under FBI investigation for potentially spilling secrets from his private email server, like his Democratic rival.)

Well, there certainly is that. The fact is, the Obama administration might as well have simply published all its classified information online, so porous are its security protocols and so little does it care. Mrs. Clinton would continue the same insouciant attitude to such things; and when confronted, the donkey would simply bray and then waddle along.