Almost all candidates for national offices are dishonest. I’ve known that for a long time, but it’s painful to be reminded that a candidate I’d planned to vote for is a deceptive bum. Recently I came across a Bluesky post by Stefany Shaheen, who’s running for US representative from my district, that was blatantly misleading.

In the video, her opponent Anthony DiLorenzo is asked if he supported Trump’s Iran war. The response in the clip is, “I would support the president at this stage.” The clip is cut off tightly at the end of that sentence, which made me suspicious. I was able to find a transcript which included his reply. It didn’t end with that sentence. His next two sentences were, “I would look at this. If we’re still there in six months I’d be looking at it differently.”

In addition to cutting off those words, Shaheen didn’t indicate anywhere that he said that in March 2026.

More recently, DiLorenzo has said, “I do not support the war, and I would ask that I would support immediate withdrawal right now, bringing our brave men and women home. That’s a weak turnaround, which feels like deserting a losing cause. He hasn’t said the war was wrong from the beginning. Still, his shift needs to be acknowledged when citing the earlier quote.

If she really cared about stopping the war, she’d have congratulated DiLorenzo for taking little steps in the right direction while noting how long he took and how small the steps have been. Instead, she’s creating an impression that Republican support for Trump’s war is more solid than it is. The only thing she cares about is getting elected.

Might she have been tricked herself? Could someone else have handed her that clip without further explanation? If it was Random Q. Poster, I might believe that, but Shaheen has a staff to verify the information she passes on and a higher level of responsibility than most Bluesky users. She should have asked for the date of the clip. She should have noticed how tightly DiLorenzo’s words were cut off. It wasn’t just carelessness.

Another Bluesky post by Shaheen claims to show that “DiLorenzo says he’ll be a yes vote for Donald Trump on Iran,” but the video gives a fragment of a sentence, with both the beginning and the end cut off. It’s impossible to tell what he means.

Politicians lie because they get away with it. They get away with it because people expect nothing better of them. People expect nothing better of them because they lie all the time. And around and around and around goes the big wheel…