Scandal in the Wind 2023. George Santos gets Sashayed

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

ARREST HIM NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if he were black he would have already been thrown in jail

Do we know for sure he isn't Black?

No. He's definitely from Sri Lanka.

[Suburbia]

State Sen. Jack Martins will win the seat when Santos is forced to retire.

[Dr Oz Lost Party!]

He lied about lying about being jewish.

https://twitter.com/jacobkornbluh/status/1607774156723986433?s=20&t=WnIvwRoZ...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

He lied about lying about being jewish.

https://twitter.com/jacobkornbluh/status/1607774156723986433?s=20&t=WnIvwRoZ...

George Santos. The layers of lies never end!

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

lol lmao lol

https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1607799177689575425
https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1607799179933360128
https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1607799761989410817
https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1607799950649491456

[Senator Incitatus]

Apparently he told coworkers that he was born in Brazil, so it's possible that he's not even a citizen: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/is-george-santos-a-us-citizen

We really need to secure our elections.

[DrScholl]

Marjorie Taylor Greene took vows to be faithful to her husband. She lied.

[Nyvin]

"I didn't say 'Jewish' I said 'Jew-ish'"

Is he trying to be comical at this point?

https://twitter.com/JacobRubashkin/status/1607789533269225472

[Ferguson97]

"I didn't say 'Jewish' I said 'Jew-ish'"

Is he trying to be comical at this point?

This literally sounds like a joke from Curb Your Enthusiasm.

[Schiff for Senate]

This guy, without a doubt, is the Madison Cawthorn of the 118th Congress. I would say Steve Watkins of KS was the 116th's Madison Cawthorn, though there might be a better candidate there (and for sure Watkins wasn't nearly as *entertaining* as either Cawthorn or Santos).

Was his seat an expected flip?

Because if it was you wonder what the NY Democrats were doing…

Nah, it was something of an upset (though not as big as the upset in next-door NY04).

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

Jesus Christ that Greene twitter rant is all the deeply unhinged, unrealistic nonsense all in one place

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

So to summarize:

- No record he ever worked at Citigroup or Goldman Sachs
- His “charity” is not registered as tax-exempt by the IRS
- No record of him attending the college he claimed to graduate from
- No clients for his “firm” exist
- No records of the properties he claimed to own existing
- Omitted key personal financial disclosures during campaign
- Charged criminally for check fraud in Brazil
- Lied about losing four employees at the Pulse nightclub shooting
- Evicted multiple times
- Bounced between several failed business ventures over two years
- A person at the address where he is registered to vote said she is not familiar with him

Also, he lied about his grandparents being Ukrainian WWII refugees.

And he might be a citizen or gay

[Schiff for Senate]

Turns out the iceberg runs even deeper than we thought

LMAOO. I laughed the entire time I was reading this. It's beyond parody.

[Schiff for Senate]

Gays are persuasive liars, news at 11

At least 50-50 odds he lied about that too (though really we can't know for sure)

[Schiff for Senate]

Do we actually know if he’s gay? One would wonder why someone would lie about that, but the same is true for a lot of this other stuff. He’s gotten some attention for being the first Republican to be elected while out, maybe it was to make him stand out.

Unless he's a really good actor, the dude is gay.

Yeah he’s probably gay, but the dude successfully lied about every aspect of his life while an organization with millions in resources campaigned against him. He has some skills.

Where did he even come from in the first place? Could I become a GOP nominee for a house seat in a safe D district if I wanted to? Santos was running in a swing seat, how did someone with no actual credentials become the nominee.

Honestly if it's a district safe for the Democrats there's no reason for the GOP to scout for a candidate or look into them too closely (and vice-versa). For instance, in deep-red AR04, Democrats nominated John White, a guy who insists Biden lost in 2020 (and thinks no president since JFK has been legitimately elected).

What makes this a travesty is that it was never a Safe D seat, and this train wreck of a guy is actually a congressman-elect now.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Do we actually know if he’s gay? One would wonder why someone would lie about that, but the same is true for a lot of this other stuff. He’s gotten some attention for being the first Republican to be elected while out, maybe it was to make him stand out.

Unless he's a really good actor, the dude is gay.

Yeah he’s probably gay, but the dude successfully lied about every aspect of his life while an organization with millions in resources campaigned against him. He has some skills.

Where did he even come from in the first place? Could I become a GOP nominee for a house seat in a safe D district if I wanted to? Santos was running in a swing seat, how did someone with no actual credentials become the nominee.

Honestly if it's a district safe for the Democrats there's no reason for the GOP to scout for a candidate or look into them too closely (and vice-versa). For instance, in deep-red AR04, Democrats nominated John White, a guy who insists Biden lost in 2020 (and thinks no president since JFK has been legitimately elected).

What makes this a travesty is that it was never a Safe D seat, and this train wreck of a guy is actually a congressman-elect now.

Santos actually had a huge overperformance relative to 2020 Pres numbers (the district was Biden + , making this all the more frustrating. Srs, I can not understate how pissed I am at Hochul and NY Dems for dropping the ball on races like this.

[Schiff for Senate]

https://twitter.com/Santos4Congress/status/1605989365632614416

Key word there is "story."

[Schiff for Senate]

What sort of horrible opposition research did the dems do with this guy?

I think it's clear that they didn't. That's the problem. Clearly Zimmerman's campaign was so complacent they didn't do half-decent opposition research. Reminds me of this movie on Netflix where the police spend most of the movie looking for a missing girl before finding out right at the end that she'd died several years earlier. That's the level of incompetence and lack of research we're talking about here.

So, apparently Zimmerman did uncover a lot of this and tried to hit Santos with it, but the media refused to pick it up because they were more interested in puffing up a fictionalized crime wave *shrugs*.

I still 100% blame Zimmerman for not slamming Santos with this again and again and again. Had he done so properly there's no way it'd have been ignored no matter how "biased" the media may be. Sure maybe Fox wouldn't give it too much attention but the other stations would.

[Figueira]

ARREST HIM NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if he were black he would have already been thrown in jail

Do we know for sure he isn't Black?

He claims to be part Black in his biography, which means he probably isn't Black.

[Yoda]

Apparently he told coworkers that he was born in Brazil, so it's possible that he's not even a citizen: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/is-george-santos-a-us-citizen

We really need to secure our elections.

I was just going to ask if we even know if he's a citizen or not.

The biggest question though is how did he suddenly get rich? His "explanation" was unconvincing, to be kind. Broke call center employees don't "have connections", or else they wouldn't have been call center employees in the first place.

I'm assuming the unexplained wealth is Russian money until he provides proof otherwise. What did his "firm" do? What service did he provide? Who were his clients? What did he charge? I want to see invoices, receipts, contracts.

[GeorgiaModerate]

https://twitter.com/nicklalota/status/1607832712836009989

[Bernie Derangement Syndrome Haver]

Tulsi Gabbard just bodied Santos while guest hosting Tucker tonight.

Imagine that. Santos was too far even for a transparently self-serving grifter like Tulsi.

[Suburbia]

Jack Martins should run for the seat.

Congressman Martins.

[Pollster]

I still 100% blame Zimmerman for not slamming Santos with this again and again and again. Had he done so properly there's no way it'd have been ignored no matter how "biased" the media may be. Sure maybe Fox wouldn't give it too much attention but the other stations would.

It's unfortunately not that simple. Even if you have the money to go on air in the New York media market, you can't just say whatever you want about your opponent in an ad. Political ads are not journalism, campaigns and candidates are not journalists, and neither enjoy the legal protections that journalists and the press do - this opens both the candidate/campaign and the television station to libel charges (most TV station won't even run a straight attack ad that doesn't have sourcing or at least a backup document - research teams on campaigns and at firms/party orgs produce these) on top of the money lost (you still have to pay for the full airtime reservation if your ad is pulled) and likely future difficulty placing new ads since all of your content will face more intense scrutiny. This is true of nearly all communications platforms a candidate/campaign may have.

This is why campaigns/party committees go to great lengths, expend significant effort and resources, and have entire teams dedicated to landing press hits. Especially because oppo research is often not "clean" - it comes in bits and pieces from a variety of sources and needs to be made sense of before any story can be told - the journalistic aspect and process of verification, reaching out for additional comment, and then actually reporting is critical to the research being usable.

I'm personally doubtful Zimmerman's team actually had much of this, or at the very least, did not have enough to capture the full gravity (see my previous post about oppo increasingly being egregiously under-resourced) because I agree with you that I can't think of a single mainstream political reporter (especially Democrat-friendly) who wouldn't bite at this no matter what narrative they were preoccupied with.

[Pollster]

Tulsi Gabbard just bodied Santos while guest hosting Tucker tonight.

Imagine that. Santos was too far even for a transparently self-serving grifter like Tulsi.

If the institutional right-leaning media (Fox/NY Post/basically anything owned by NewsCorp) are doing this it seems like a pretty transparent sign that the Republican powers-that-be want him gone. My guess is they know where his money came from and can foresee the fallout. Don't be surprised if things move quickly almost immediately after he votes to make McCarthy speaker.