The word of the day is “handful.”

As in wrinkly Martha Raddatz’ dismissal of the takeover of some apartment buildings in Colorado by gun-toting illegal-alien gangbangers from Venezuela who’d been welcomed into the nation with open arms and unlimited welfare benefits by Kamala Harris.

Sure, they took over buildings, but it was just a “handful.”

These undocumented Democrats terrorized taxpaying Americans on videotape with, among other atrocities, extortion and child prostitution. In other words, out of control crimes.

Did I say “crimes?” I meant to say, “incidents.”

As Martha Raddatz, age 71, sputtered to J.D. Vance: “The incidents were limited to a handful of apartment complexes.”

Incidents? In a handful of apartment complexes.

Sen. Vance, who is young enough (at least in certain Democrat circles) to be her grandson, gently chided Granny Raddatz in the gentle tones you reserve for the moment that you take away her car keys:

“Martha,” J.D. Vance said, “do you hear yourself? Only a handful of apartment complexes in American were taken over by Venezuelan gangs, and Donald Trump is the problem and not Kamala Harris’ open border?”

It’s like when Democrats talk about how you can’t deport some Third World savage for committing a “minor crime.” You know, like burglary or car theft.

Have you ever been burglarized, or had your car stolen? It wasn’t a minor crime to you, was it?

And what if it was your apartment complex that got taken over because Democrats were determined to fundamentally transform America?

In her dotage, of course, Martha is merely doing what’s always been expected of her – cheerleading for the Ministry of Truth. But it’s getting harder and harder this year.

Kamala Harris’ campaign is going so sideways that the question is beginning to be asked openly: Would Dementia Joe Biden be running a better campaign than his vice president?

They’ve been wheeling out former presidents to try to drag Kamala across the finish line, and they seem almost as non compos mentis as Dementia Joe.

In Georgia, Bill Clinton mentioned the vicious murder of nursing student Laken Riley by yet another of Kamala’s new Americans, a Venezuelan gang banger.

“Yeah, well, if they’d all been properly vetted that probably wouldn’t have happened,” Clinton said.

Another Trump campaign ad, in the Democrats’ own words.

And then there was Barack Obama, of Martha’s Vineyard, lecturing the “brothas” about how they must vote for Kamala because… brothas.

Now Kamala Harris has a plagiarism scandal. She’s been busted by Christopher Rufo, the same guy who took down another DEI fraudster, Claudine Gay, the ex-president of Harvard University.

The Kamala scandal is following the exact same trajectory now as the Gay catastrophe, with the New York Times circling the wagons for the lying protected-class fraudster. Their first headline yesterday was: “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages from Harris Book.”

Got that? Nothing about plagiarism, it’s about “passages.” And Rufo’s not investigating, he’s “seizing,” which is one of their favorite words about what Republicans do when a scandal breaks, along with “pounces” and “weaponizes.”

The Times even trotted out a “plagiarism consultant” to pooh-pooh Kamala’s cheating, in much the way Claudine Gay’s serial plagiarism was dismissed as “duplicative language.”

Of course, the Times only showed him five rather mild incidents, and when Rufo kept posting more and more damning passages, he threw himself on the mercy of the twitterverse: “I want to be clear I have NOT performed a full analysis of the book.”

It’s all falling apart for them. Every “handful” of BS that they throw out there comes back to bite the Democrats in their gluteus maximus.

To change the subject from their disastrous response to Hurricane Helene in North Carolina, state-run media just ran a story about something in Rutherford County (a name the anchor mispronounced).

FEMA was cutting back, state-run media reported, “due to a reported threat against workers… after National Guard troops reportedly encountered armed militia saying they were ‘hunting FEMA.’”

Armed militia! Now that’s some scary stuff. Cue the Jan. 6-insurrection hysteria.

Only one problem. The next paragraph of the story read: “The North Carolina National Guard sent CBS News the following statement, saying, ‘The NCNG has no reports of our soldiers or airmen encountering any armed militia, any threats and any type of combatants. We are continuing serve all those counties in need of our assistance.”

In other words, Never mind! It was fake news. But the bogus headline gave Kamala’s low-info and no-info voters a chilling headline. Who cared that the story was debunked in the second or third paragraph. As the managing editor in The Front Page used to say: “Who reads the second paragraph?”

It’s only going to get worse in these final three weeks. They’ll do anything to stop Orange Man Bad. Remember election night 2016 – the aforementioned Martha Raddatz was weeping on the set, or it certainly looked that way, although I believe she later denied it.

She used to be a TV reporter in Boston, not that that means anything. Some of the worst of the worst in Fake News have come out of this market – think David Muir, for one.

But in the old days, even though she was married to a quintessential Globe puke (that was two marriages ago), Martha seemed to have at least a little something on the ball. I think I’ve told this story before, maybe a “handful” of times. But it seems appropriate for the occasion.

I was covering the sale of this newspaper to Rupert Murdoch for Ch. 7. She was on the Herald sale beat for Ch. 5. Andy Hiller was Ch. 4’s man.

One night at the Long Wharf Marriot, waiting for news on the negotiations, she said something to Andy and me that I’ve always remembered because it was so brilliant.

“We’re not reporters,” she said. “We’re TV reporters. We’re not in news, we’re in TV news.”

And now, all these years later, as Martha approaches the checkout counter, she’s no longer a TV reporter. She’s a fake TV news reporter. She’s not in news, she’s in fake TV news.

God, I hope Martha’s weeping again come the evening of Nov. 5 – a handful of tears.

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Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaks during a campaign Town Hall on Saturday in Reading, Pa. (AP Photo/Laurence Kesterson)