Speaking on the Senate floor recently, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) rightly observed: “Out of all the attacks on our institutions during the first four years of Donald Trump, nothing was more corrosive to our democracy than his relentless assault on the truth.”

If I believed in the existence of Satan, the Gospel’s “father of lies,” I’d say President Trump is his “chosen one,” not God’s — disseminating such lies as that a president can declassify documents just “by thinking about it” and that the press is “the enemy of the people.”

More, in my opinion his cabinet picks, from Senate reject Matt Gaetz to conspiracist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., share in his mendacity, to one extent or another.

As I see it, he chose them because he wants what he’s acknowledged he himself was raised to be — a killer, so to speak; loyalists not averse to lying, as he deems necessary, and willing to assist him in wreaking vengeance on his enemies.

That repugnant mix of mendacity and retribution is exemplified in statements by FBI director Kash Patel.

On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Patel once swore that — “whether criminally or civilly” — he and like-minded colleagues would go after  people in government and the media inimical to Trump. And in his book “Government Gangsters,” he presents a hit list of 60 political “gangsters,” including former presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who are — get this — “a dangerous threat to democracy.”

Said the lackey of the liar who would be king.

William LaRochelle, Lewiston