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.

But after the F.B.I. recovered government documents including classified papers at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, critics questioned whether Trump could be trusted with sensitive information.

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 before attacking President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, his newly installed election opponent.

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.

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'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. 

'So the only way to solve that problem is not to take it I don't want it understood. 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. We can sure see they've thrown everything else but the kitchen sink at him, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see some kitchen porcelain being chucked his way in the next few weeks. Nothing else they have tried has worked, after all, so why not?

The level of seething hatred so many on the left show towards Donald Trump is shocking, but it shouldn't be a surprise. This kind of irrational hatred began, at least, during the Reagan years, and has grown steadily worse. I remember during the two terms of George W. Bush, when the internet was still kind of a new thing, seeing him referred to on message boards with such epithets as "Chimpy" and "George W. Hitler." 

The internet, frankly, has made this a lot more visible, with people being able to hide behind a degree of anonymity. But something about Trump has tossed the left off the deep end. It's not just the internet; it's crap like Nancy Pelosi tearing up Trump's State of the Union speech, like a petulant child having a tantrum.

The internet makes it more visible. But the hate is there. Donald Trump knows this, he accepts it and pushes forward - but obviously, he's not going to hand them any sticks to beat him with.