I binge-watched HBO’s “Chernobyl” this week. It made me think of Donald Trump.

No, my Trump Derangement Syndrome has not spiked to 12,000 Roentgen on the ideological dosimeter. And no, I don’t think of the Trump administration as an open-air nuclear-reactor fire. To watch “Chernobyl” (and read nonfictionalized accounts of the tragedy) is to be reminded that such similes should be used sparingly.

But there’s one striking parallel. “Chernobyl” isn’t just an account of an environmental catastrophe, or the personal heroics that prevented it from becoming even worse. It illustrates what happens to societies corrupted by the institutionalization of lies and the concomitant destruction of trust.

That’s the real story of the real Chernobyl, where for once the basic truths of the natural world — of chemistry and particle physics — overwhelmed the enforced truths of Soviet orthodoxy and propaganda.

In scene after scene, party officials decree that the seriousness of the accident isn’t so bad. Or that the extent of the fallout isn’t so wide. Or that the reach of the blame isn’t so deep. They lie to the West. They lie to their people. They lie up the chain of command and down it. Why? Because they can.