Last week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended a woke county prosecutor who pledged not to enforce laws that he opposed. For a couple of days, this felt like a big deal. DeSantis was denounced as a strongman by his enemies and celebrated as a brave champion of law and order by his allies. Yet, compared with the action at Mar-a-Lago, the firing was a picayune dispute over county government — local theater compared with Broadway; Hollywood, Florida compared with Hollywood, California.

The FBI search played into Trump’s hands in another way. Populism thrives on the sense that big, out-of-control-forces are wielding outsize power, that things aren’t what they seem, and that institutions are fundamentally corrupt.

Trump built his political career playing to this sentiment. He portrays himself as the courageous fighter against such malign forces, and their victim.

Usually, politicians want to avoid seeming like victims — it communicates weakness. Trump, on the other hand, welcomes it. If you think about it, it’s pathetic that he claims he was cheated out of a landslide presidential victory in the worst fraud in U.S. history and couldn’t do a damn thing about it.