William A. Lee III is an attorney and former chair of the Maine Ethics Commission.

Integrity is the quality of being consistently honest in your interactions with others. Unfortunately, integrity is a quality sorely lacking in many of our elected officials today.

The Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump in his first term averaged 21 false or misleading statements per day. This trend continues in his second term with President Trump’s claiming, incredibly, that Ukraine started the war with Russia. When President Trump did not like the recent low job creation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, he claimed the figures were “rigged” against him and fired the commissioner of the bureau.

He grossly inflates or deflates numbers to support his agenda. Some of these false or misleading statements may be due to declining mental acuity, but most are due to his being a narcissist, and a narcissist can never admit to being wrong.

I have had acquaintances who voted for Donald Trump justify his false statements by saying all presidents lie. There is some truth to this claim. Nixon lied to us about Watergate; Clinton lied under oath about his relationship with a White House intern. However, the enormous number of Trump’s false or misleading statements is a difference in kind, not degree.

Americans are entitled to hear the truth from their president, not a constant barrage of false or misleading statements. Some people have even said that if Trump ever tells the truth, it is purely by accident.

The lack of integrity does not end with President Trump. His Cabinet and agency heads were not chosen for integrity but rather sycophantic loyalty. They will do or say whatever their leader wants, even if they know better. This is dangerous. A good leader welcomes a diversity of
opinions to be able to make the best decisions.

Attorney General Pam Bondi gushed that President Trump in his “…first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other president in this country. Ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it.” This is hardly someone who will give the president an independent opinion on an issue.

There were many people within the executive branch who possessed integrity. Unfortunately, many have either been fired or resigned, as the administration purges those deemed not sufficiently loyal or willing to do its unlawful bidding.

When Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove directed federal prosecutors to dismiss bribery and fraud charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams because Adams was agreeing to cooperate with the administration’s anti-immigration agenda, seven federal prosecutors resigned in succession. They did so rather than move to dismiss the charges, because such an action violated the oath they took to uphold the law. These seven federal prosecutors demonstrated integrity.

The lack of integrity does not end with the executive branch. President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” was deeply disliked by many of the Republicans in Congress who passed it. It adds trillions to the national debt, gives tax breaks to the very wealthy and pays for some of it with steep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps), hurting those in our country who need financial assistance the most.

Recognizing the unpopularity of these cuts, Congress delayed the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP until after the midterm elections in November of 2026. If these Republicans had integrity, they would have voted against the “big, beautiful bill.” Instead, out of fear of a Trump-sponsored opponent in the primaries, they compromised their integrity and voted for a bill they knew was not in the best interest of our country.

Rather than be a co-equal branch of government, Congress has become a rubber stamp for President Trump’s agenda.

It should come as no surprise that a large swath of the American public has become cynical about our governmental system. The ship of democracy is listing. To have any chance of righting it, we, the American public, must become critical thinkers, calling out the falsehoods of
politicians and actively campaigning for those who possess integrity. There are many people with integrity. We just have to convince them to run for office.