The talk in Washington these days is all about George Santos. Eugene Robinson writes:
After initial reporting by the New York Times, journalists have discovered that, basically, Santos’s whole life story — as he sold it to voters — is a lie. He did not attend the exclusive Horace Mann Prep school in the Bronx, according to school officials. He did not graduate from Baruch College, as he had claimed. He did not climb the ladder of Wall Street success via Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, as he boasted. He is not “a proud American Jew,” as he wrote in a campaign document seeking support from pro-Israel groups, but instead considers himself “Jew-ish, as in ‘ish.’” Which apparently means not being Jewish at all.
Those are just a few of the acknowledged or apparent lies Santos told. He presented himself as the made-for-television incarnation of the vitality and diversity the Republican Party would like to project: a handsome gay Latino man, wealthy and self-made, whose very existence refuted the charge that today’s GOP shamelessly panders to racism and bigotry.
Most Republicans have had nothing to say about Santos. But some have spoken out:
One exception is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), who defended him with tweets acknowledging that Santos lied but accusing “the left” of lying, too, although most of the examples she cited were not lies at all. “The left said George Floyd didn’t die of a drug overdose, they lied,” she wrote. Fact check: Floyd was murdered, and a jury convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin of the crime.
Santos is just another in a line of better-educated con men:
In today’s GOP, a leading figure such as Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) — a cum laude graduate of Princeton University and a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School who clerked for Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist — routinely rails against smarty-pants “elites” who supposedly look down on regular folks like him.
Greene and others have shown that the way to prominence in the party is not through legislative or administrative accomplishments but via attention-grabbing displays of performative outrage. If you can “own the libs” on Fox News and on Twitter, you can raise a lot of campaign cash; and if you can raise tons of money, you can have tons of power. What does it matter if what you say has no grounding in fact? By the time you get called on it, you’re off to the next over-the-top statement.
For Republicans, it's not about the truth. It's about the money.
Image: CNBC
6 comments:
Why do you think Trump got involved in Republican politics? An experienced conman like him knows a grift when he sees it. The whole party is made up of people running scams, from leaders like Trump and McConnell right down to the true believers like pillow Nazi Lindell. By electing crypto-king Poilievre as leader, our own Cons show they're not far behind.
Cap
We're fools if we think we're immune from this kind of thing, Cap.
Part of the blame for this type of outrageous behaviour falls on the people that believes these grifters.
Before the internet, I was blissfully unaware that there are so many stupid people in this world.
Rather than a source of wisdom, Gordie, the internet has become a source of unbelievable human stupidity.
Its all about the money and the power it buys.
The Republicans may have known he was lying, but people didn't do their home work to check out his claims prior to the election. It was so convient it all came out after he was elected.
The internet is what we make it. Some of those conspiracy theorists are just faster at getting their "news" out there.
Although the internet has been used to spread rumours, lies, etc. it has also enabled people whose information we would never have known about, get out there.
Some of us aging baby boomers had Moms who told us, "don't believe everything you read in the newspaper".
That was good advice then, e.a.f. And it's good advice now.
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