It was a condition of employment. One would not believe the depth they plunged into my past, who they interviewed (basically everybody, including neighbors from my youth). Put it this way, it was in depth. And yes, the FBI was involved.

However, if one is elected President of the USA, I think one kind of passes by default. It kind of goes with the Commander in Chief role.

That is what scares me about the GOP these days, theocrats with that title. Either that, or toadies. Both dangerous as Hell.

Congress punted the entire classification system over to the Executive branch in 1947.

For most people, that means going through the process outlined in the series of executive orders since 1947. But the President is fundamentally the one who decides who has and does not have a clearance.

Presumably, Trump would not deny himself a security clearance.

As it should be- the American people grant the clearnace in this case.

Do we really want the FBI and OPM digging deep into the private lives and history of Presidents, even our ones, right down to all kinds of sexual history?

A TS-SCI/Yankee White (Yankee White is the cleanse level to work with the President/VP) clearance involves the kind of digging into someone's background the other party can only dream of- including a full "lifestyle" polygraph asking about infidelity in marriage, sexual practices and more.

In fact, it's probably good we don't. I can't swear every candidate we have had or will have on our side has a clean enough background to qualify for working in any of the jobs that surround them....