The Trump administration should send a bouquet of flowers and a thank-you note to the schedulers at the Democratic National Convention. They’re the ones, after all, who gave Hillary Clinton a primetime speaking slot last night.

Mercifully, her speech was less than seven minutes long, but it took a mere eight seconds for the lies to come tumbling out.

“The morning after the last election,” she began, “I said we owe Donald Trump an open mind and the chance to lead. I meant it. Every president deserves that. And Trump came in with so much set up for him: a strong economy, plans for managing crises including a pandemic.”

Does anyone in their right mind believe that Hillary Clinton, on the morning after suffering the most humiliating loss in American electoral history, really meant that we should give Donald Trump a chance to lead? Of course not.

Hillary has thus become the gift that keeps on giving. With each passing day, she appears older, shriller, nastier, frumpier, more bitter, more aggrieved, more vindictive, more conspiratorial, and less gracious than ever before.

The proof of this could be seen in how much time she spent dwelling on the past rather than looking to the future — and how insistent she was that the American people now realize what a terrible mistake they made by choosing Trump over her. “For four years,” she complained, “people have said to me, ‘I didn’t realize how dangerous he was.’ ‘I wish I could go back and do it over.’ ‘I should have voted.’ This can’t be another woulda-coulda-shoulda election.”

Of course, no screed of Hillary’s would be complete without a gentle reminder that SHE WON THE POPULAR VOTE! “Remember,” she warned, “Joe and Kamala can win by three million more votes and still lose. Take it from me.”

Yes, take it from her.

She then insinuated that the only chance President Trump has of winning this upcoming election is by cheating: “So we need numbers overwhelming, so Trump can’t sneak or steal his way to victory.”

And this: “Vote for honest elections, so we, not a foreign adversary, choose our president.”

If anyone was looking for a reason to be hopeful, for a reason to vote for Joe Biden rather than against Donald Trump, they didn’t hear it from Hillary. As Democrat consultant Doug Schoen put it, “In terms of what did not work tonight, Hillary Clinton’s speech reminded many Americans why they chose not to vote Democrat in 2016.”

There were other speakers last night — Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, and Kamala Harris among others — but none of them did as much damage to their cause as Hillary Clinton did.

Pelosi came to us from San Francisco, a once magnificent city that folks are abandoning in droves. As is her wont, she cast the election as good vs. evil, imploring us to “rid the country of Trump’s heartless disregard for America’s goodness.”

Warren came to us from an elementary school classroom, but she used it for disgracefully propagandistic purposes, with three building blocks arranged behind her to spell out B-L-M.

Obama’s delivery was impressive as always, even if the subject matter was stale and predictable. And his choice of venues was rich: Philadelphia, “where our Constitution was drafted and signed,” he said. “We the people” was shown boldly above and behind him, as if he ever regarded that venerable document as anything more than the codified oppression of a bunch of wealthy, slaveholding white men.

As for Harris, she tried to make the case for Joe Biden, but she was really making the case for herself. “We’re at an inflection point,” she said. “The constant chaos leaves us adrift. The incompetence makes us feel afraid. The callousness makes us feel alone. It’s a lot. And here’s the thing: We can do better and deserve so much more. We must elect a president who will bring something different, something better, and do the important work. A president who will bring all of us together — black, white, Latino, Asian, indigenous — to achieve the future we collectively want. We must elect Joe Biden.”

Just remember, this is the man at the top of the ticket, and he won’t be long for the job if he gets it.