Prof. Victor Menaldo adds thoughts on how people should take what politicians say.
As campaigns try to sway voters before the November election, they'll face few, if any, legal consequences for stretching the truth or telling outright lies, experts tell Axios.
Why it matters: Voters are about to get inundated with political TV ads, mailers and texts, many of them making dubious claims. But a long history of court rulings protects politicians' ability to lie in most cases.
What they're saying: The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment must protect speech that is false or misleading "to avoid chilling legitimate political discourse," Victor Menaldo, a University of Washington political science professor, tells Axios.
Voters "should always be skeptical and never take what politicians say at face value," Menaldo writes.
"Politicians are not in the truth business, but in the power business," he says — and "quite often the truth is collateral damage....
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