Donald Trump posted late Monday night an eerie apocalyptic ad calling America ‘a nation in decline’ – while also still promising a political future for himself where he says ‘the best is yet to come’ just hours after the FBI raided his Florida home.

The ad was posted to Truth Social, Trump’s own alternative social media platform, in the aftermath of a raid on his Mar-a-Lago home by the FBI – reportedly as part of an investigation into whether he took classified documents with him when he left the White House.

The former president’s voice narrates the video ad, which opens with a jolting clap of thunder over black and white photos of America.

‘We are a nation in decline,’ Trump said.

‘We are a failing nation,’ he continues, pointing to high inflation , high energy costs and leaving behind soldiers in Afghanistan.

The ad was posted late Monday night after Lara Trump appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight and blasted the FBI’s raid. She claimed it was about weaponizing the justice system and added that people are terrified that her father-in-law is going to run for president in 2024. 

Lara’s husband Eric Trump also appeared on Fox News’ Hannity on Monday night to explain he was the person who received the call Monday morning informing of the impending raid on his father’s home.

‘To have 30 FBI agents – actually more than that – descend on Mar-a-Lago, give absolutely, you know, no notice, go through the gates, start ransacking an office, ransacking a closet – you know, they broke into a safe. He didn’t even have anything in the safe. I mean, give me a break.’ 

A search warrant does not suggest that criminal charges are near or even expected – but it would have to be court authorized.

Attorney General Merrick Garland and his Justice Department are under heavy political pressure from Democrats who want the former president indicted and from Republicans who will blast any probe as election-year politics.

Republicans lashed out Monday evening at Garland, the DOJ and Biden administration for the raid.

President Joe Biden and his staff had no heads up on the matter, with senior White House officials finding out about the raid via Twitter, according to The New York Times.

House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy warned Garland of payback for the move and pledged to investigate the raid if Republicans win control of the House in November, which they are expected to do.

‘Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar,’ he said in a statement on Monday night.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded Tuesday morning in an interview with NBC’s Today program.

‘Whatever the leader is saying is idle,’ Pelosi said, insisting that Democrats will maintain their majority despite a dim outlook.

‘We believe in the rule of law, and that’s what our country is about,’ she continued when asked about the raid and McCarthy’s response. ‘And no person is above the law, not even the President of the United States – not even a former President of the United States.’

The raid comes as Trump is considering another bid for the presidency and his actions after the 2020 election, where he tried to invalidate Joe Biden’s victory, are under investigation by lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

‘We are a nation that in many ways has become a joke,’ Trump said in the ad. ‘But soon we will have greatness again.’

Donald Trump said in a statement Monday evening that his Florida home was ‘under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents’.

Hoards of angry Trump supporters descended on his Mar-a-Lago home Monday night shortly after it emerged that the FBI had searched the ex-president’s estate, likely in search of documents he reportedly took from the White House to his Florida residence.

Many of his supporters were angered by the raid and a raucous crowd – many of whom wearing Trump-themed clothing – gathered outside his Florida home to back the former president.

The avid Trump supporters held pro-Trump signs, including ones for a presumptive 2024 campaign and even one for Trump’s previous campaign with former Vice President Mike Pence’s name crossed out.

One supporter was publicly identified as a member of the far right group Proud Boys.

Lara told Fox News: ‘Look, my father-in-law, as anybody knows, who’s been around him a lot, loves to save things like newspaper clippings, magazine clippings, photographs, documents that he had every authority … to take from the White House.’

The raid began Monday morning and took several hours.

It is highly unusual for a federal raid to take place at the residence of a former commander in chief.

‘These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before,’ Trump said in a shocking statement released on Monday night.

‘After working and cooperating with the relevant Government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.’

‘It is prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024,’ said the former president, who was not present during the raid, according to The New York Times.

‘Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries. Sadly, America has now become one of those Countries,’ Trump said, adding: ‘They even broke into my safe!’

Multiple US media outlets cited sources close to the investigation as saying that agents were conducting a court-authorized search related to the potential mishandling of classified documents that had been sent to Mar-a-Lago.

The National Archives said in February it had recovered 15 boxes of documents from Trump’s Florida estate, which The Washington Post reported included highly classified texts, taken with him when he left Washington following his re-election defeat.

‘This is about weaponizing the justice system, as it has been so many times in the past against somebody who you politically do not like,’ Lara Trump said Monday night. 

‘They detest Donald Trump, not just on the Democrat side, but the general establishment, because he’s not one of them, because he doesn’t play their game. They are terrified. He’s going to announce any day that he’s running for president in 2024. And this is a very convenient way to just throw a little more mud on Donald Trump as though they haven’t already done enough.’

‘Think about this. If this is what they’re able to do to the former president of the United States, think about what they could do to you, to anybody in America. The bottom line here is that these documents that have been in question have been, everybody’s been cooperating.’

‘Everybody from my father-in-law’s team has been cooperating with the FBI with any authority that asks for anything up until now and there was no need to make such a big scene, to do something this insane, quite frankly, to a former president. But I think everybody clearly knows, Will, what is going on here. This is about weaponizing the justice system, as it has been so many times in the past against somebody who you politically do not like.’

Trump has not yet officially declared his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election, though he has dropped strong hints over the past few months.

Just prior to posting his new ad on the Truth Social platform, Trump was spotted leaving Trump Tower in New York around 8:00 p.m. on Monday night.

He waved and gave his signature thumbs’ up to the gathered bystanders, but didn’t comment on the investigation as he got into his SUV, surrounded by Secret Service agents.

Eric Trump was also spotted at Trump Tower on Monday.

In his first public remarks since news of the search surfaced, Trump made no mention of the raid during a tele-town hall on behalf of Leora Levy, the Connecticut Republican he has endorsed in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate primary to pick a general election opponent against Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Trump gave his public backing to Levy late last week, calling her on Monday the best pick ‘to replace Connecticut’s joke of a senator.’

But in a social media post Monday night, he was much more unguarded, calling the search a ‘weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President in 2024.’

Truth Social was officially launched on February 21, 2022 and immediately saw a slew of bugs and glitches, including a lengthy waiting list to get approved for an account on the platform. 

When Trump was indefinitely banned from Twitter in the days following the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, he vowed that he would create a ‘free speech’ social media platform that did not censure its users. It came after several conservative voices were seeing themselves suspended, censored or kicked off social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.