In a public health crisis, lies are lethal. The Trump administration's lies about the coronavirus and related matters are likely to kill people, if they have not done so already. 

I recently spoke with historian and journalist David Perry about the urgent question of how America recovers from Trump's regime of lies. Perry's work has appeared in many publications, including the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic, CNN.com, The Guardian, The Nation, Newsweek, Rolling Stone and others. 

Perry explained why, in his view, the United States will ultimately need a truth commission to begin healing from the harm done to the country by the Trump administration's lies and systematic abuses of the rule of law, not to mention its criminality, corruption and other assaults on democratic norms and values. Such a commission would also be a necessary first step in documenting the Trump regime's crimes and assaults on truth, reality and America's collective memory. 

Perry also outlined how the Trump regime's assault on the truth serves another agenda: enabling increasing cruelty against nonwhite Americans, black and brown immigrants and other "racial undesirables" through a campaign of "soft ethnic cleansing."