It’s been said that lies are like cockroaches: For every one you uncover, there are dozens more hiding in the woodwork.

This couldn’t be more true, it seems, than it is for the Biden administration, and for the president’s press secretary, Jen Psaki. She’s a paid liar, and she’s really good at it. To watch her at work is to see a polished, even cold-blooded dissembler, one who lies with conviction and attitude, and with an occasional dose of weapons-grade condescension.

Take the recent kerfuffle about the First Dog, Major, a German Shepherd with a taste for Secret Service agents. As it turns out, Psaki was lying about the extent to which the dog was sinking his teeth into the agents, and we learned about this when the intrepid watchdog group Judicial Watch got its hands on some Secret Service records. Those records indicated that their agents had been bitten every single day from March 1 through March 8.

But that’s not what Psaki shared with the White House press pool at the time, and a reporter has now called her out with a great question: “At a March 9 briefing, you only described one biting incident to us. … Obviously, that is not the world’s most important story, but it is significant, because we expect honest information even for minor stories. … And if we can’t get honest information about minor stories, why should we have faith in the administration’s account for larger issues like Afghanistan?”

Psaki responded with a non-answer bookended by the aforementioned condescension: “I know you do keep the dog in the news in the briefing room, so thank you for that,” she began, and “to be fully transparent in your ongoing interest in the dog,” she concluded. See for yourself:

Psaki is asked about reports about the First Dog “Major” and his habit of biting Secret Service agents:

“If we can’t get honest information about minor stories, why should we have faith in the Administration’s account for larger issues like Afghanistan?” pic.twitter.com/AX5QuVBiSb

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) August 27, 2021

In short, Jen Psaki is a doggone good liar. And if she’ll lie about a dog, she’ll most definitely lie about the dog’s master, who himself happens to be a serial liar.

Again, this is all small potatoes, but it reminds us of what Thomas Jefferson said about the slippery slope of telling a lie: “It is of great importance to set a resolution, never not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. there is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible & he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second & third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to it, & truths without the world’s believing him. this falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, & in time depraves all it’s good dispositions.”