Since Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s official announcement that he’s running for president, Walker and the national media have been getting to know each other.

Last week, a Washington Post reporter on the Walker beat tweeted out, "In NH, Scott Walker says Wisconsin reporters weren’t used to a gov who would ‘actually answer questions and speak the truth.’" The reporter cheekily added "Fact check?" after the Walker quote, but anyone here is Wisconsin can tell you the answer to that: pants on fire.

It may well be that Walker feels he talks a lot to reporters, and I suppose there is probably a wonky, PolitiFact-y way to quantify how many press questions Walker answers in a year compared to his predecessors. But when Walker suggests that he and his administration are open, transparent and truthful with the media or with the public in general, he’s just not telling the truth.

You’re probably already thinking about the whole mess a few weeks ago when the Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee tried to slip language into the the state budget that would have completely upended the state’s open records laws, the laws that allow media, voters and taxpayers to see what’s happening behind closed doors in state and local government. Ironically, no one on the JFC or anywhere else in the legislature was willing to admit the provision was their idea.

It was eventually revealed that the specific changes came out of talks between the Republican legislative leadership and the governor’s office. Walker’s administration has, in fact, for months been maintaining his office is immune from many open records requests by articulating a line of reasoning that closely tracks the JFC’s changes to the law, according to the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Just in this one story, we have a pretty solid rebuke of Walker’s claim that he will "speak the truth." From the repeated evasions when asked about the origins of the changes to the potential effect of the changes themselves, it’s pretty clear that the governor had no interested in speaking truth about what really happened there.

Indeed, all through this particular budget cycle, we’ve seen spin and dissembling from Walker and his team, hardly the paragon of honesty Walker is trying to claim he is. The most glaring example is probably the one that got the open records changes rolling in first place: the attempt in Walker’s submitted budget to erase the "Wisconsin Idea" from the statutes authorizing the University of Wisconsin system.

When it became clear that Walker’s budget made radical and, to many, unfathomable changes to the UW system, Walker himself claimed many of those changes were simply "drafting errors," as if an intern fell asleep on his keyboard during an all-nighter trying to get the budget finished. It was only through an open records request that we found out this is was a complete fabrication and that, in fact, Walker and his administration were completely behind those changes and meant every word of them.

"Drafting error" was a laughably phony excuse. Had the open records changes been in place, Walker would have been able to get away with what he knew was a lie.

But even in smaller-stakes environments, Walker doesn’t bother trying to "speak the truth." Over the weekend, he was on CNN talking about his recent Boy Scout comments. Earlier in the week, Walker had been asked about a recent vote by the Boy Scouts of America to begin changing their policy against hiring openly gay adults or letting them serve as troop leaders. He said, "I have had a lifelong commitment to the Scouts and support the previous membership policy because it protected children and advanced Scout values."

You can see how this would be a problem, with Walker’s unambiguous statement that Boy Scouts needed to be protected from gay men and the implications thereof – that Walker thinks gay men are predators who would be harming Boy Scouts absent such a prohibition. He was rightly attacked for that position by all kinds of people, enough so that his campaign had to clarify that he meant the policy protected children from the media and controversy. Oh, sure, because the Scouts’ current policy is completely uncontroversial and has never once attracted media attention. Clearly, that was another chance of for Walker and his team to paper over the truth.

But on CNN, Walker couldn’t even answer the question of whether being gay is a choice (hint: it’s not). "To me, that's, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that question," Walker said, bravely speaking truth to power.

Truly galling, though, is that he said a few moments later without the slightest hint of self-awareness, "[T]he one thing people find unique, I guess, whether you like it or not, is that I actually answer questions people ask me."

Of course, he does no such thing, whether it’s the press asking – even friendly Fox-News flavored press – or a seven-year-old boy, whether it’s about if he knew there was a secret email system just steps from his Milwaukee County office or about fundamental things like his legislative agenda (no, he did not "run on Act 10").

So I don’t know which half of Walker’s statement last week in New Hampshire, that he answers press questions or that he tells the truth, is most outrageous. Those of us here, those of us who know him and have watched his rise from attention-seeking legislative back-bencher to where he is now on the cusp of being the most powerful man in the world, know he regularly does neither of those things. And he doesn’t seem to mind lying about that, either.