My good Catholic mother issued a stern warning every time she caught one of her sons fibbing. "God’s going to punish you, and if he doesn’t, I will."

If mom were around today, no doubt she would say that President Donald Trump, America’s Lyin’ King, deserves a good thrashing.

The fact-checking website Politifact has analyzed Trump’s statements and found 70 percent to be mostly false, false or "pants on fire." Similarly, the Washington Post, which is keeping a tally, counted 219 false or misleading claims by Trump in his first 51 days in office.

We have come to expect politicians to distort facts, but not lie most times they open their mouths or Tweet. That’s not the way to lead our country or earn the public’s trust.

The most frequent subject of Trump’s off-base claims so far has been jobs, according to the Post. Many were statements in which Trump claimed credit for things that were in the works well before his election, such as ExxonMobil’s expansion on the Gulf Coast.

We shouldn’t be surprised about Trump’s unpresidential behavior. Time and again we watched him bully adversaries and twist facts on the campaign trail last year. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was correct when he called Trump a "pathological liar."

Journalist-author James Fallows recently wrote in The Atlantic magazine: "Donald Trump either cannot tell the difference between truth and lies, or he knows the difference and does not care."

What’s just as troubling is that Trump’s followers and Republicans in Congress don’t seem to care either. When confronted with Trump’s lies, they typically blame journalists who are exposing the lies, or change the subject to Muslims or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.

Since his inauguration, Trump has come out with some whoppers, starting with the fantasy that his inauguration crowd was the biggest ever. That lie was easily debunked by photos showing much smaller numbers attending Trump’s inauguration than the massive crowds at Obama’s inaugurations.

Perhaps to ease the slap to his ego by losing the popular vote by nearly three million to Clinton, Trump claimed a "landslide" in the Electoral College. Wrong. Trump’s Electoral College margin of victory ranks in the bottom quarter in the history of U.S. presidential elections. Then, Trump claimed that "millions of people" voted illegally for Clinton. He provided no evidence to support that claim, which was widely debunked.

Trump’s wildest claim came recently when he accused Obama of wiretapping phones at Trump Tower during the campaign. As of this writing, he has offered no evidence. A president cannot legally order wiretaps of Americans. Only a federal judge can do so, and only if there is sufficient evidence of a serious crime.

It may be unprecedented, and it may be an impeachable offense, for a sitting president to falsely accuse his predecessor of a felony. Some pundits said Trump did it to divert attention from the growing scandal surrounding the relationship of Trump and close associates with Russia, which interfered with the 2016 presidential election in Trump’s favor. Others suggest Trump made the accusation in a snit after reading a conspiracy story in Breitbart News, a far-right news and opinion website.

Certainly, presidents have lied to the American people before. Richard Nixon lied about Watergate; Bill Clinton lied about his sexual dalliances; George W. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But Trump is legitimizing and institutionalizing lying. He is degrading the office of the president like never before. He is turning lying into a political weapon that could prove dangerous for our country. Unfortunately, Republicans, including GOP leaders in Texas, are condoning it with their silence.