Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented that across all four years of Donald’s Trump’s first presidential term, he lied or said blatantly misleading statements 30,573 times, an average of 21 such statements each day. Assuming the per day average holds in his second term, between 21 January 2025 and 1 July 2026 (527 days) Trump lied 11,067 times for a total of 41,640 times while in office – and still counting. It is likely that no American president or politician or American leader of any kind (and perhaps no world leader) has lied as much and as often about matters large, small and ridiculous as Donald Trump.

Deceit, of course, is nothing new to the human condition. It is even embedded in the founding myths of Judaism and Christianity. Eve justified eating the forbidden fruit: “The serpent deceived me.” (1) After Cain murdered Abel, God asked Cain, the killer: “Where is your brother?” Cain refused to answer truthfully: “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?” (2)

The point is this – we all lie. Deception occurs in every kind of relationship – between parents, children, spouses, partners, and friends, employers and employees, professionals and their patients and clients, governments and their citizens, politicians and their supporters.

Dr. David Livingston Smith, Professor of Philosophy at the University of New England says that lying is programmed into our DNA (3) and is embedded in the structure of the brain as a Darwinian mechanism of survival. Habitual and pathological liars have much more white matter that speeds communication between neurons in the prefrontal cortex of the brain than non-liars. Liars have fewer neurons. (4)

Lying and cheating are epidemic in North American culture. Students cheat on school tests and, in this AI age, lift entire passages from the internet for term papers and final exams without attribution to the original writer. Adults mis-represent themselves on employment applications and cheat on their tax returns. In marriages, partners keep secrets from each other about money, flirtation and infatuations. Though many secrets are better left unsaid, many couples violate their most intimate promises to each other made under the wedding canopy. According to the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, national surveys in the United States indicate that 15 percent of married women and 25 percent of married men have had extramarital affairs. The incidence is about 20 percent higher when emotional and sexual relationships without intercourse are included. (5)

Why do we lie so chronically?

There are many reasons. We want the better job, to land a sale, and to enroll our children into better schools. We want the attention of love interests, recognition, fame, power, and wealth. For the most pathological of liars, truth and facts are irrelevancies to get what they demand, want and need. Even for those who do not lie incessantly, so often they convince themselves that a little lie is not such a big deal. After all, everyone does it, the sin is innocuous, deceiving makes little difference, no one gets hurt, and no one will know.

It’s human nature to want to hide the truth and protect oneself when we feel inadequate or have done something wrong about which we feel guilt and shame. Whether we lie in politics, government and diplomacy, business, with co-workers, employees and employers, colleagues, friends and family, everyone at one time or another succumbs to that Darwinian impulse to limit our exposure and hide our shame and embarrassment when we fear that we look incompetent, inadequate, stupid, foolish, weak, heartless, insensitive, or cruel.

What are ways to protect ourselves from lying and deceptive behavior while affirming the value of truth-telling and honesty? I offer seven ethical guidelines and strategies from a variety of Jewish sources against which we can measure how ethical we really are:

1.     Strive to speak factual truths and avoid half-truths;

2.     Be as precise and accurate as possible about even minor matters, and avoid making minor alterations to the truth;

3.     Avoid lying or shading the truth, even on behalf of a good cause, not only because lying is morally wrong, but because others will come to doubt your credibility even when you speak the truth;

4.     Teach your children to be honest. Keep your word to them and do not make false promises because your children will learn that it is permissible to lie;

5.     In business, maintain credibility at all costs, even when it is disadvantageous and costly;

6.     Avoid what the Talmud calls “stealing the mind” (6) which covers a wide range of deceitful actions such as cheating on a test, tax returns, job applications, and dating Apps because these and other acts lead others into thinking we are not who we say we are;

7.     Stay far from the most destructive lies of all, such as persuading others by misrepresenting the facts and ourselves using gross exaggerations and outright lies in order that others not follow us into promoting evil, whether it is in politics, government, the courtroom, the boardroom, the classroom, or the family room. Included also in this most destructive category of lies is spreading gossip and slander about others, a sin that Judaism compares to the crime of shedding innocent blood because slander and gossip can destroy another person’s livelihood, reputation, and good name, and at the very least, sow suspicion and doubt about the integrity of the other person. (7)

It is legitimate to ask, however, if it is always wrong to withhold or shade the truth. The biblical and rabbinic traditions cite many examples when it is not only permissible to lie, but it is a higher virtue to do so. For example, it is permissible to lie to save a life, to prevent physical harm being done to another, and to divert a bully from exploiting or humiliating another human being. So too is it acceptable to lie to right wrongs or injustices done to us by an unscrupulous and dishonest person, and to take something back from a person who stole it from us. (8) Shading the truth and outright lying are also acceptable to spare someone shame and embarrassment. (9) We are allowed to withhold or shade the truth when speaking to a seriously ill patient, for to do so might rob patients of hope and be injurious to their lives, unless (of course) the dying patient insists upon hearing the entire truth about his/her condition.

There are many who pride themselves on always being honest and giving unsolicited advice, however brutal and hurtful to others their honesty may be. They are convinced that it is a virtue to hold nothing back, that honesty in all things is the best policy. However, Judaism counsels that kindness is preferable to truth, and if being honest means that we are hurtful, then we ought to reconsider what we say.

The problem with truth is that we cannot live by it alone. It is too abstract, theoretical, and ideal; too absolute, unbending, and exacting; too uncompromising, precise, and rigid. Because truth is so demanding, it is natural to run from it, pervert it, or lie outright. However, when what we say and do fills us with feelings of guilt, shame, unworthiness, and inadequacy, that is evidence that we likely violated our sense of integrity, and we best pay attention to that.

Trump is not the cause of the deception and lies that have permeated our culture. He is simply the very worst example of a liar that most of us have ever witnessed in our lives. But each of us too crosses the line from time to time between telling the truth and misrepresenting it or outright lying about it. Telling the truth and acknowledging facts, be they historical, scientific, data based, or legal, constitute the greatest antidote to the spread of lies and deliberate misrepresentations, and constitute acts of resistance against the most corrosive, immoral and destructive condition in human nature.

This blog is edited from my chapter “Truth-Emet” in my book Finding Your Moral Compass – Jewish Values for the 21^st Century (Toronto: University of Toronto New Jewish Press, 2026), pages 71-77. It is available from the publisher or on Amazon.

Notes:

1. Genesis 3:13.
2. Genesis 4:6.
3. Dr. David Livingston, Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind (New York: Macmillan Press, 2006).
4. The British Journal of Psychiatry, as reported in The Los Angeles Times, 1 October 2005.
5. Jane Brody, “When a Partner Cheats,” NYT, 22 January 2028.
6. Babylonian Talmud, Hullin 94a.
7. Babylonian Talmud, Berachot 43b, and many others.
8. Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 65b.
9. Chofetz Hayim, Laws of Rechilut, 1:8.