George Santos Seriously Compares Himself to Rosa Parks

George Santos has taken many identities, finding his inspiration, personality, and even personal background from the lives of others. His latest model? Rosa Parks.

Santos compared himself to the civil rights leader during a bamboozling interview on conservative talk show host Mike Crispi’s Unafraid podcast last week, during which he appeared live from the back seat of a vehicle and went on a rant about how his party is apparently not intersectional enough for far-right Latino gay men.

“Come for me, I go right back for them because they think for far too long they’ve gotten away with getting along to get along. So no, it’s not going to stay that way anymore. I’m going to call them out. You want to call me a liar, I’ll call you a sellout,” Santos spitted.

“I mean, Mitt Romney: The man goes to the State of the Union of the United States wearing the Ukraine lapel pin, tells me a Latino gay man, that I shouldn’t sit in the front, that I should be in the back,” the fake volleyball all-star and vet charity scammer continued.

“Well guess what, Rosa Parks didn’t sit in the back and neither am I gonna sit in the back. That’s just the reality of how it works. Mitt Romney lives in a very different world. And he needs to buckle up because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride for him,” finished the congressman under investigation for potential criminal activity both here and abroad.

It’s unclear why Santos brought up Romney’s wearing of a Ukraine pin as an apparent pejorative or contrast to his identity as a Latino gay man. But Santos’s typically odd sentences pale against him—a member of Congress and possibly serial financial criminal—likening himself to a Black woman risking her life to make a stance against systemic racism and discrimination.

From Martin Luther King Jr. to now Rosa Parks, one wonders which other civil rights leaders Republicans may try to co-opt next!

Fabian Basabe used to be known as the “male Paris Hilton” in tabloid circles, a cosmopolitan socialite famous for being famous (being the son of a wealthy Ecuadorian businessman probably helped, too). Now, as a Florida state representative known for pushing anti-LGBTQ policies, he is being accused of sexual harassment by two male former staffers.

On Thursday, the Miami Herald reported on the lawsuit, which said Basabe made repeated sexual comments and advances towards a legislative aide and an intern. The suit detailed accusations including Basabe nonconsensually slapping the aide’s butt while at an elementary school career day, and groping and trying to kiss a Florida State University graduate student before then going on to hire him as an intern.

The lawsuit, filed by former intern Jacob Cutbirth, former aide Nicolas Frevola, and his mother Janette Frevola, goes into great detail of what allegedly transpired. According to the accusations, Cutbirth first met Basabe and Frevola at a Tallahassee bar in December. Later, Cutbirth was asked to drive the drunk Florida representative back to his hotel.

While Cutbirth was driving, Basabe allegedly “began to physically touch and grope him and to grab at him to try to kiss him.” Cutbirth says he “repeatedly told Basabe to stop touching him” and refused a request to come back to Basabe’s hotel room. Cutbirth accepted a part-time unpaid internship in Basabe’s office just weeks later; he saw the opportunity as an “apology.”

But things did not end there. Cutbirth alleges that Basabe repeatedly requested that he “flirt with him” while in the office, and that Basabe described him as “eye candy” in front of other people. Basabe allegedly even suggested that Cutbirth should break off his engagement with his girlfriend and instead “explore his sexuality by having sex with men.”

In a different incident, Basabe allegedly told his aide, Frevola, that he wanted “all of that butt” before slapping Frevola’s buttocks in the back of a fifth grade classroom, while another aide spoke to students during career day.

On another occasion, Basabe allegedly showed Cutbirth and Frevola a photograph of a naked man on his phone, and told the two that he was a “bottom,” while they should be “tops.”

Cutbirth says he quit in March due to “pervasive sexual harassment.”

The lawsuit also carries a previous claim made by Frevola that Basabe slapped him across the face at an event hosted by one of the largest Tallahassee lobbying firms, following Ron DeSantis’s inauguration. Allegedly, while Frevola was talking to a lobbyist, Basabe—who had apparently been drinking all day—approached and asked Frevola if the lobbyist was the woman he had “slept with” a few weeks ago. The pair were both shocked by the question and denied the inquiry. Basabe apparently grew angry, saying “Oh, so you are cheating,” before slapping Frevola and telling him to stand in the corner.

Basabe has been criticized for running as a supposed social moderate, while supporting Florida’s slate of anti-LGBTQ bills. That includes the infamous Don’t Say Gay bill, a measure that prevents teachers from asking students their preferred pronouns, and another that makes it a crime to host drag shows with anyone under the age of 18 present.

Cutbirth and Frevola said they didn’t know what they could’ve done in response to all the alleged incidents, as Basabe apparently made them both sign Non-Disclosure Agreements. Asked earlier as to whether he had indeed required them to do so, Basabe simply said, “There’s an application package, whatever is in there is in there. I don’t deal with the hiring process.”

The Florida legislature doesn’t require or provide NDAs for staff. Basabe has since accepted forcing staff to sign NDAs, and defended doing so. Still, he has denied the broader allegations, even calling the accusations from Frevola a “false” one made by “lazy, entitled, unscrupulous, self-involved, ungrateful, lying scum.”

Basabe once appeared on the reality TV show Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive, which depicted privileged children of celebrities experiencing the rugged life of working on a Colorado cattle ranch. “I just can’t believe some of the stuff that comes out of [Fabian’s] mouth,” one viewer remarked in an IMDB review of Filthy Rich. “He is the most disrespectful, lazy, arrogant person I have [ever] come across.”

“Every week I am amazed at what a spoiled, immature, brat Fabian is,” another said.

In 2006, he was arrested in New York for drunk driving and running a red light in his Hummer. He sued a New York nightclub $2 million after the doorman, who he called a “sand negro,” didn’t allow he and his friends to enter.

In December 2019, Basabe reportedly called a Black Miami publicist the n-word at a party at the Bass Museum in Miami Beach.

“When he’s leaving, he starts screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘peasant,’ ‘whore,’ ‘bitch’ at me … When he’s 50 yards away, he screams, ‘F–k you [n-word] bitch,’” publicist Tayo Otiti said.

Basabe has since viewed himself as a reformed man. “[Raising my son] has made me realize and focus and make up for any wrongs in my past,” he said in 2021.

Rudy Giuliani has been embroiled in scandal for years, most recently for being accused of promising to pay a woman a $1 million annual salary to be his close associate, and instead raping and abusing her over the course of two years. He also was allegedly constantly drunk, plotted to sell pardons to criminals, and regularly made racist and antisemitic comments.

And now, separately, a court panel is calling for him to be disbarred from practicing law for trying to overturn the 2020 election results.

The D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility issued a 38-page memo on Friday detailing their conclusion that the former Trump lawyer should be disbarred for his “destructive” efforts to help overthrow the election in service of the twice-impeached, now twice-indicted, and liable for sexual abuse former president.

“His malicious and meritless claims have done lasting damage and are antagonistic to the oath to ‘support the Constitution of the United States of America’ that he swore when he was admitted to the Bar,” the panel wrote. “The misconduct here sadly transcends all his past accomplishments. It was unparalleled in its destructive purpose and effect. He sought to disrupt a presidential election and persists in his refusal to acknowledge the wrong he has done. For these reasons, we unanimously recommend that Mr. Giuliani be disbarred,” the panel added.

The panel, appointed by the D.C. Court of Appeals to serve as its “disciplinary arm,” had deliberated for months on the decision.

The D.C. bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel had come to the conclusion last December, saying his license to practice law should be revoked. Giuliani’s ability to practice law in the district had already been suspended by the D.C. Court of Appeals, and that same court is now tasked with deciding whether to heed the calls and indeed fully disbar him.

Giuliani had already previously been suspended from practicing law in New York for making “demonstrably false and misleading statements” while trying to help overturn the election.

“The decision-makers at the DC Bar Association are nothing more than an arm of the permanent regime in Washington,” said Giuliani advisor Ted Goodman. “This is also part of an effort to deny President Trump effective counsel by persecuting Rudy Giuliani—objectively one of the most effective prosecutors in American history. This is the sort of behavior we’d expect out of the Soviet Union, not America.”

“I call on rank-and-file members of the DC Bar Association to speak out against this great injustice,” Goodman finished.

Giuliani may also likely face further criminal charges in the Department of Justice’s investigation into Trump’s 2020 election interference, led by special prosecutor Jack Smith. Smithhas already leveled 37 felony counts against Trump for taking and mishandling top secret government documents.

She’s a Barbie comrade, in a Communist Barbie world—or so say Republicans, who are doubling down on accusations that the upcoming Barbie movie is Chinese propaganda.

The film, which comes out July 21, stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, who leave Barbie Land to explore the real world. In one scene before they leave, a rough, hand-drawn map of the world can be seen in the background. The map includes the so-called nine-dash line, a much-disputed division of territory in the South China Sea.

Senator Ted Cruz was one of the first U.S. lawmakers to weigh in, sarcastically tweeting, “I guess Barbie is made in China.…” Fox News commentators speculated outright whether Barbie was Communist or not.

More Republicans have joined them. “While it may just be a Barbie map in a Barbie world, the fact that a cartoonish, crayon-scribbled map seems to go out of its way to depict [China’s] unlawful territorial claims illustrates the pressure that Hollywood is under to please CCP censors,” Representative Mike Gallagher, who chairs the House select committee on China, told Fox News Digital on Thursday.

Representative Jim Banks, who also serves on the select committee, accused the film’s producers of “endangering our national security.”

“We defeated the Soviet Union with Coke, Levi’s and James Dean. We need soft power superiority just as much as we need military superiority to win the new Cold War with China, and that’s impossible with Hollywood working alongside the Chinese Communist Party,” he said.

Representative Mike Waltz accused Hollywood of “hypocrisy” and slammed Barbie as “yet another disgraceful example of Hollywood being in the pocket of communist China.” Senator Marsha Blackburn accused the movie of “bending to Beijing.”

Representative Mark Green warned Hollywood that continuing to spread Chinese propaganda would cost the industry federal support. “In no world should American films be spreading CCP propaganda,” he said. “I encourage all film studios to stand with integrity or lose support from federal entities like the DOD.”

In March, Green reintroduced the SCREEN Act, which would bar the U.S. government from helping American studios produce films if the movie is co-produced by a Chinese company.

China has used the nine-dash line to mark its controversial territorial claims in the South China Sea. Over the years, Beijing has tried to claim sovereignty over 90 percent of the region. Even though The Hague ruled in 2016 that China has no legal basis for its claims, the country has pressed on, building military installations on otherwise uninhabited islands in the sea.

Hanoi has already banned the Barbie movie for its inclusion of the nine-dash line, which Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei all say violates their sovereignty. The Philippines is also considering banning the film.

For the record, here is the shot in question of the nine-dash line:

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s officials discreetly removed an entire Health Department web page listing resources for LGBTQ kids after Ben Shapiro’s media outlet inquired about a couple of items listed on the site.

In May, right-wing outlet The Daily Wire, which Shapiro co-founded, had inquired about two websites linked on the state Health Department page, reports The Virginia Mercury.

One site, Queer Kid Stuff, describes itself as “an edutainment company on a mission to spread queer joy to LGBTQ+ kids, parents, caregivers, educators, their loved ones, and allies.” The other, Q Chat Space, offers “live, chat-based discussion groups for LGBTQ+ and questioning teens ages 13 to 19 … facilitated by experienced staff and volunteers from youth programs at LGBTQ+ centers across the United States.”

Daily Wire reporter Spencer Lindquist sent an inquiry on May 31, asking about the sites. “How are resources selected by the Virginia Department of Health?” Lindquist wrote in his email at 9:12 a.m. “Queer Kid Stuff has previously promoted child transgenderism. Does the Virginia Department of Health take a stance on the medical transitioning of minors? Is the Virginia Department of Health aware that the QChat Space, which is marketed to those as young as 13 who identify as LGBT, has a special quick escape feature that allows users to swiftly exit the site?”

He had given a two-hour window for response, which apparently set off a frenzy within the state government to remove the entire LGBTQ Resources for Youth page instead.

Emily Yeatts, a supervisor for the Health Department’s Division of Child and Family Health, and Rachel Brown, the Health Department’s adolescent health coordinator, drafted a response to Lindquist’s questions, detailing their goals “to be a trusted source of public health information for all Virginians” and adding that all “Virginians includes people of all ages, races, ethnicities, gender identities, sexual orientations, and ability statuses.”

“VDH does not have a ‘stance’ on medical transition; as a state agency, VDH provides information, and the administration takes a position on issues.… QChat Space is not managed by VDH, but we can share that ‘quick escape’ features are typical for a variety of websites, particularly websites that could put a person at risk for violence from others. Intimate partner violence/sexual violence/domestic violence webpages often have this feature. LGBT people are at increased risk for violence,” the officials also wrote.

But the detailed statement was never used; instead Director of Communications Maria Reppas told staff she was “working with leadership on this one.” While officials never responded with comment to Lindquist’s questions about the two specific resources, it seemed that the intention of “leadership” was indeed just to quietly get rid of the entire web page.

“Did someone request this?” asked Yeatts in an email to other staff members after the web page was removed. “This request did not come from the program.”

Vanessa Walker Harris, director for the Office of Family Health Services (which manages content on the Health Department web page) expressed similar concern in a separate, concurrent email.

“I’m noticing that the referenced webpage is no longer accessible and I’m having a bad case of deja vu,” Walker Harris wrote. “What am I missing? I’m very concerned that staff were directed to remove the webpage without engaging [subject matter experts] in response to a politically motivated inquiry, yet again.”

Indeed, the Mercury revealed that the office of John Littel, the secretary of health and human resources, ordered the removal of the whole site—with little concern to inform any other relevant parties.

Youngkin’s administration has removed information from the government health website without consulting any subject-matter experts at least three times in the past year and a half, The Washington Post reports. Information on abortions, sexual health, and pregnancy, and more, all unilaterally removed at the behest of far-right interests opposed to people’s civil rights and bodily autonomy.

In this way, Youngkin—whom, like Ron DeSantis, portions of the mainstream press have professed to be a moderate vessel of the Republican Party—is in fact just a friendly Americana face masking the far-right agenda to vilify LGBTQ people and kids and make them feel as isolated and desperate as possible.