“He not only stole the money [destinado a una operación] for a guide dog. He didn’t just steal the money for a dying guide dog. He stole the money for a dying service dog from a homeless and disabled veteran. OMG. Evil and stupid.”
George Santos, the US congressman who lied about his studies, his work for Goldman Sachs and his Jewish heritage
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This is how Leslie Jones, guest presenter of the program, summed up The Daily Show de Comedy Centralone of the latest scandals involving George Santos, a US Republican congressman whose ability to lie shamelessly has stunned Washington, a capital that believed it was cured of fear and the lies of the political class.
“What does this guy have to do to get kicked out of Congress?” Jones wondered, echoing a sentiment shared by many: “He’s a fucking liar.”
Far from being ousted from the House of Representatives, Santos, 34, was rewarded with new responsibilities on two congressional committees. However, the congressman announced this Tuesday to his party colleagues that he is withdrawing from the two commissions, as reported by the AP agency. The decision comes after Santos met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday night.
¿George Santos or Anthony Devolder?
Stuart Stevens, political consultant and author of It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump (Everything was a lie, how the Republican Party became Donald Trump“), has indicated that “Santos perfectly exemplifies the collapse of the Republican Party“. ”He shows that the party has no values. It seems like a million years ago, but there was a time when we said that character set destiny. Nobody even knows who this guy is. We literally don’t even know what it’s called.”
In fact, just four years ago, Santos publicly introduced himself as “Anthony Devolder,” a combination of his middle name and his mother’s maiden name. It’s just one more of a pack of lies that makes the stars of ‘Catch Me If You Can’, ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ and ‘Pinocchio’ seem the most honest in the world.
That pack of lies went largely unnoticed during Santos’ New York campaign last year, but in recent weeks it has unraveled at breakneck speed, forcing him to confront reporters on Capitol Hill daily and admit to lying about his inheritance. family, his university studies and his work experience.
some of his lies
For example, Santos lied offensively when he said his maternal grandparents escaped the Holocaust. In reality, they were born in Brazil and now the congressman has been forced to admit that he was raised Catholic. However, when it was discovered that Santos was not Jewish, as he had claimed, the congressman told the conservative chain Fox News that he had not lied because, simply, he had referred to himself as “jew-ish” (in English jewish means Jew, but if it is separated with a jew-ish hyphen, the ish serves to emphasize that something is like that to a certain extent ). Supposedly unaware that he was borrowing an old joke from British polymath Jonathan Miller, who once declared: “I’m not really a Jew… but I’m Jew-ish).
Santos wrote on Twitter that her mother was killed in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in New York, but later said she had died on December 23, 2016. An investigation into her mother’s employment history found no evidence that she worked. in it World Trade Center or close to it, while his immigration history suggests he was not even in the United States on 9/11.
Last October, Santos told the newspaper USA Today: “I am openly gay, I have never had a problem with my sexual identity in the last decade and I can tell you and assure you that I will always be an advocate for LGBTQ+ people.” Later it was learned that he had been married to a woman, from whom he divorced in 2019.
Santos has claimed to have briefly attended Horace Mann, an elite private preparatory school in New York, but the school is not aware of it. He has also claimed degrees from New York University and Baruch College of New York, and even claimed to have been a star player on Baruch’s volleyball team. Again, there is no record that he studied at either institution or that he played volleyball.
Santos also claimed to have worked for two of the main companies on Wall Street, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, but none of them are aware of it. In an interview with the newspaper New York PostSantos declared: “My sin has been embellishing my resume. Sorry”.
Santos introduced himself as a successful real estate investor whose family owned several buildings. However, court records indicate that Santos was the subject of three eviction proceedings in Queens, New York, between 2014 and 2017 for non-payment of rent.
In 2020 Santos was hired by Harbor City Capitol Corp, a Florida-based investment fund. The company ceased operations in 2021 after being accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of being a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme.
The scandals keep coming. A few days ago Santos was accused of keeping $3,000 – about 2,762 euros – from an internet fundraiser intended to help save the life of a sick dog owned by Richard Osthoff, a disabled military veteran. Santos described the accusations as “shocking and senseless.”
Old acquaintances of Santos have recently said that he had competed as a drag queen in Brazilian beauty pageants 15 years ago, opening him up to charges of hypocrisy, as he has supported Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill and aligned himself with with far-right Republicans hostile to transgender rights. Outraged, the congressman has denied this information, stating that the media “continue to make outrageous claims” about his life.
NEW: I just spoke by phone with Eula Rochard, a Brazilian drag queen who was friends with George Santos when he lived near Rio. She said everyone knew him as Anthony (*never* George), or by his drag name, Kitara, and confirms this photo is from a 2008 drag show at Icaraí Beach. pic.twitter.com/1MeeDR1O2O
— Marisa Kabas (@MarisaKabas) January 18, 2023
As if that were not enough, Brazilian authorities have announced their intention to re-file fraud charges against Santos in connection with a 2008 checkbook theft case. “international criminal in search and capture”.
Even the most experienced analysts are horrified by such outlandish behavior. “It’s beyond anything I think I’ve ever seen,” says Monika McDermott, a professor of political science at Fordham University in New York. “We see a good deal of dissimulation or exaggeration, but outright lying on your resume and continuing to do so even after being caught telling such lies really does take a great deal of courage, if you will.”
“He is not just any congressman”
Democrats have asked the House ethics committee to investigate Santos. New York state and local Republican leaders have called on him to resign for lying to the voters who elected him. The congressman has flatly refused.
McCarthy and Washington Republican leaders have said they will manage the situation internally, but they are aware of the stakes. They only have a 10-seat margin and know that Santos represents a district that could lean Democratic if they have to call an election.
As McDermott has pointed out, “it all depends on the numbers.” “I don’t see how they can do anything about it without risking their slim majority in the House, so they’re going to have to support him as much as they can. Right now it’s unlikely they’ll do anything about it.”
In particular, while some congressional Republicans have turned their backs on Santos, he seems to have found support in the House Freedom Caucus and in the extremist wing MAGA (Make America Great Again).
Zac Petkanas, senior adviser to the House Accountability War Room, an organization that monitors activity in Congress, has noted that “people are rightly focused on the lies you’ve told about your resume, where you got the money, where he has studied and all that, but he is also someone who participated in the movement that led to the assault on the Capitol on January 6.”
“He is not just any deputy; he is in the MAGA group that has taken control. He’s in the cabal of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert. The lies, the conspiracy theories, the promotion of political violence are part of the brand of this caste of politicians that is exerting so much influence on the new Congress.”
a natural evolution
Some do not see Santos as an outlier or a rare avis, but as the natural culmination of the process of the Republican Party in the last decade. Donald Trump, who rose to political fame with the racist lie that Barack Obama was born outside the United States, made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency, according to US government estimates. Washington Post.
One of the former Republican president’s top advisers, Kellyanne Conway, coined the phrase “alternative facts.” Some 147 Republicans voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, and McCarthy was one of them. During last year’s midterm elections, Republican candidates like Herschel Walker were repeatedly caught lying.
In this sense, Santos represents another step in the same direction. Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist, points out that “there is no better living image of what the Republican Party is becoming than George Santos: a party completely removed from truth and reality, openly embracing conspiracy theory and time and time again he rejects facts and science.”
“When the standard-bearer for your party is someone like Donald Trump, who lies about everything from classified documents to the number of people who took to the streets on the day of his inauguration, it’s only a matter of time before people emerge who take the plunge. completely in an ocean of lies,” he says.
Bardella, a former top adviser to Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, adds: “It’s no wonder someone like Santos has come along and managed to fool everyone into elected office. The refusal of the leadership of the Republican Party to do or say anything about it only encourages others to follow in their wake.”
Translation by Emma Reverser.