"What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." Sir Walter Scott wrote that. My grandmother used to say it. I grew up on it.

My Sunday school-going-well-into-middle age grandmother was a very moral person. She would be thoroughly impatient with Donald Trump. She would not welcome him. And none of his friends either.

But she also had a sense of humor. As the lies began piling up one upon another until they reached a risible mass, she would have smiled. Even laughed.

With staffers and aides tripping over each other to defang the obvious lies (Kellyanne Conway, for instance, defending the overestimation of Trump's inaugural crowd as "alternative facts"), Trump has always had sycophants who will say things that fly in the face of common sense. And recently, there is this cadre of frightened Republicans who've rushed to fall upon the sword for Trump, covering the airwaves, mouthing nonsense.

There, for example, was Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, cheered on by the likes of Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham on Fox News, spouting his unexamined obfuscations and accusations. The whistle-blower procedure, he falsely asserted, has been altered to eliminate the requirement that the knowledge must be first-hand. The whistle-blower complaint, he mused, reads like a spy wrote it, the same one who wrote the Steele dossier.

Then there is Trump himself, claiming that Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, had helped the whistleblower write his complaint and should be arrested and charged with treason.

Clearly the gentlemen are flailing. And as the evidence mounts and further machinations are revealed, acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney adds the coup de grace, acknowledging the quid pro quo the president has denied. The White House did withhold close to $400 million from Ukraine, insisting they scour for dirt on the Democrats in the last election and on Joe Biden for the future one. And Mulvaney said this on TV, in broad daylight, for all to see, creating a permanent replayable sound bite. With friends like these who indeed needs enemies? Of course, before the sun rose upon another morning, Mulvaney denied it. And if you don't think so, he furthermore told you that things like this happen in politics. So get over it!

But there is more. I've forgotten Rudy Giuliani, Trump's enforcer and our shadow secretary of state, roaming about in the nether regions of Ukraine aided by his assistants, recently arrested as they were boarding in first class at Kennedy Airport. We are in trouble. The trouble is Rudy babbles incoherently. Whether or not this is more deliberate obfuscation or age-related deterioration is moot. On the international platform it creates an impression of less than forthright dealing — more like a small time crook caught about to lift some guy's wallet.

It's a rare cast of characters running our government these days. And the more they protest, the more outrageous their lies, the deeper and higher they add to their quivering house of cards that's bound to collapse at the first decent blast of fresh air.

Honesty will trump Trump. It's very simple. As my moral grandmother could tell him, when you're up to no good, the truth will out. Those tangled webs will trip you every time. And woe to those who've woven them.

As the lies mount, crossing and recrossing themselves in ludicrous contradictions, they begin to show their fragility. Richard Nixon remains the legendary lesson. In the end, he had to give up his tapes. The Supreme Court said so. It's too bad these guys have so little respect for or knowledge of not-so-distant history. But soon it will be over, for they won't be lying fast enough.

Barbara DeMille lives in Rensselaerville.