George Santos Is the New Republican Party
In case you’ve been on an Arctic expedition, retracing the 1472 route of Didrik Pining and Hans Pothorst, you’ve probably, by now, heard about George Santos, the New York 3rd District Congressman-elect. This guy makes Herschel Walker sound like a scholar of veracity, probity and
downright rectitude. The New York Times first discovered that just about everything on his resume from the first sentence to the last was a lie. Not an “exaggeration” or an “embellishment” or, even, a “figment of his imagination” but an outright lie. This is not Brian Williams “conflating” a story about being in a helicopter struck by enemy fire, this is not Joe Biden conflating Tuskegee Airmen with Tuskegee Syphilis Study Black men. No, Santos made up facts out of whole cloth, deliberately, intentionally and with malice aforethought.
He claimed to have graduated from Baruch College, a highly regarded New York city college, he claimed to have worked for CitiGroup and Goldman Sachs, two prestigious Wall Street firms in New York City and he claimed his grandparents were Holocaust survivors. None of this is close to the truth. It’s not even as if he had once enrolled at Baruch before dropping out. He never set foot in Baruch as a student. The same goes for CitiGroup and Goldman Sachs. Neither company had any records of George Santos having ever been employed by them, even as a janitor or elevator boy. Santos just outright lied. In fact, he had the audacity to call his opponent in the race a liar. None of this is any worse than Herschel Walker’s non-existent college degree or his deputy dawg sheriff badge baloney. During his campaign, Santos even claimed to be Jewish, something not even Herschel Walker tried to lie about. Well, it turns out Santos now admits he’s not Jewish but, because his grandmother was a Jew before converting to Catholicism, Santos says he’s Jew-ish. SMFH!
It’s now also leaking out that Kevin McCarthy and senior house republicans knew about Santos’ lies even to the point it was a big joke among them that such a liar had been elected.
While the breadth, depth and scope of Santos’ lies are breathtaking, there are two issues that may prove even bigger. First, an eagle-eyed reporter at TPM noticed something in a Santos interview and is now vigorously asking questions. It turns out Santos has told many people over the years that he was born in Brazil and intimated he is a Brazilian citizen. It’s possible he holds dual citizenship but since Santos is such a prolific liar, it seems like a good time to ask him to, “Show me the papers” as in citizenship documents. You know, like how Republicans still whine on about Obama. If it turns out Santos can’t prove he’s a bona fide US citizen, oh well, there goes that cushy job scamming New Yorkers.
Even more interesting is the source of his money. He went from being a phone bank operator, you know, one of those annoying guys trying to sell you extended car warranties or timeshares in Syria, to suddenly lending his campaign over $700,000. If I had known call centers paid that kind of dough, I would have been dialing for dollars long ago. The folks at Crooks & Liars have uncovered evidence that, at least, part of Santos’ loot came from Russian sources. Now this puts a whole ‘nother spin on things here. If this can be proven, Santos is a Russian asset, waiting for his handlers to give him instructions. If this is proven, I hope it leads right up to through the rotted core of the republican party,