Serial liar George Santos is the politician Americans deserve

[BidenPresident]

Santos’s fellow New York Republicans are trying to distance themselves from the congressman, calling on him to resign in the hopes that it will help their own re-election chances. “He needs help,” said Jennifer DeSena, a local Republican official from Long Island. “This is not a normal person.” And indeed it’s hard not to suspect that there might be something wrong with the man, aside from the moral turpitude – a delusional tendency or break with reality that precipitated all these fictions.

But it would be a mistake to think that George Santos’s pathologies are his alone. His lies are the product of a political system that incentivizes dishonesty, punishes sincerity and is rife with opportunities for petty crooks. In that sense, Santos is the politician that we deserve.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/14/george-santos-politician-americans-deserve

 

[archives]

Hard to believe that no one in the GOP, the local GOP, ever screened or checked his background, he was running for Congress. Also why his Democrat opponent never campaigned on it

It is the age of Trump, the bar has been set low, to many, especially on the right, lying is an acceptable means to the end

 

[Guno צְבִי]

Concerns over Santos’ backstory were known prior to the election

When it became clearer that Santos had a chance at winning his New York district, people talked more about how his backstory didn’t add up, the source said.

There was trepidation among consultants, donors and other Republicans – including those in Washington – that what Santos was saying about himself wasn’t accurate and that his biography didn’t line up, the source said. There had also been an expectation that some kind of major story would drop in the press before the election, the source said. But that story never came.

Among potential donors, one person who went to a Santos fundraising event in March 2022 told CNN that he immediately could tell Santos was not being truthful. Santos, he said, boasted about his time at Goldman Sachs, promised to pressure China and planned to require the US to default on its debt to not pay China – something that anyone who worked in finance would know to be a catastrophic mistake.

A separate donor who now feels conned said he gave substantial amounts of money to Santos, who he felt came across as “maybe” an embellisher. “He seemed like a novice but I believed his heart was in the right place,” the source said.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/13/politics/george-santos-concerns-republicans/index.html