A great man once said: that most of the world’s ills are caused by taking politics seriously.

Democrats are now learning that lesson.

When Donald Trump came to the presidency in 2016, the loyal opposition failed to recognize him for what he was, a stand-up comedian in the mold of many Borscht Belt comics trained in his native New York.

But when it came to business matters, Trump had no plans to keep his campaign promises. He had no plans for replacing Obamacare or building a border wall to be paid for by Mexico.

He was more adept at making deals than executing them.

Democrats would have been wise to take advantage of this and let him spend his first four years as a puppet. He did not have the votes in Congress to implement most of his policies.

Instead, they took him seriously. The key to the Russiagate scandal was that Democrats accused him of “collusion” with Russia, in part because of a joke asking Vladimir Putin to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you can find the 30,000 missing emails,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. “I think you will probably get a big reward from our press.”

He was clearly jokingbut many members of the mainstream media took it seriously.

Then there was Ukraine. The public’s ignorance when it came to Ukraine was bliss for the Bidens. Hunter Biden was involved in some questionable financial dealings there. But these wouldn’t come to light until Hunter Biden dropped off his laptop at a Delaware computer repair shop in April 2019.

It was full of information that would embarrass the Bidens. But my colleagues in the mainstream media were complicit. covering up the contents of that laptop Until after the 2020 elections.

“They said the laptop in hell was from Russia, and I said, ‘It wasn’t from Russia.’ “It was from Hunter,” he added. “And I never received an apology.” (Just a newspaper columnist I took the trouble to call the former CIA agent caught in the middle of the argument.)

Trump addressed this cover-up during the last campaign, when Donald sounded more bitter than funny.

However, this did not hurt his popularity. Donald was bulletproof, both literally and figuratively.

In the last campaign Donald would make one gaffe or another that would undo a lesser candidate. However, the next day the polls remained unchanged.

The latest was the comedian’s joke about Puerto Ricans and trash at the Trump rally. Experts claimed this would cost Latino votes. Instead, Trump’s Latino vote rose to historic proportions.

Then there was Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate.

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Democrats made a big mistake in electing a candidate who didn’t need to win a single primary to win the nomination.

If they had pressured Joe Biden to drop out of the race from the start, they could have opened the presidential primary to a number of Democrats more talented and accomplished than Harris.

And even if Harris comes out on top, they could have a much more competitive ticket if they had chosen someone other than Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as their vice president.

New Jersey native and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly would be a much stronger candidate since the ticket likely carries Kelly’s home state. The Harris-Walz ticket lost the state and 11 electoral votes.

But my friends in the Democratic Party told me that Kelly had been harshly demoted to six by leaders of public employee unions who felt he did not show due loyalty to government workers.

Now that Trump will return to the White House with a Republican Senate and perhaps even a Republican House, he will have the authority to exact whatever revenge he desires. Or, says one GOP legal expert:

“I think it’s really funny how the far left is trying to criminalize Donald Trump’s actions and it’s boomeranging for them,” said Michael Carroll, an attorney and former assemblyman from Morris County. “Many people looked at what was happening in New York and stood back in horror.”

This incident was a classic example of Democrats turning comedy into tragedy.

The comedy featured porn star Stormy Daniels, who claimed she was flirting with Donald.

The humorous part came when Daniels visited Trump’s penthouse for the second time.

““I remember coming in and he was watching Shark Week,” he said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “He made me sit down and watch an entire documentary about shark attacks.”

This is so funny! But what happened to Trump next was serious. He was convicted in Manhattan criminal court on charges that he covered up hush money payments to Daniels 18 years ago.

News reports state that the other three lawsuits filed against Trump will be suspended as long as he is president.

As of Wednesday morning, my liberal friends were in mourning.

The big question now is how Trump will behave when he returns to the White House.

All I can say to my liberal friends is this: You should never have started it.

But forgive us for laughing at the outcome.