Alexei Navalny is the Russian opposition leader who was recently poisoned with Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent thats Vladimir Putins preferred means of disposing of old spies and new political leaders who displease him. I was listening to a spokesman for the Russian president, who was serving up a string of improbable hypotheticals, creative excuses and transparent lies purporting to prove Putin didnt poison his most recently poisoned political opponent and the world was being unfair and unreasonable to suspect him. It was as if Id been transported back to my Cold War youth and the Pravda bulletins that really were fake news.

As I listened, though, I realized what I was hearing sounded more recently familiar. From Sean Spicers preposterous insistence that President Trumps inaugural crowd was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration period, to Kellyanne Conways Orwellian doctrine of alternative facts, to Sarah Huckabee Sanders slip of the tongue that countless FBI agents had told the White House theyd lost confidence in James Comey, a baseless lie not founded on anything that she was compelled to retract under oath, Trump White House press briefings more closely resemble the six o clock news with Joe McCarthy than an honest presentation of the facts.

Most recently, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnaney denied that the president had misled the American people about the virus, despite the fact hes on tape in his own voice repeatedly misleading us about the virus, and conceding that misleading us was his deliberate intent.

In taped interviews with reporter Bob Woodward, the president volunteered that rather than accurately inform the public about the virus, hed decided to play it down.

As early as Feb. 7, he acknowledged to Woodward on tape that the coronavirus was deadly stuff, more deadly than even your strenuous flus, with a 5% versus 1% and less than 1% mortality rate. Meanwhile, for nearly another two months in his daily statements to the public to us he continued to liken the virus to a regular flu, all the while insisting we dont turn the country off for the regular flu.

In early February, he told Woodward about a setback, that the virus was particularly tricky because it goes through the air. You just breathe the air, and thats how its passed. Yet he continued to tell the public us that the virus was low risk, a problem thats going to go away, and the U.S. case count within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.

Even after learning the virus was airborne, hes persistently dismissed mask-wearing as a matter of political correctness, and apart from paying occasional lip service to the overwhelming medical consensus, has with words and by example failed to encourage and actively discouraged masks and social distancing.

In mid-March, he was telling Woodward its not just old people, that its plenty of young people, too. But as late as August, he was still telling us, including parents, children are almost and I would almost say definitely but almost immune from this disease. They dont have a problem. They just dont have a problem.

Hes justified his serial deceptions on the grounds he didnt want to create a panic. He nonsensically claims his critics wanted him instead to come out screaming theres going to be great death.

Its possible to be both calm and truthful.

Just as its possible to be calm and a raving liar.

The president and his minions have likened his conduct to Winston Churchills during the Blitz and to the British wartime maxim, Keep calm and carry on. Except Churchill warned his people he had nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. He cautioned them to expect hard and heavy tidings.

Churchill told his people the truth.

The president also compares himself to FDR and his 1933 inaugural assurance that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. Except FDR meant the nameless, unreasoning, subjective fear that had settled on and paralyzed us during the Depression. The virus, in contrast, is a fearsome, objective force all its own.

FDR didnt hide the truth the day after Pearl Harbor. When he asked Congress to declare war, he included a frank litany of Japanese advances and Allied defeats. He acknowledged there was no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

For someone who claims hes intent on avoiding national panic, President Trump is doing everything he can to foment it. In one Michigan speech alone, he accused Joe Biden of planning to surrender our country to the violent left-wing mob, overwhelm your state with poorly vetted migrants from jihadist regions, ban American energy, confiscate your guns, shut down auto production, delay the vaccine, destroy your suburbs, indoctrinate your children, eliminate your job, lock law-abiding Americans into their homes, encourage rioters and vandals, usher in a murder rate and crime wave like youve never seen, cut short the lives of thousands of young African-American citizens, and install somebody from Antifa as a member of your suburb.

According to the president, Biden wont rest until hes flooded your neighborhood with rioters, arsonists, and flag-burners, and wiped out production of pick-up trucks.

Lets assume for a moment, though, that you were a leader who sincerely believed it was needful to hide the truth from your people to help keep them calm.

If your concern was sincere, you wouldnt discourage them from wearing masks once you knew a deadly disease was being transmitted through the air.

You wouldnt invite them to rallies and sit them cheek-to-jowl at galas on the South Lawn.

You wouldnt tell parents their children were immune if you knew the truth was they could sicken and die.

Sometimes a lie is just what you tell when you dont want to look as bad as you are.

Peter Berger has taught English and history for 30 years. Poor Elijah would be pleased to answer letters addressed to him in care of the editor.

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Poor Elijah's Almanack: Lies and other deadly stuff - Rutland Herald