Politicians have always been liars. The internet just makes them easier to catch.

Illustration of a liar — (Image credit: iStock)

The internet has produced a wealth of fact-checking options so we can all investigate statements from public figures — but politicians being deceptive is nothing new. In fact, says Dr. Matthew McGlone, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Texas in Austin who spoke with Vice, people have bemoaned political dishonesty for centuries:

VICE: Polls indicate that American public trust in institutions is at an all-time historic low. Are institutions actually lying more frequently than they have in the past?MCGLONE: I think it's a new incarnation of what's been going on for a long time. There's a book called The Devil Wins, about a history of the public's perception of deception. He'll point out things that were written in essays read at various royal courts in Europe, things that monks wrote in the medieval era, talking about how deception has become so rampant that God is going to strike us down because we've become so corrupt. [Vice]

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.