On Tuesday, in the midst of a rant against the World Health Organization, Donald Trump actually said, “It would have been so easy to be truthful.”

Richard Nixon in his speeches would often ridicule “the easy political path.” But Trump goes even further than Tricky Dick, since he never seems to be able to bring himself to take easy street to the truth. The only mystery surrounding Trump’s mendacity is whether he knows that he’s lying or whether he is trapped inside his own world of alternative facts.

Trump gets away with many of his lies either because they are too inconsequential or because they would require too much effort to disprove. Voters, for example, would have to know something about the events in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, or the more recent history of McCarthyism to be able to debunk Trump, the Martyr, every time he wails that he is a victim of a historical “witch hunt.”

Trump’s lies about Covid-19 are both more serious and more politically devastating. Sure, Trump can demonize the WHO without most voters knowing that cutting off its funding also jeopardizes the continuing effort against Ebola in Africa. But when it comes to matters at home regarding the virus, Americans are paying keen attention.

A recent Monmouth University poll found that 83 percent of all Americans are either very concerned or somewhat concerned “about someone in [their] family becoming seriously ill from the coronavirus outbreak.” In similar fashion, an April Quinnipiac University poll revealed that three quarters of all Americans are concerned that they or someone close to them will be hospitalized because of the virus. And despite Rush Limbaugh continually likening Covid-19 to the flu, 64 percent of Republicans in the Quinnipiac poll worry about such hospitalizations.