WASHINGTON ― Perhaps George Santos’ real problem is that he’s very objective.
When the newly elected New York congressman faced calls from some of his own party to resign after the revelations that fabricated many life stories in his campaign, a fellow New York Republican seven years earlier ran in an even bigger raft of lies. Voters made him president.
Donald Trump lied about how much money he had, the size of his plane, the number of floors in his building, whether he was still in the order steak business, even his own height.
He was rewarded with the White House, where he set a new record for falsehoods, which ended with the “big lie” about the 2020 election that was stolen from him, which later became the basis for the coup attempt on January 6, 2021. to stay in power.
So why the fixation on Santos’ lies now, compared to the relative pass Trump got?
“Triage,” explained former Republican consultant Mac Stipanovich, who left the party because of Trump. “Among the ongoing outrage is Trump’s stock and trade, from undisguised and repeated racism to admitting sexual assault and endemic misogyny to blaming legitimate heroes and attacking their families in your name, biographical fiction is small beer.
“In the case of Santos,” he added, “it’s just beer on tap.”
Indeed, the fabric of Santos’ fabric is extraordinary for an elected politician. He has lied about the college he attended, about getting a knee replacement after playing competitive volleyball, about working at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs (and having been very successful at both), about losing four employees in the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Florida and even about being Jewish.
But he remains in the minor leagues compared to the lies the party’s last president told about his own life story.
Trump lied about the size of his private jet, claiming it was bigger than the 747 the president usually uses as Air Force One. He lied about having model girlfriend Carla Bruni and was pursued by Madonna.
He lied about the British royal wanting to buy an apartment in Trump Tower in Manhattan. And he lied about how many floors the building had, calling the building 68 floors, even though there were only 57 (floors 6 to 13 were missing, and so were 27 to 29).
He lied about his own identity, calling reporters with names he made up to spread fake news about Trump. He lied about his height, claiming for decades to be 6 feet, 3 inches, even though photos of him next to 6-foot-3 Jeb Bush and 6-foot-2 Justin Trudeau show him to be shorter, even with his shoes on. 2-inch lift.
Then, when he entered politics in 2011 with hints that he would run for president in 2012, he was not only the top spreader of the racist lie that Democrat Barack Obama was born abroad and was therefore ineligible for the presidency, he was also lavishly decorated. , claimed he had sent a team of investigators to Hawaii and “they couldn’t believe what they found.”
In fact, as Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen admitted later, no investigators were sent to Hawaii (Obama’s birthplace) or anywhere else. Trump just made it.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images
Eventually even Republican rivals who generally left Trump alone as they attacked each other began to criticize Trump for his dishonesty.
“This man is a pathological liar; he does not know the difference between the truth and a lie,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), whose father has been accused by Trump of complicity in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. “Whatever lie he told, he believed it.”
Trump’s biggest lie of all, though, is the basis for his popularity with many voters: that he is brilliant, a self-made billionaire entrepreneur, worth, as the campaign claimed in the 2015 press release in all capital letters, TEN BILLION DOLLARS.
In fact, he’s only played a self-made billionaire on TV, as the host of NBC’s “The Apprentice.” His wealth came from taking over his father’s real estate business when he was still in his 20s, not, as he claimed, from a “small” loan from him that he later repaid.
His true net worth is a small fraction of what he claims. In a 2007 deposition, in fact, he admitted that his net worth fluctuated depending on his daily mood rather than a fair market valuation.
Indeed, a 2015 National Journal analysis found that if Trump had invested his father’s money in an S&P 500 index fund 50 years ago instead of actively running his own business, he would have been richer.
Despite the story and anyone doubting the myth of Trump’s origin, however, none of it has penetrated with voters, especially Republicans, most of whom continue to believe that Trump is a great businessman.
“‘The Apprentice’ and his longstanding notoriety have helped him,” said George Conway, a lawyer who supported Trump in 2016, but quickly saw him as a danger to the country. “It creates a preconceived image of him that sticks in the public mind.”
Sarah Longwell, a Republican pollster and consultant who also opposed Trump from the beginning, said the aggressive coverage of Santos’ lies compared to the focus on Trump may be because Santos was not popular from the start.
“Maybe the media is embarrassed because they missed the Santos story. Or maybe it’s because Santos is not a celebrity,” he said. “‘When you’re a celebrity, they let you do it’ is one of the truest things Trump said,” he added, referring to Trump’s claim about the “Access Hollywood” tapes that women let him touch their genitals.
Another major factor, Stipanovich said, is the news media’s vested interest in exploiting Trump for entertainment value. The cable network famously showed Trump’s empty rally stage before his appearance, and CBS chief Les Moonves even said: “Maybe it’s not good for America, but it’s good for CBS.”
Stipanovich said the same motive appears to be present in all the coverage of Santos, who ended up being only a member of the House of Representatives, not a presidential candidate. “He’s a useful tool for Democrats and the media to drag down Republicans, no matter where there’s a seat at stake in the House where the Republican majority is slim.”