George Santos Spent the Holiday Doing Damage Control
The beleaguered New York politician has been backpedaling and making strained excuses for the numerous fabrications in his back story.
Representative-elect and apparent serial fabulist George Santos is back in the news, and he comes bearing even worse explanations than ever for the many noteworthy discrepancies in his biography.
The scandal-ridden New York Republican has recently endeavored to address allegations that he fabricated the bulk of his professional and academic resume, as well as details about his Jewish heritage.
Santos admitted Monday night that he had exaggerated his resume. “If I disappointed anyone by my résumé embellishment, I’m sorry,” he said in an interview with New York’s WABC radio.
But “a lot of people overstate in their résumés,” he explained, adding he still plans to take office.
While people may fluff their resumes from time to time, very few claim to have attended two different colleges or worked at major Wall Street firms knowing that no such documentation confirming these assertions exist, nor do they brag about founding a charity that was never registered with the IRS, or running an alleged multimillion-dollar company with no reported clients, website, or even a LinkedIn page.
Santos has also yet to explain how he went from reporting having no assets or earned income in 2020 to declaring he was worth millions in 2022.
But there are concerns beyond the fabrications on his CV. The right-winger has also said he is Jewish through his mother’s family, and has attended several Republican Jewish events. On this point, Santos has begun to backtrack after reports from Jewish Insider and the Forward showed his family has no Jewish heritage whatsoever.
His explanation is, to put it charitably, thin. “I’m Catholic, but I’m also ‘Jew-ish,’” he told City & State NY in an absolutely cringeworthy pun. “It strikes me as so odd that people are rushing to disinherit me … in a time and era where antisemitism is at [an] all-time rise.”
Democrats including Ted Lieu, Joaquin Castro, and Eric Swalwell have all demanded that Santos resign. Republicans, however, have remained silent, likely because they will need every vote they can get when they take control of the House, where the margins are razor-thin.
It’s unclear what will happen to Santos next, and it’s hard to say what, if any, repercussions he will face when he does take office. One thing, however, is clear: The New York Democratic Party failed to do basic research in him, and its stinging losses in the November midterms are growing more humiliating by the day.