Read my lips: Former Rep. George Santos is not a good person.
The former New York congressman’s entire backstory was fabricated. He didn’t graduate college. He didn’t work on Wall Street. His grandparents weren’t Holocaust survivors. He wasn’t Jewish — or even “Jew-ish,” to use his own cynically deceptive terminology for it.
None of this was discovered before he was elected to New York’s 3rd Congressional District in an upset during the 2022 midterms. Good job, local New York media. It was later reported by The New York Times — the paper that initially started raising questions about the man’s résumé after his victory — that state Republicans knew he was also a habitual liar but did nothing about it. Even better job, New York state GOP.
In two separate indictments issued in May and October of 2023, Santos was hit with 23 charges related to fraud. When those cases go to trial is anyone’s guess, and Santos had promised not to run in 2024, according to The Hill. Even if this were another one of his lies, he would have been soundly defeated in a primary by pretty much anyone who could credibly identify as a Republican.
Nevertheless, in December, the Republican-controlled House voted to expel Santos, making him the only elected representative get kicked out of the chamber without either being convicted of a crime or supporting the secession of the Confederate States of America.
On Tuesday night, we found out just how poor of an idea that was.
In a special election to fill Santos’ seat, Tom Suozzi — a well-known Long Island Democratic apparatchik who has held various offices for just over 30 years now — defeated Republican nominee Mazi Pilip, a relatively inexperienced candidate who is still a registered Democrat, according to ABC News, by a nearly 9-point margin.
With 93 percent of the votes in as of early Wednesday morning, the Times reported, Suozzi had 53.9 percent of the vote, compared to Pilip’s 46.1 percent.
As Reuters noted, he’d previously held the seat Santos took in 2022 before stepping down to mount an unsuccessful run for governor.
Was expelling George Santos a mistake?
“The win reduces House Speaker Mike Johnson’s majority to 219-213, making his job of managing an unruly caucus a bit more difficult,” Reuters noted. “His challenges were on full display last week, when the chamber failed to pass a measure to impeach President Joe Biden’s top border official, Alejandro Mayorkas, in an embarrassing setback.
“The House approved the measure in a second attempt on Tuesday, after No. 2 Republican Steve Scalise returned from cancer treatment to cast a decisive vote.”
In victory, Suozzi tried to paint himself as a moderate Democrat who would work with the GOP to fix America’s issues.
“The people of Queens and Long Island are sick and tired of political bickering,” he said. “They want us to come together and solve problems.”
However, Suozzi’s voting record on Ballotpedia during his last term in office evinces nothing of that kind of bipartisanship, with the Democrat voting for the White House’s proposed federal voting overhaul, all of its larded-up infrastructure bills and a law that would have enshrined a federal right to an abortion.
Santos is and was an awful individual. He was also an individual who was elected by 8 points by the people of the 3rd Congressional District, had not been convicted of a crime, and had a 100 percent voting scorecard from conservative think-tank the Heritage Foundation.
So, yeah — in addition to not exposing Santos before he stepped into a landmine of his own making and then proceeding to eject him from Congress when norms have typically dictated rebellion or criminal conviction are the two real requirements for expulsion, the House GOP has now narrowed its margin even further and has made any realistic, organized opposition to the Democrat-controlled White House or Senate that much harder.
Fantastic work on all fronts, really.
Would the Democrats do this? No, of course not — because they haven’t.
In October, Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for setting off a fire alarm in the Cannon Office Building of the Capitol complex. Bowman claimed it was an accident, but it had the effect of delaying a vote on a bill to keep the government funded — a vote Democrats were trying to stall. While he offered other explanations for his behavior, they were completely irrational and nonsensical. Was Bowman expelled? No.
In 2020, it was reported that Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell of California — who was a contender for the Democratic nomination for president at one point, may I add — was linked to a Chinese spy who was also known to foster romantic and/or sexual relationships with her targets in order to gain connections. He has repeatedly been given opportunities to deny he slept with said Chinese spy; he has refused to do so, which, you do the math.
Has Swalwell been expelled? No, and the Democrats threw an epileptic fit when then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy stripped Swalwell of his role on the House Intelligence Committee on the not-unreasonable grounds that someone who apparently lacked the sexual sophistication to avoid falling into a potential honeypot trap with a Beijing operative shouldn’t be receiving sensitive intel.
When Democrat Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut was found to have lied about his service in Vietnam — which was non-existent — was he expelled from Congress for stolen valor? Give me a break. He’s still there and he was exposed almost a decade and a half ago. The beat goes on, as they say.
Former President Donald Trump, in a Truth Social post, lambasted the decision to throw out Santos before his term was up and he was convicted.
He urged Republicans to have a better candidate in November when the seat will go before voters again as candidate seek a full term representing the district. Both Suozzi and Pilip have said they intend to run in November, according to NBC News.
“Republicans just don’t learn, but maybe she was still a Democrat? I have an almost 99% Endorsement Success Rate in Primaries, and a very good number in the General Elections, as well, but just watched this very foolish woman, Mazi Melesa Pilip, running in a race where she didn’t endorse me and tried to ‘straddle the fence,’ when she would have easily WON if she understood anything about MODERN DAY politics in America,” wrote Trump. (While Trump had scant involvement in the special election, The Hill noted that Pilip “kept Trump at an arm’s length” during the race.)
“MAGA, WHICH IS MOST OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, STAYED HOME – AND IT ALWAYS WILL, UNLESS IT IS TREATED WITH THE RESPECT THAT IT DESERVES,” he continued. “I STAYED OUT OF THE RACE, ‘I WANT TO BE LOVED!’ GIVE US A REAL CANDIDATE IN THE DISTRICT FOR NOVEMBER. SUOZZI, I KNOW HIM WELL, CAN BE EASILY BEATEN!”
Other Republicans and conservatives were similarly unimpressed with the decision:
So who still thinks Republicans helping Democrats kick out Santos was a good idea?
— Rep. Mike Collins (@RepMikeCollins) February 14, 2024
The Republican Party is a complete joke.
George Santos was by far the best voting record we were going to get for a Long Island representative.
We had a four-seat majority.
So what do we do?
Get rid of @MrSantosNY and shoot ourselves in the foot with a milquetoast candidate… pic.twitter.com/FWqgI7PKJK
— Joey Mannarino (@JoeyMannarinoUS) February 14, 2024
She’s a Democrat who refused help from Trump but promised to switch to be a Republican later. https://t.co/uUfHNVXdUt
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) February 14, 2024
The New York Republican Party ousted George Santos and then ran an unknown woman who struggles to speak English as a sacrificial lamb in the Special Election. The Democrats won easily.
It’s hard to put into words just how ridiculous the GOP can be.pic.twitter.com/BKUw9BDhSM
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) February 14, 2024
Here’s the thing:
George santos ONLY lied about his personal history.
Alejandro Mayorkas AND EVERY OTHER CURRENT DEMOCRAT lies about policy and national issues that affect us EVERY SINGLE DAMN DAY.
So if Santos had to go for lying, so should Schiff.
So should AOC.
So should…
— Lavern Spicer 🇺🇸 (@lavern_spicer) February 11, 2024
Even — sigh — George Santos got an opportunity to dunk on the people who kicked him out of office:
Hey Americans!
Please thank these two gems for losing a seat in the house today! pic.twitter.com/ePSG72Ht1N
— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) February 14, 2024
Those are New York Republican Reps. Anthony D’Esposito and Nick LaLota, who both voted to expel Santos, according to the Times.
Please make no mistake: I believe George Santos isn’t just a serial liar, he’s a serial liar by the rock-bottom-and-still-digging standards of Washington, D.C.
That being said, being a sociopathic fabulist isn’t a disqualification from office. He was elected once, he would never be elected again, and until he was tried and convicted of a crime in an American court of law he should have been subjected to the same standards Washington congressmen — especially Democrats — hold their own to.
He was an awful person who was a reliably conservative vote, but read that last part again: reliably conservative vote. The GOP couldn’t find anyone better than a Trump-ambivalent minor-leaguer who was a registered Democrat to run against the man who had previously held the seat and is a fixture in Long Island politics.
George Santos was a Republican self-own from beginning to end, and the only people who will have benefited from his premature expulsion from Congress are Democrats.
Good job, Republicans. Good job.
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