Lucas: Raids, retribution and a humiliating loss

They should have left Donald Trump alone.

Here he was, a battered ex-president minding his own business and licking his wounds following his controversial and tumultuous departure from Washington following the Jan 6, 2021, riots.

After four years as president, he had been beaten by Joe Biden in an election the results of which he disputed.

Despite his complaints about the election being rigged, some pundits and politicians — but not all — figured that Trump was finished. Washed up. Perhaps he was.

And who knows if Trump, now the president-elect, would even have run again had not the Biden administration, if not President Joe Biden himself, ordered the August 2022 FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home searching for classified documents he was not supposed to have.

They were like the documents that Biden had stored for years in the garage at his Wilmington, Del. home in boxes next to his vintage Corvette.

The difference is that Biden’s home was not raided, and he was not charged with any offense; Trump was.

The raid on Trump’s home was an unprecedented event. Never in U.S. history had a president ordered federal agents to invade the home of a former rival with the aim of sending him to prison.

These things happened in other countries but not in the United States, the leading democracy in the world.

But the raid and subsequent prosecution of Trump on this and other cascading, phony charges, was applauded by the Democrat liberal establishment and its fawning cheerleaders in the left-wing media, out to get Trump at any cost.

They failed. Everything blew up in their face. The country in 2024 voted for Trump, not them, and it did so in an overwhelming fashion.

They should have left Trump alone.

Now, if Trump were the vindictive and vengeful tyrant the left and the media have made him out to be, it would only be fair if Trump, upon returning to the White House, ordered an FBI raid on Biden’s home. Maybe there are some classified documents scattered under the Corvette.

It won’t happen, of course. Trump is bigger than that. He even let Hillary Clinton walk. And Biden is finished anyway.

Kamala Harris is finished too, although she may not know it.

While conceding to Trump on Wednesday, Harris did so in a manner indicating, however, that she would not “concede the fight that fueled” her campaign.

In a speech filled with platitudes, like most of her campaign speeches, she could not resist taking a last shot at Trump when she said, “many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of all I hope that is not the case.”

Harris was lucky. She entered the presidential contest through the side door when Biden initially chose her as his running mate, and then exited through the front door when she ran but lost for president.

Her exit only came however, after Trump had kicked the door in.

When you look at it, though, the “dark time” was Harris’s three-month campaign for president when she went all 107 days on the campaign trail without holding a single press conference.

She had a hard time talking about the issues that concerned the American people, like rising food costs, gas and energy prices, open borders and illegal immigration, rising crime and so on. So, she ignored them.

And when on a rare occasion she was asked about specifics, she wandered off into space and into word salads.

Her campaign was a campaign about nothing.

It was like a television sitcom.

It was like the famous Seinfeld television episode where Seinfeld and George pitch an NBC television executive about doing a show about nothing, a show where nothing happens.

“If nothing happens then why am I watching it?” the executive says.

“Because it’s on TV,” George replies.

“Not yet,” the executive says.

Harris did get her show on TV, but nothing happened.

Peter Lucas is a veteran political reporter. Email him at: peter.lucas@boston herald.com