Everything George Santos (1 Viewer)

[MT15]

I think we need a new thread just about this guy. It seems like every day brings new awfulness.

 

[MT15]

Which is what the electoral college does. My vote means nothing here in Alabama.

I’m in the same boat. But times are a changin’. Not as fast where I live as elsewhere but you can see signs.

And as long as Rs keep doing shirt like this, the change will come, they try to control everything:

 

[MT15]

This is what McCarthy thinks is a few lies on a resume much like lots of people do:

 

[Saintman2884]

Santos is the future of the MAGA party. America will learn that the only requirement for admision to MAGA world is fealty to the party. It is even better if you have the entire Left-wing/communist Liberal media attacking you. You get to be a MAGA poster boy. You pledge to support McCarthy and you are so IN.. You mean tweet about Biden and get bonus MAGA points.

Santos has the same resume that Trump had, the ability to lie and just move on.

"Special Council John Durham will prove the crime of the century was committed by the FBI and DOJ against me" 2yrs and millions of dollars later, Durham got a conviction of one lawyer who got a small fine and probation and nothing elese except 2 not guilty verdicts.

"I paid million of dollars in taxes each year," Trump claimed during his presidental debate = LIE. He claimed to be a "fabulous" business man. His companies lost 10's of millions of dollars in the last 7 years. "I do not have any bank account in China!" LIE. Everything he touches fails and/or operates outside the law. His presidency got "stolen." LIE. Even his buddy Sean Hannity testified he never believed a word of it.

Jan 6th was peaceful. LIE . His company being convicted of 17 counts of felony tax fraud and Trump says the Distric Attorney is a leftist racist and the judge at his company's trial was a communist and the jury "all democrat operatives." LIE.

MAGA is a party dedicated to ingesting and processing lies into "destroy the woke" feed for the gullible, their media echo chamber and worshiping Sycophants. Santos will make a great foot soldier in the MAGA army of invention.

Santos has a similar resume to Trump in that he lies and most of his lies, with a little investigative work, are actually revealed to make him look silly, ridiculous, and pathetic by most as much as scorn and disgust. But whoever, however the type of family he grew up in, its very likely he didn't grow up the son of a multibillionaire real estate developer like Fred Trump.
He doesn't have the resources and doesn't come across as particularly too likable to get a large, political backing to rise further then above where he is now. Santos like about everything, not just about politics or his political opponents views, positions, or the Democratic Party thinks, in general.

GOP, right now are kind of looking for a candidate who's Trump, but without the negative baggage, the scary, frightening MAGA cult of personality thats been built up around him and the fact that Trump, like the Joker in the Dark Knight Rises, was someone the desperate leaders of the GOP back in 2015/16 turned to, that in their desperation, they didn't fully understand, and he turned on them as much as the rest of the nation and by the time, most sensible GOP politicians realized their mistake, they were too few, too marginalized, outmanuevered and too many retiring, like Sen. Jeff Flake or Arizona, to rectify it or prevent it. Ron Desantis is the guy who's best candidate to move on from Trump but he knows his best chance to win is in 2028, if he runs in 2024, Biden likely wins re-election and his reputation as a one-time Presidential loser gets hurt in any future RNC primaries. Once a loser, always a loser like John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012, respectively.

 

[cuddlemonkey]

 

[Saintman2884]

This idea you seem to have that states are either/or got me to thinking so I checked. Would you believe there are more registered Republicans in New York State than in Alabama? It’s true.

NY - 2.7 million registered Rs
AL - I couldn’t find data as easily so I looked up % registered R - 52%
and population over 18 - 3.3 million
Which equates to 1.7 million registered Rs.

Just thought that was interesting and shows how there are no “red” or “blue” states unless you’re willing to disenfranchise millions of people.

Millions of more people live in New York than Alabama, so the numbers likely would be bigger, plus, areas of New York State in Central and western New York, around Rochester, Buffalo, historically, have tended to be more socially and politically conservative than their eastern counterparts. For a long period of time, there was even a bit of a secessionist movement that wanted to break away from eastern New York state and form like a western New York State, similar to how mountainous, Unionist Western Virginia seceeded from the Confederacy in 1862 to form West Virginia during the Civil War.

 

[MT15]

Millions of more people live in New York than Alabama, so the numbers likely would be bigger, plus, areas of New York State in Central and western New York, around Rochester, Buffalo, historically, have tended to be more socially and politically conservative than their eastern counterparts. For a long period of time, there was even a bit of a secessionist movement that wanted to break away from eastern New York state and form like a western New York State, similar to how mountainous, Unionist Western Virginia seceeded from the Confederacy in 1862 to form West Virginia during the Civil War.

Yes, all true. But my point was that Farb shouldn’t be so dismissive of NY voters by saying they are all so progressive when it just isn’t true.

Also, the R majority in AL consists of only 52% of registered voters. It would appear from this that none of these states are as monolithic as everyone likes to believe they are.

It’s useful to remember this from time to time.

 

[superchuck500]

 

[MT15]

Yeah, I think we pretty much know he has changed his name. I mean you have to admire his commitment to the bit, lol.

 

[cuddlemonkey]

Yeah, I think we pretty much know he has changed his name. I mean you have to admire his commitment to the bit, lol.

Maybe he changed it because he thought Santos sounded more Jew-ish.

 

[Optimus Prime]

……..What could Santos possibly have to gain, for instance, by claiming, as he apparently did to a local Republican party leader, to have been a college volleyball champion?

Others are transparently self-serving, his attempts to cover them up so brazen as to be frankly hilarious.

On the campaign trail, running in the heavily Jewish third district of New York, on suburban Long Island, Santos claimed that he was “a member of the Jewish community”, and descended from Ukrainian refugees. When this turned out to be untrue, he later tried to claim that he merely meant that he was “Jew-ish”.

It was like a line from Seinfeld; punning, implausible, shameless. At times like this, it’s hard to take Santos’s dishonesty seriously. It seems less like an affront to the dignity of the democratic process and more like some kind of durational satire, a piece of performance art…….

He professed the identities that have been most easily demonized in the Republican imagination: he was supposed to be Jewish, a member of the group targeted by conspiratorial QAnon theories; he was supposed to be gay, a member of the group increasingly smeared on the right as pedophiles; he was supposed to be a Latino immigrant, a member of the group associated with dark fantasies in the white mind about demographic change and crime.

But at the same time, he was a Republican, a defender of these bigotries; his membership in the very groups his party worked against seemed to absolve his voters of complicity even as they indulged their bias.

The identities were not meant to be investments in the pluralism of our country, but moral shields, flimsy cover behind which attacks on those very groups could be launched.

And of course, there were the remarkable historical coincidences, the tendency of Santos to claim his own life intersected with moments of crisis for the American conscience.

He said that his grandparents – the supposedly Jewish ones – had been Holocaust survivors. He said that his mom had died in 9/11. He said that he had lost four employees at the Pulse massacre, the event where a gunman opened fire at an Orlando gay club.

It seems that he used this proximity to tragedy to some effect in his fundraising; among the several investigations into Santos, there is now one related to campaign expenditures, and the curious way that money seemed to disappear from his account in amounts just beneath the federal reporting threshold where a receipt would be required.

Santos, in this telling, had an uncanny, Forrest Gump-like biographical connection to these momentous historical moments, his own life changing at just the same moments that challenged the identity of the nation.

It’s not hard to see why this fiction appealed to Santos, and why it appealed to his voters. It made him into an avatar of America itself.

Maybe he is. Because with his boldness and deception, his shamelessness and alleged comfort with financial malfeasance, Santos, with all his lies, seems to reveal an uncomfortable truth about American politics, emphasizing what the politics writer John Ganz called “the reign of crime”.

Politicians, after all, lie all the time, and the Republican party in particular seems to have rapidly mainstreamed the use of fabulism, fraud and cheap scams that manipulate and extort the government, the public and the ruling elite.

Are Santos’s lies, after all, any more far-fetched than Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him via a vast, undetected conspiracy?

Are his lies about where he worked and went to school any more nefarious than the claim that Covid vaccines kill people, or that drag queens are scheming to molest children at public libraries?

Perhaps Santos’s real sin is not in lying, but in telling the wrong lies. He didn’t regurgitate the same fabrications as the rest of his fellow Republicans – the ones about marginalized others. Instead, he merely lied about himself. And crucially, he lied about the one thing that seems to really matter to Republican leadership: he claimed to be a member of the monied elite, when he wasn’t……

Serial liar George Santos is the politician Americans deserve | Moira Donegan

The congressman’s many lies are the product of a political system that incentivizes dishonesty and punishes sincerity

www.theguardian.com

 

[Farb]

Which is what the electoral college does. My vote means nothing here in Alabama.

Thank the Lord for that!

 

[Saintman2884]

……..What could Santos possibly have to gain, for instance, by claiming, as he apparently did to a local Republican party leader, to have been a college volleyball champion?

Others are transparently self-serving, his attempts to cover them up so brazen as to be frankly hilarious.

On the campaign trail, running in the heavily Jewish third district of New York, on suburban Long Island, Santos claimed that he was “a member of the Jewish community”, and descended from Ukrainian refugees. When this turned out to be untrue, he later tried to claim that he merely meant that he was “Jew-ish”.

It was like a line from Seinfeld; punning, implausible, shameless. At times like this, it’s hard to take Santos’s dishonesty seriously. It seems less like an affront to the dignity of the democratic process and more like some kind of durational satire, a piece of performance art…….

He professed the identities that have been most easily demonized in the Republican imagination: he was supposed to be Jewish, a member of the group targeted by conspiratorial QAnon theories; he was supposed to be gay, a member of the group increasingly smeared on the right as pedophiles; he was supposed to be a Latino immigrant, a member of the group associated with dark fantasies in the white mind about demographic change and crime.

But at the same time, he was a Republican, a defender of these bigotries; his membership in the very groups his party worked against seemed to absolve his voters of complicity even as they indulged their bias.

The identities were not meant to be investments in the pluralism of our country, but moral shields, flimsy cover behind which attacks on those very groups could be launched.

And of course, there were the remarkable historical coincidences, the tendency of Santos to claim his own life intersected with moments of crisis for the American conscience.

He said that his grandparents – the supposedly Jewish ones – had been Holocaust survivors. He said that his mom had died in 9/11. He said that he had lost four employees at the Pulse massacre, the event where a gunman opened fire at an Orlando gay club.

It seems that he used this proximity to tragedy to some effect in his fundraising; among the several investigations into Santos, there is now one related to campaign expenditures, and the curious way that money seemed to disappear from his account in amounts just beneath the federal reporting threshold where a receipt would be required.

Santos, in this telling, had an uncanny, Forrest Gump-like biographical connection to these momentous historical moments, his own life changing at just the same moments that challenged the identity of the nation.

It’s not hard to see why this fiction appealed to Santos, and why it appealed to his voters. It made him into an avatar of America itself.

Maybe he is. Because with his boldness and deception, his shamelessness and alleged comfort with financial malfeasance, Santos, with all his lies, seems to reveal an uncomfortable truth about American politics, emphasizing what the politics writer John Ganz called “the reign of crime”.

Politicians, after all, lie all the time, and the Republican party in particular seems to have rapidly mainstreamed the use of fabulism, fraud and cheap scams that manipulate and extort the government, the public and the ruling elite.

Are Santos’s lies, after all, any more far-fetched than Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him via a vast, undetected conspiracy?

Are his lies about where he worked and went to school any more nefarious than the claim that Covid vaccines kill people, or that drag queens are scheming to molest children at public libraries?

Perhaps Santos’s real sin is not in lying, but in telling the wrong lies. He didn’t regurgitate the same fabrications as the rest of his fellow Republicans – the ones about marginalized others. Instead, he merely lied about himself. And crucially, he lied about the one thing that seems to really matter to Republican leadership: he claimed to be a member of the monied elite, when he wasn’t……

Serial liar George Santos is the politician Americans deserve | Moira Donegan

The congressman’s many lies are the product of a political system that incentivizes dishonesty and punishes sincerity

www.theguardian.com

Honestly, and not try to make this a "both-sides" argument, but Republicans aren't the only ones in D.C. lying, telling half-truths, or distortions or exaggerations about themselves, their own party, or about the opposing party, its been that way for decades, perhaps, its always existed in some form, matter or another. Oh, sure one side may be a whole lot worse, but this Guardian's writer's tone sounds a bit too, priggish, wanting or expecting some scenario where a modicum of corruption, dishonesty, graft, misappropriation of public funds, extortion, power politics doesn't always get in the way, even a little of the time. it sounds a bit unrealistic, to me. Its not the way the world works, or has ever worked.

 

[MT15]

Honestly, and not try to make this a "both-sides" argument, but Republicans aren't the only ones in D.C. lying, telling half-truths, or distortions or exaggerations about themselves, their own party, or about the opposing party, its been that way for decades, perhaps, its always existed in some form, matter or another. Oh, sure one side may be a whole lot worse, but this Guardian's writer's tone sounds a bit too, priggish, wanting or expecting some scenario where a modicum of corruption, dishonesty, graft, misappropriation of public funds, extortion, power politics doesn't always get in the way, even a little of the time. it sounds a bit unrealistic, to me. Its not the way the world works, or has ever worked.

George Santos, and Trump for that matter, are not your run-of-the-mill political liars. They are pathological, unwell, possibly sociopaths. We can’t keep pretending they are not mentally ill.

 

[cuddlemonkey]

Honestly, and not try to make this a "both-sides" argument, but Republicans aren't the only ones in D.C. lying, telling half-truths, or distortions or exaggerations about themselves, their own party, or about the opposing party, its been that way for decades, perhaps, its always existed in some form, matter or another. Oh, sure one side may be a whole lot worse, but this Guardian's writer's tone sounds a bit too, priggish, wanting or expecting some scenario where a modicum of corruption, dishonesty, graft, misappropriation of public funds, extortion, power politics doesn't always get in the way, even a little of the time. it sounds a bit unrealistic, to me. Its not the way the world works, or has ever worked.

Anytime a short statement is followed by a but, the short statement is immediately disproven. It's like saying "I'm sorry, but," completely negates the apology part of the apology.

 

[Optimus Prime]

I’m sure this would be Comer’s opinion if a Democrat had done the exact same thing
===============================


The New York Republican congressman George Santos, whose résumé has been shown to be largely fictional and whose campaign finances are the subject of increasing scrutiny, is a “bad guy” who has done “really bad” things but should not be forced to resign, the new House oversight committee chair said on Sunday.

James Comer of Kentucky appeared on CNN’s State of the Union. He was asked if Santos should quit.

He said: “He’s a bad guy. This is something that you know, it’s really bad … but look, George Santos was a duly elected by the people. He’s going to be … examined thoroughly. It’s his decision whether or not he should resign.”

Saying Santos was “not the first politician unfortunately to be in Congress to lie”, Comer aimed a barb at Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts whose claim of Native American ancestry was widely questioned………

George Santos a ‘bad guy’ who did ‘bad things’ but should not be forced out, top Republican says

New York congressman’s résumé is largely fiction and campaign finance questions abide but support is vital for speaker McCarthy

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

Two former roommates of New York Republican Representative George Santos have claimed that he stole expensive items from them when they lived together in Queens in 2020.

Gregory Morey-Parker and Yasser Rabello texted each other about the things they believed the scandal-plagued congressman to have stolen, such as a $520 Burberry scarf and a $500 Armani shirt, according to Insider.

In the texts obtained by local news site Patch, they call Mr Santos “Anthony”. It’s been previously reported that Mr Santos has gone by the name Anthony Devolder.

Mr Morey-Parker told Patch that when he saw Mr Santos speak at a “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington DC on 5 January 2021, the day before the Capital attack, he was certain that he was wearing his camel check scarf..............

Former roommates come forward with new allegations against George Santos

 

[Optimus Prime]

George Santos, the freshman Republican congressman from New York who lied about his biography, has deeper ties than previously known to a businessman who cultivated close links with a onetime Trump confidant and who is the cousin of a sanctioned Russian oligarch, according to video footage and court documents.

Andrew Intrater and his wife each gave the maximum $5,800 to Santos’ main campaign committee and tens of thousands more since 2020 to committees linked to him, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. Intrater’s cousin is Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in the Russian energy industry.

The relationship between Santos and Intrater goes beyond campaign contributions, according to a statement made privately by Santos in 2020 and a court filing the following year in a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against a Florida-based investment firm, Harbor City Capital, where Santos worked for more than a year.

Taken together, the evidence suggests Santos may have had a business relationship with Intrater as Santos was first entering politics in 2020. It also shows, according to the SEC filing, that Intrater put hundreds of thousands of dollars into Santos’ onetime employer, Harbor City, which was accused by regulators of running a Ponzi scheme. Neither Santos nor Intrater responded to requests for comment. Attorneys who have represented Intrater also did not respond.

The congressman, whose election from Long Island last year helped the GOP secure its narrow House majority, has apologized for what he called “résumé embellishment” while rebuffing calls for his resignation. He is under scrutiny by prosecutors in New York and Rio de Janeiro.

Ties between Santos, 34, and Intrater, 60, reflect the ways Santos found personal and political support on his path to public office.

While Intrater is a U.S. citizen, his company, the investment firm Columbus Nova, has historically had extensive ties to the business interests of his Russian cousin. As recently as 2018, when Vekselberg was sanctioned by the Treasury Department, his conglomerate was Columbus Nova’s largest client, the company confirmed to The Post that year.

Intrater’s interactions in 2016 and 2017 with Michael Cohen, who at the time was working as a lawyer for Donald Trump, were probed during special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links between Trump and the Kremlin.

Intrater’s company paid the lawyer and self-described Trump fixer to identify deals for his business, and court records show they exchanged hundreds of texts and phone calls. Neither Intrater nor Vekselberg was accused of wrongdoing in Mueller’s investigation...........

MSN

www.msn.com

 

[Saintman2884]

Anytime a short statement is followed by a but, the short statement is immediately disproven. It's like saying "I'm sorry, but," completely negates the apology part of the apology.

I'm saying D.C. is full of liars and soulless, completely amoral yet driven political opportunists, corporate lobbyists, unelected agency heads or government civil servants that dictate or influence mainstream policymaking that we never see, hear, or know much about. It's the reality part of the apology.

Santos and Trump are the more radical, sociopathic extreme but they give it away so easily, the most and probable dangerous ones are those who are more cunning, intelligent, skillful and manipulative in their ability to sway public opinion and favorable policies to an extent that their willing to play the long game.