Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson admits on national television that President Donald Trump is a liar, specifically noting the lie about the crowd size at his inauguration. He then brushes it off as some sort of harmless joke. “Donald Trump is a salesman: A talker, a boaster, a compulsive self-promoter. At times he’s a full blown BS artist,” Carlson said.

This brazen admission masquerading as an excuse is scary. Clearly, when public officials lie it’s not a good thing. But the openness with which some public officials now exercise the tactic is stunning and truly damaging to government, and for two reasons.

First, lying makes it tough to govern effectively as an internal matter. In my 18 years in the Connecticut General Assembly I always maintained that I could pretty much deal with any colleague as long as I knew he or she was being straight with me. So you’re a bit of an egotist, or you are stubborn, or you like to be in control, or you are a contrarian. Or maybe your politics is just plain different than mine. All that can be difficult to deal with when making policy, but as long as I know you’re being honest, I also know there’s a chance that we can work things out.

For example, when I was working on getting toxic metals out of children’s jewelry, I gave a little bit on Halloween costumes. But I had to be confident that those with whom I made that deal would support the bill we hammered out when it came to the floor, and they did. This dynamic completely depends on people behaving in an honest and forthright manner, regardless of their politics.

You wonder at the lack of progress on important policy issues in Washington, like health care, infrastructure investment or immigration? How in the world can you make progress on tough issues like that when you have a chief executive who is a proven liar, and who is being aided and abetted by a depressingly cohesive cadre of Republicans in Congress who either lie themselves, or at least enable the prevaricator in chief.

The second serious consequence of lying becoming acceptable is a complete erosion of faith in our representative form of government. Gallup polls show that trust in government is the lowest it has been in decades. This inability to know who is telling the truth and who isn’t challenges the very nature of representative government to the point where you don’t know whether you can trust your own legislature, or your own CIA, or your own FBI, or your own Connecticut Port Authority, for that matter, given its past failure to have even minimal accounting safeguards in place to protect the public purse.

If you can’t believe your elected representatives or other public officials then who can you believe? The latest tweet from a self- appointed expert? An email from a group that seems factual and reputable, but who really knows? The evening news? Sure, people can have a big ego or be a contrarian. They can disagree with my politics and throw hissy fits. But they need to be straight with me if we’re going to find a way to “yes” on public policy.

If I’m never sure whether you’re lying or telling the truth, then my best strategy is to stay as far away from you as I can. And that is flat out crippling to progress in these increasingly complicated and noisy times.

Diana Urban, a Democrat, served in the Connecticut General Assembly for 18 years representing the towns of Stonington and North Stonington and was chair of the Committee on Children. She recently retired from the General Assembly to pursue national legislation on addressing animal cruelty and child abuse.