PHILADELPHIA — Turns out Donald J. Trump is right. The system really is rigged! At least the Democratic Party’s system is.

For all of the “doom and gloom” Mr. Trump was accused of peddling last week, at least the guy was telling the truth — ugly as it may be.

This convention we have going on here this week is a carnival of magic, lies, dodging and cover-ups. It was the Russians!

Truly, this was the only way Hillary Clinton was ever going to be the nominee of any party in the current political environment.

Sure, Republicans had their moments of unpleasantness last week. The great, constipated constitutionalist Sen. Ted Cruz went into Cleveland hellbent to make a scene.

Wisely, Mr. Trump realized that letting the family feud spill out onto the floor a little bit would not hurt him one bit. Instead, it served the much greater purpose of letting all the toxic air out of the fight.

In the end, it was an honest airing of grievances and Mr. Trump still won and walked out of Cleveland with a handsome bump in the polls.

As always, Mr. Trump was raw, honest and off-script.

Even during Ted Cruz’s kamikaze speech, Mr. Trump violated all protocol and marched out onto the convention floor while Mr. Cruz was still delivering his non-endorsement. The surprise move stunned conventioneers and created a huge distraction, which only added to the thundering boos that ushered Count Chocula off the stage.

Ugly, yes. But at least brutally honest.

The media, of course, blasted Mr. Trump’s speech for all its doom and gloom. Hilariously, they had to tuck in their hand-wringing stories about his “midnight in America” speech amid the endless stream of other stories about the world on fire, dire desperation in America and Islamic terrorists winning the war against civilization.

And you knew the whole place was on some serious truth steroids when delegates roared their approval of Mr. Trump’s vow to protect “our LGBTQ citizens” from the nasty evil Islamic terrorists.

“And I have to say — as a Republican,” Mr. Trump told the crowd, “it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said. Thank you.”

It was a truth burger between two slices of white truth bread with bunchy green leaves of truth lettuce and slathered with yellow truth mustard. Speared all the way through with a truth pickle.

On the way to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, however, truth got whacked by Russians working for the KGB, on loan to the Clinton Foundation. Truth’s body was wrapped in a tarp and dumped into the Potomac River, weighted down by some old computer servers they don’t want anymore. That body won’t surface again until December after crabs have picked all the bones clean.

Leaked emails expose just how stacked the whole deck has been against Bernie Sanders from the start. Get the Russians to take the fall.

DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz caught plotting to rig the system for Hillary Clinton? Shut her up. Then sack her.

Press demanding answers? Stonewall, stonewall, stonewall.

Of all the speeches at either convention, probably the one that had to be the most terrifying for Democrats was by entrepreneur Peter Thiel, delivered in Cleveland last week.

All the demographic experts would tell us the gay billionaire from Silicon Valley should be an obedient Democrat. Instead, he destroyed one of the most vocal reasons for their very existence.

“When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. And we won,” he told Republicans.

“Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom. This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?”

Truly.

Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com; follow him on Twitter via @charleshurt.