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    An ex-congressman or a publicity-shy Republican: who will replace George Santos?

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    George Santos, an overcoat draped around his shoulders like a villain’s cape, finally left Washington in December, expelled from Congress as he faced more than 20 fraud charges, and after his almost entirely fabricated backstory fell apart.“To hell with this place,” Santos declared as he exited.But while the Republican may be done with Washington, plenty of other people were soon desperate to fill his seat representing New York’s third congressional district.In Long Island, New York, the former congressman Tom Suozzi emerged as the Democratic candidate hoping to replace Santos. Quickly, Suozzi set about distancing himself from the left of his party. He has promised to “battle” the “Squad”, a group of progressive Democratic members of Congress and has discussed the “border crisis”.Mazi Pilip, a relatively unknown local politician, was chosen by a local Republican party desperate to move on from the embarrassment that Santos – whose claims that he was a successful businessman and investor, a graduate of a top New York university and a whiz on the volleyball court had all fallen apart under scrutiny – had brought.While the looming presence of Santos, who has pleaded not guilty to charges including stealing donors’ identities, has piqued national interest, the Suozzi-Pilip match-up could also provide an early insight into what the US can expect in what’s likely to be a second presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in November.With early and absentee voting due to start in the special election on Saturday – election day is 13 February – so far it seems that immigration is top of the agenda, for Republicans at least.“Joe Biden and Tom Suozzi created the migrant crisis by opening our borders and funding sanctuary cities,” Pilip said recently on X, in a post that seemed to overestimate the achievements and influence of Suozzi, who spent six fairly uneventful years in Congress before stepping down last year.Pilip has run a strange campaign that has seen her duck interviews and largely avoid the press. She has repeatedly sought to tie Suozzi, who represented the district before Santos’s disastrous tenure, to the unpopular Biden. In her telling, Suozzi is also responsible for “runaway inflation”, while Pilip has also attempted to link Suozzi to antisemitism.In a district which the Jewish Democratic Council of America estimates has one of the largest Jewish populations of anywhere in the country, US funding to Israel has proved a key issue so far. Both Pilip, an Orthodox Jew who was born in Ethiopia before moving to Israel and who served in the Israel Defense Forces before coming to the US, and Suozzi are fervent supporters of continued aid.As a largely suburban, purple area, which voted for Biden in the 2020 presidential election before, fatefully, electing Santos in 2022, the race is being closely watched, said Lawrence Levy, former chief political columnist for Newsday and executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University.“It’s almost become a cliche to say that this [district] is a bellwether, but it really is in terms of national elections,” he said. “Competitive suburbs all over the country are the places that for years now have determined who gets the gavels in Congress, and the keys to the White House.”More than 60% of registered voters in New York state believe that the influx of migrants into the state is a “very serious problem”, according to a poll by Siena College in January. The border has come to dominate the election, and the lines of attack are beginning to serve as a preview for November.“What political operatives, and candidates, and donors are looking at around the country is how the strategies and tactics and messaging, in particular, play,” Levy said.“And what that will mean for how they approach their own races, whether it’s Orange county, California; Montgomery and Bucks county [in] Pennsylvania; Oakland county, Michigan: these are our swing suburban areas that are themselves bellwethers in the national elections.”The election has certainly brought in plenty of money. Suozzi has raised $4.5m since he entered the race, Politico reported, with Pilip bringing in $1.3m. Much of the money seems to have gone to local TV channels, with New Yorkers bombarded by attack adverts from both sides.Some of Pilip’s attacks have followed the familiar path of tying her opponent to an unsuccessful incumbent. Although Pilip’s repeated claims about a “Biden-Suozzi immigration crisis” seem something of a stretch given Suozzi’s fairly modest significance in the House of Representatives, where he served on the ways and means committee and was known for his bipartisanship.In some ways, Pilip has already cleared the very low bar set by Santos. A local CBS news channel said it had verified documents showing that Pilip did, as she claimed, study at Haifa and Tel Aviv universities, and serve in the IDF, which suggests she has not invented her history in the way Santos did. (In an email, the IDF said “we cannot comment on the personal details of past or present IDF soldiers” when the Guardian asked to confirm Pilip’s service.)Pilip has run a very quiet campaign. Her largest event so far, which saw several Republican members of Congress trek to Long Island to champion their candidate, was most noticeable for Pilip not being there: she said she was observing the sabbath.There have been complaints from local journalists, including from the New York Times and NPR, that Pilip has left them off invitations to press conferences. During the opening weeks of the campaign she conducted few interviews – one notable effort was an odd video interview with the conservative new outlet the New York Sun, during which Pilip stared into the middle distance as she answered questions.Her campaign did not respond to requests for comment or requests to be added to the press mailing list. The Guardian signed up for supporter emails, and did not receive a single one in the space of five days.It’s a far cry from the attention-pursuing Santos, who recently turned up to a Trump party during the New Hampshire primary, despite not being invited; has been hawking video messages on the app Cameo; and recently insisted in an interview: “People still want to hear what I have to say.”Whatever happens in the special election between Pilip and Suozzi, there will be plenty of people interested in what it might say about the state of US politics – and what we might expect this November. More

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      Liars, expulsions and near-fistfights: Congress plumbs the depths in 2023

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      Before House Republicans left for their holiday recess this month, they addressed one last matter of business. They did not take up an aid package for Ukraine or pass an appropriations bill to fully fund the government through the fiscal year.The House chose instead to vote along party lines to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, even though Republicans have failed to uncover any proof that the president financially benefited from his family’s business dealings.“Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” Biden said of the vote. “The American people deserve better.”The vote was a fitting end to a year defined by new lows on Capitol Hill. From removing a House speaker to expelling an indicted member and issuing threats of violence, 2023 saw Congress explore new depths of dysfunction. And it all started with a days-long speakership race.The battle for the gavel (part one)After a disappointing performance in the 2022 midterms, Republicans took control of the House in January with a much narrower majority than they had anticipated. That created a math problem for Kevin McCarthy, a Republican of California and the conference’s presumed speaker nominee.Instead of the uneventful process seen in past speakership elections, McCarthy failed to win the gavel on the first ballot, as roughly 20 hard-right members of the Republican conference opposed his ascension. The gridlock forced the House to hold a second round of voting, marking the first time in a century that the chamber failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot.The standoff lasted for four long days and necessitated 15 ballots in total. Just after midnight on 7 January, McCarthy won the speakership with a wafer-thin majority, in a vote of 216 to 212. He would hold the job for just nine months.On the brink of economic collapseAs soon as Republicans (finally) elected a speaker, attention turned to the most pressing matter on Congress’s agenda for 2023: the debt ceiling.The treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, warned that the debt ceiling, which represents the amount of money the US government is allowed to borrow to pay its bills, had to be raised or suspended by early June to avoid a federal default and prevent economic catastrophe.Despite those urgent warnings, hard-right members of the House Republican conference appeared prepared to let the US default on its debt in an attempt to force steep government spending cuts. With just days left before the expected default deadline, both the House and the Senate passed a bill to suspend the debt ceiling until January 2025.The bill passed the House with a vote of 314 to 117, as 149 Republicans and 165 Democrats supported the measure. But 71 House Republicans opposed the bill, accusing McCarthy of cutting a horrendous deal with Biden. One Freedom Caucus member, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, mocked the deal as “insanity”.In retrospect, the Freedom Caucus’s attacks on McCarthy marked the beginning of the end of his speakership.The indicted senator from New JerseyAs House Republicans clashed with each other, the Senate grappled with its response to a member accused of corruption so rampant that it bordered on comical. In late September, Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat of New Jersey, was charged in connection to what prosecutors described as a “years-long bribery scheme”.The indictment accused Menendez of exploiting his role as chair of the Senate foreign relations committee to promote the interests of the Egyptian government in exchange for kickbacks. A raid of Menendez’s home, conducted in 2022, revealed that those kickbacks allegedly included a Mercedes-Benz convertible, $500,000 in cash and 13 gold bars.Even as more of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate called on him to step down, Menendez insisted he would not resign, claiming he had been “falsely accused” because of his Latino heritage.Pete Aguilar, a Democrat of California and the highest-ranking Latino member of the House, said of those claims, “Latinos face barriers and discrimination across the board in so many categories, including in our justice system. This is not that.”The chair is declared vacantThe next near-disaster for Congress came in September, when the government appeared to be on the brink of a shutdown that would have forced hundreds of thousands of federal employees to go without a paycheck.But that fate was avoided because, with just hours left before the government’s funding was set to run out, McCarthy introduced a mostly clean bill to fund the government for 45 days. In the House, the bill won the support of 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans, but 90 Republicans opposed the legislation.Democrats and hard-right Republicans alike said McCarthy had “folded” in the funding negotiations, failing to secure the steep spending cuts demanded by hard-right Republicans. Outraged by the bill’s passage, Matt Gaetz, a Republican of Florida, introduced a motion to vacate the chair, forcing a chamber-wide vote on removing McCarthy as speaker.The motion passed, with eight Republicans joining House Democrats in voting for McCarthy’s ouster. Seated in the House chamber, McCarthy let out a bitter laugh as he became the first speaker in US history to ever be ejected from the job.The battle for the gavel (part two)McCarthy’s removal prompted another speakership election, and this one somehow proved even more chaotic than the days-long spectacle that unfolded in January.Republicans initially nominated the House majority leader, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, for the speakership. But Scalise was forced to withdraw from the race days later because of entrenched opposition to his nomination among hard-right lawmakers. The caucus then nominated Jim Jordan of Ohio, who attempted to pressure his critics into electing him as speaker by holding multiple unsuccessful chamber-wide votes. Jordan dropped out of the race when it became clear that opposition to his speakership bid was only growing.The election reached its peak level of absurdity on 24 October, when Tom Emmer of Minnesota withdrew from the race just hours after becoming the conference’s third speaker nominee in as many weeks. By then, it appeared even Republicans had grown tired of their manufactured crisis. Republicans’ fourth and final speaker nominee, Mike Johnson of Louisiana, won the gavel in a party-line vote, bringing an end to weeks of turmoil that had become the subject of nationwide mockery.‘You are a United States senator!’The fourteenth of November was a special day on Capitol Hill because it offered an opportunity for members of both the House and the Senate to embarrass themselves.In the House, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, one of the eight Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy as speaker, accused McCarthy of elbowing him in the kidneys. Burchett then chased after McCarthy to confront him, but the former speaker denied the allegation.“If I’d kidney-punched him, he’d be on the ground,” McCarthy told reporters.Meanwhile, on the other side of the Capitol, Senator Markwayne Mullin, a Republican of Oklahoma, challenged one of the witnesses at a committee hearing to a fistfight. Mullin had previously clashed with the witness, the Teamsters union president, Sean O’Brien, over social media and suggested they settle their score with a physical fight.“You want to do it now?” Mullin asked.“I’d love to do it right now,” O’Brien replied.“Then stand your butt up then,” Mullin said.“You stand your butt up,” O’Brien shot back.The chair of the committee, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, then intervened to prevent any violence and offered this pointed reminder to Mullin: “You know, you’re a United States senator.”From Congress to CameoThe House kicked off the final month of the year with a vote to expel George Santos, a freshman Republican from New York who had been indicted on 23 federal counts related to fraud and campaign finance violations.Santos had been plagued by controversy since before taking office, as reporters discovered he had fabricated most of the life story he shared with voters. A congressional investigation uncovered that Santos had spent thousands of dollars from his campaign account on Botox treatments, luxury items at Hermès and payments to OnlyFans, an online platform known for its sexual content.Faced with that mountain of evidence, more than 100 House Republicans joined Democrats in voting to expel Santos. The 311-114 vote made Santos only the sixth member of the House ever to be expelled from Congress.Without his day job, Santos has turned his attention to Cameo, which allows D-list celebrities to make money by filming short personalized videos for fans. Reports indicate Santos is already raking in six figures on the platform.Goodbye, KevinSantos is not the only House members leaving Congress this year. McCarthy announced in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that he would resign from the House at the end of December. McCarthy’s decision brought an end to a 17-year career in the House that encapsulated the Republican party’s shift away from small-government conservatism and toward Donald Trump’s “Make America great again” philosophy.Despite his humiliating fall from power, McCarthy expressed unbroken faith in Americans’ goodness and in “the enduring values of our great nation”.“I’m an optimist,” McCarthy declared.That makes one of us, Kevin. More

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      Are we laughing at George Santos, or is he laughing at us? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      George Anthony Devolder Santos was born in 1988 with a serious congenital condition which means he is incapable of feeling shame or embarrassment. I’m not sure what the name of the affliction is or whether it’s recognized by the medical establishment – but many of his former colleagues in government seem to suffer from the same thing.Still, the disgraced New York Republican, who was expelled from Congress three weeks ago and pleaded not guilty in October to a total of 23 federal felony charges ranging from wire fraud to money laundering, clearly has an extreme case. Santos, who was elected to represent parts of Long Island and Queens last year, has been dogged by controversy throughout his short political career. It turns out he lied about pretty much everything in his life – including his mother surviving 9/11.Every time he’s been called out on his lies and alleged frauds, however, he’s shrugged his shoulders and acted as if people were making a fuss out of nothing. “It’s the vulnerability of being human,” he said loftily when challenged on his claims to have an extensive property portfolio, for example. “I am not embarrassed by it.”Santos, who is just the sixth person ever to be expelled from Congress, doesn’t seem particularly fazed by his ousting either. I don’t know about you, but if I’d been kicked out of Congress – and was facing a 23-count federal indictment that alleged, inter alia, that I’d stolen campaign donors’ identities and charged thousands of dollars to their credit cards for things like Botox without their knowledge – I’d probably feel a tad sheepish. I’d probably lie low for a bit and try to avoid doing anything that brought undue attention to myself or got me into even more legal trouble.Santos, however? He’s busy trying to reinvent himself. He hasn’t let disgrace bring him down. Instead, Santos, the first non-incumbent gay Republican ever elected to Congress, seems to be busy trying to turn himself into some kind of ironic gay icon and is leaning into his camp and outlandish persona as far as he possibly can.He recently announced an X subscription where he promises to “spill tea” on Congress for just $7 a month, for example. He also signed up as a “former congressional ‘Icon’!” to Cameo, a website that offers access to personalized messages from celebrities. For a mere $200-$500 you can get a video message from him.Are people actually paying for this? I’m afraid they are! A friend of the Nebraska state senator Megan Hunt, who is bisexual and a big supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, hired Santos – who has endorsed several anti-trans policies – to send her a message of support which was widely shared.“Be yourself unapologetically,” Santos said in the video, seemingly oblivious that he had supported laws that would stop people doing just that. “Just love yourself. Just make sure that you don’t buy into the hate and stand your ground and don’t let them force you out. Don’t let them bully you. You do you, girl. I’m cheering for ya.”Then there was this week’s much-anticipated interview with Ziwe Fumudoh, a comedian famous for her deadpan interviews. Santos used drag slang like “boots the house down” (an expression of enthusiasm) multiple times throughout the interview in a seeming attempt to remind us all that he may be a disgrace and a Republican but he’s also gay, so he can’t be all bad, ya know?While he may be familiar with gay slang, Santos doesn’t seem to know much about LGBTQ+ history. Ziwe quizzed Santos on civil rights icons (the former politician once compared himself to Rosa Parks) and he admitted he had no idea who James Baldwin or Harvey Milk were. He also didn’t seem familiar with the transgender activist Marsha P Johnson.What about Santos’s own gay history? Namely allegations that Santos, a supporter of anti-LGBTQ+ policies like Florida’s “don’t say gay” law, had been a drag queen in the past. That was true, Santos said, but only for a day. “If I was a career drag queen then, like everybody likes to claim, then I must be a myth of a drag queen now … I wear far more makeup today.”The most important question Ziwe asked was probably her most earnest. “What could we do to get you to go away?” she demanded towards the end, speaking for a nation. “Stop inviting me to your gigs,” Santos replied quickly. “But you can’t. Because people want the content.”Santos may be fond of fiction but, for once, he was speaking the complete truth. You can be forgiven for pretty much anything in America if you generate entertaining enough content. You can lie, you can cheat, you can commit all manner of sins – but if you draw eyeballs and generate headlines you will probably be forgiven. You might even become president! And you certainly won’t go broke. The talkshow appearances, the book deals, the invitations to Dancing on the Stars will come.That said, there are a few things that do tend to kill your career in America. Espousing pro-Palestinian views being a major one. Ziwe, in fact, joked about that herself. “Do you support a ceasefire or are you afraid of losing your Hollywood representation?” she asked Santos at one point during the 18-minute interview.The former congressman, in case you’re interested, made it very clear that he did not support a ceasefire in Gaza, where more than 20,000 people have died. What a strange world we live in, where calling for a ceasefire can get you cancelled faster than using campaign money on shopping sprees and lying your way into Congress.Ziwe is hilarious but, despite the laughs, the interview with Santos ultimately left a bad taste in one’s mouth. You can’t “gotcha” a guy like Santos. You can’t embarrass him. You can’t expose him. You can’t unsettle him. At one point, for example, Ziwe asked: “What advice do you have for young diverse people with personality disorders considering a career in politics?” Most people would get flustered. Santos just paused for a while then said, “You’re cute.”Ultimately, none of this is cute. Platforming a guy like Santos, a bigot who thrives on the oxygen of attention, only helps to rehabilitate him. We may think we’re laughing at the ex-congressman but with every view his interviews rack up, it’s clear that the joke is on us.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Man convicted in January 6 riots running for Santos seat in Congress

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      Of the 15-odd Republican candidates vying to replace George Santos in Congress, one stands out so far – not just because he has now been convicted for trying to obstruct the very body he wants to join, but because he claimed to have “no idea” Congress met at the Capitol building he stormed on January 6.Philip Grillo, a candidate in the special election for Santos’s vacant Long Island seat, was convicted this week of charges relating to the January 6 attack, when he entered and exited the building multiple times, at least once through a broken window.At one point during the protest Grillo, 49, was interviewed on camera about why he was there.“I’m here to stop the steal,” he said, according to the justice department. “It’s our fucking House!”He then made his way further into the Capitol. He also recorded videos of himself in the Capitol. “We fucking did it, you understand? We stormed the Capitol,” Grillo said in one. “We shut it down! We did it! We shut the mother..!”On his third entrance to the building, the justice department said, he could be seen in multiple instances pushing up against police officers and, in another recording, from his cell phone, smoking marijuana inside the building and high-fiving other rioters.Recently, during his trial, he testified that he had “no idea” Congress convened inside the Capitol.Grillo was found guilty this week of the felony charge of obstruction of an official proceeding, along with a series of misdemeanors, including entering restricted grounds and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building.At trial, his attorney’s argued that their client had “was acting under actual or believed public authority at the time of the alleged offenses” and said “he was and believed he was authorized to engage in the conduct set forth in the indictment”.Grillo is one of the more than 1,230 people who have been charged with crimes related to the effort on January 6 to block certification of the 2020 election.In May, 10 days before Santos was indicted in New York on multiple charges of fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements, Grillo registered as a candidate for New York’s third congressional district seat – the seat Santos, a Republican, held until his expulsion last week.A special election to replace Santos will be held on 13 February, the New York governor Kathy Hochul announced this week. Under electoral rules there is no primary, so Democrats and Republicans will each pick a candidate to go head-to-head.The candidates have not been announced, but Republicans are reported to be edging toward Jack Martins, a former state senator, and Democrats toward Tom Suozzi, who represented the third congressional district before it was redrawn.However, the Republican selection committee has said it is conducting a formal interview process. Committee chairman Joseph Cairo Jr has said the committee has “15 bona fide candidates” to review, including Grillo.The party will be hoping that mud from the Santos affair does not stick to their candidate, and Republicans in the state of New York have in recent years been more successful in leveraging wider turnout margins and courting independent voters than Democrats.For Democrats, the election will be a test of the party’s ability to flip districts in New York City’s suburbs and exurbs that turned red last year in a blow to the party’s majority in Congress.Veteran strategist Hank Sheinkopf told City & State that Santos’s expulsion would likely benefit Republicans because it made them “look like the defenders of the institution, of ethics, and of the courage to oust one of their own”.“Democrats might just for a moment pause and stop gloating. A gone Santos does not a Democrat replacement necessarily create,” Sheinkopf said.Since his disgrace and ouster, Santos has reportedly been making the equivalent of $174,000 a year by charging $400 for brief personalized video messages on the Cameo service.His profile on Cameo describes him as a “former congressional ‘Icon’!” along with a painted fingernail emoji and as “the expelled member of Congress from New York City”.The Cameo founder and chief executive, Steven Galanis, told CBS MoneyWatch this week that Santos has already booked enough Cameo videos to earn more than his congressional salary.“Assuming he can get through the videos, he will exceed what he made in Congress last year,” Galanis told the outlet. More

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      in US Politics

      The lives and lies of George Santos

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      It’s a story that is already being turned into a movie by HBO. George Santos, the US politician seemed to have had an amazing life. He had worked on a Broadway show, appeared on the children’s series Hannah Montana, been a star volleyball player, was a noted academic and a successful businessman whose company was worth millions. Now he was in Congress pushing policies such as making the AR-15 rifle the national gun of America. But as it turned out, many of the stories he told about himself were not just exaggerations, but outright lies. The politician was not even, as he had apparently said, Jewish. Yet, as US reporter Adam Gabbatt explains, surprisingly, this did not mean Santos lost his seat. When a report from the House ethics committee arrived along with 23 federal criminal charges, Santos’s colleagues finally expelled him. Yet his rise and fall pose worrying questions about the US political system in a post-truth era. Michael Safi asks why voters were not more outraged by Santos’s dishonesty, and how he was allowed to continue his career even after his apparent dishonesty was exposed. More

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      George Santos reportedly making six figures by selling Cameo videos

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      The disgraced lawmaker George Santos is reportedly making six figures by selling videos on the platform Cameo, generating more income than his previous salary as a US congressman, Semafor first reported.Santos, a former Republican representative from New York state, was expelled from Congress last Friday following a blistering ethics report that detailed his misuse of campaign funds.Since his removal, Santos has been publishing videos on Cameo, a website that allows users to purchase personalized videos from celebrities. The disgraced congressman has drastically increased the price of his videos, now selling them for $400 a pop from his initial $75-per-video price point.Santos’s appearance on the platform has reportedly been one of the strongest debuts for a celebrity on Cameo, with Cameo’s CEO, Steven Galanis, telling Semafor that the 35-year-old “is going to be an absolute whale”.“Sarah Jessica Parker, Bon Jovi – he’s putting numbers up like that,” Galanis said to Semafor.A representative from Cameo could not be reached by the Guardian.In one Cameo video, Santos wishes “happy holidays” to the general elections group at the app Whatsapp.“Here’s to a season filled with more joy and fewer factchecks. May your festivities be as genuine as my campaign promises,” Santos said, emphasizing that he did keep his campaign promises.In another, Santos tells an NYU student named “Harper” to finish their final papers before blowing off steam.“Don’t go out, don’t go partying, don’t go have fun. Just finish the damn papers,” Santos said.On Tuesday, Santos briefly paused making videos on Cameo to catch up with high demand, he announced on X, formerly known as Twitter.Santos has already sold Cameo videos to high-ranking officials. The Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman bought a Cameo video from Santos in “support” of the New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, who faces federal bribery and extortion charges.In the video, later published to social media, Santos tells Menendez to “stay strong” amid his legal woes.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I don’t think I need to tell you, but these people who want to make you get in trouble and want to kick you out and make you run away, you make them put up or shut up. You stand your ground, sir, and don’t get bogged down by all the haters out there,” Santos says in the video.Santos later said he did not know that he was making a video for Senator Menendez, but found the entire premise hilarious.The Nebraska state senator Megan Hunt also received a Cameo video from Santos as a gift and published it to X, before emphasizing that Santos “is a transphobic fool who has defrauded and harmed people” on X.Many on social media were critical of Hunt for publishing the Cameo and others who are buying videos from Santos, especially as the ex-lawmaker still faces 23 federal criminal counts, including wire fraud and identity theft.“You could try not promoting him,” said on user on X in response to Hunt’s post of Santos’s Cameo.“[Take] the post down, don’t amplify him,” read another reply to Hunt’s post. More

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      Santos duped by Democratic senator to troll disgraced colleague Menendez

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      Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman enlisted a Cameo video from disgraced lawmaker George Santos in “support” of the also-disgraced New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, with Santos telling Menendez to “stay strong” amid his legal woes.In a rare example of bipartisan financial support, Fetterman paid Santos, a Republican, $200 for the personalized video as a prank. Santos did not know the “Bobby” he was recording the video for was Menendez.Santos was expelled from the House of Representatives on Friday following a scathing ethics report that detailed his misuse of campaign funds. Ever since he has been selling videos on Cameo, a website that allows users to buy short, personalized videos from celebrities.On X, Fetterman said he wanted to provide Menendez with “encouragement” amid the “substantial legal problems” the New Jersey senator faces.“So, I approached a seasoned expert on the matter to give ‘Bobby from Jersey’ some advice,” Fetterman wrote on X.Menendez and his wife both face federal bribery and extortion charges, as the senator also faces calls to resign. Fetterman has been one of Menendez’s fiercest critics, questioning during a CNN appearance on Monday why Menendez should remain in office if Santos is expelled.In the Cameo video to Menendez, Santos begins with “Hey Bobby!”He continues: “I don’t think I need to tell you, but these people who want to make you get in trouble and want to kick you out and make you run away, you make them put up or shut up. You stand your ground, sir, and don’t get bogged down by all the haters out there.”Santos ends with “Stay strong” before wishing Menendez a “Merry Christmas”.Santos reportedly made the Cameo video just 16 minutes after receiving the request from Fetterman’s camp. “We did not expect to get it back so fast,” an unnamed Fetterman spokesperson told Business Insider.After Fetterman posted the Santos video online, Santos responded on X that he did not know which “Bobby” he was making the video for: “I love this! I wish I knew the Bobby in question! LOL.”Santos then publicly called for Menendez’s removal.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMenendez, for his part, responded to Fetterman’s prank by telling NBC News: “I don’t think Mr Clickbait’s donors would appreciate him enriching George Santos.”Fetterman wasn’t the only one to cash in on Santos’s new career.Ohio Democrats also bought a Cameo from Santos in order to troll Senator Bernie Moreno for his donations to the Santos campaign.“A little message from [Santos] to his number one supporter in Ohio, [Moreno],” the group posted on X, along with the video in which Santos expressed his gratitude to “Bernie Moreno from Ohio” for “maxing out to my campaign”.“Unfortunately, you know, it ended, it’s over, but I want to say thank you very much for that donation and for all the support and I hope that in the future I can come back and be part of the game again,” Santos added. More

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      HBO to develop George Santos’s ‘Gatsby-esque journey’ into movie – report

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      A book about the improbable rise and rapid fall of former congressman George Santos has been optioned by HBO Films, it was reported Saturday, and will be produced under the guidance of Frank Rich, a former New York Times columnist known for executive production credits on Emmy awards-winning Succession and Veep.HBO reportedly optioned the rights to Mark Chiusano’s The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos, published last week.Chiusano, a former Newsday reporter, told the Guardian last week that the story of Santos, who was expelled from Congress last week after a damning ethics report that focused on his use of campaign funds and also faces criminal charges, was at its heart “a tragedy”.“He is someone who is clearly very ambitious and wants to live a kind of wealthy life, a life of fame and notoriety, and he is trying to attain essentially a version of the American dream, which so many people have sought over the years,” Chiusano said.A movie interpretation of Santos’s political career may have literary precedents to follow. Part of the New York district three that Santos served includes Great Neck, transposed as Little Egg in the story of Jay Gatsby, the (fictional) character who created his own fictional life in F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby.According to Deadline, the adaptation of The Fabulist will be written by Mike Makowsky, who wrote the screenplay of HBO’s crime drama Bad Education, and will tell the “Gatsby-esque journey of a man from nowhere who exploited the system, waged war on truth and swindled one of the wealthiest districts in the country to achieve his American Dream”.The disgraced ex-congressman fired off a series of tweets late Friday night announcing he would file complaints about misdeeds involving former colleagues Nicole Malliotakis, Mike Lawler, Nick LaLota and Bob Menendez.By Sunday, Santos’s controversial expulsion ahead of a criminal trial continued to attract political comment. Former Trump White House chief of staff and ABC political analyst Reince Priebus acknowledged splits within the Republican party on the vote to expel and the issue of the legislative body acting independently of voters in Santos’s district.“True, he lied. He has a big mouth, all of these things. You know, I do think there is a concern with taking that power away from the people in the district,” Priebus said.Santos, he added, was “a victim of himself. But he is also paying the price for having a big mouth, for being almost a comedian in front of his colleagues, who are now his judges. And he paid the price. And that’s a good lesson about, when you get in trouble, you keep your head down; you keep your mouth shut.”But the immediate aftermath of a year of Santos headlines has left an emotional vacuum – and the prospect of a hotly contested election in the New Year in which Democrats will hope to recover a seat they lost in 2022. New York Magazine, which exhaustively chronicled the Santos’s political epic, echoed the line from Dr Seuss: “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” More

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      ‘To hell with this place’: George Santos sharpens attacks after expulsion

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      George Santos, the disgraced New York Republican who was expelled from the US House on Friday, spent his first hours as a former congressman railing against his former colleagues and saying he would file ethics complaints against four of them on Monday.Santos told reporters after his expulsion he was done with Congress.“Why would I want to stay here? To hell with this place,” he told reporters outside the US Capitol after the vote.By Friday evening, he was tweeting about his colleagues. He wrote on X that he would file an ethics complaint against three fellow Republicans from New York – Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis and Nick LaLota – who had long pushed to oust him from Congress. He offered no proof of wrongdoing against any of the three.He also wrote that he would file a complaint against Representative Rob Menendez, whose father, New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez, has been criminally charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent on behalf of Egypt. Santos, again, didn’t offer specific accusations of wrongdoing.Any person can file a complaint to the Office of Congressional Ethics, but that does not mean it will result in an investigation.He also urged a Republican in Congress to have the “testicular fortitude” to move to expel Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and paid a fine for setting off a fire alarm in a congressional office building.Santos spent the week leading up to his impeachment vote railing against colleagues, accusing them of having affairs and missing votes because they were hungover.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSantos became just the sixth person to ever be expelled from Congress after a bipartisan 311-114 vote on Friday. His expulsion came shortly after a report from the House ethics committee detailed how he spent campaign funds on luxury goods, cosmetics and an OnlyFans subscription. He also has pleaded not guilty to a 23-count federal indictment related to his use of campaign funds.After being elected to Congress to represent Long Island and Queens last year, Santos quickly earned a reputation as a prolific liar. Among other things, he lied about working on Wall Street, that his mother died during 9/11, and that he was a volleyball star in college. More