🇺🇸 The George Santos Saga

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📉 December 28, 2022: President Biden Job Approval: Approve 46, Disapprove 52 (Rasmussen Reports)

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📉 December 26, 2022: Direction of Country: Right Direction 37, Wrong Track 57 (Rasmussen Reports)

📉 December 21, 2022: President Biden Job Approval: Approve 39, Disapprove 55 (Reuters/Ipsos)

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POLITICS

The George Santos Saga

Last week, Congressional Representative-elect George Santos admitted he fabricated parts of his work and education background. After alluding to being of Jewish descent, Santos clarified he’s Roman Catholic.

Reporting from the Right: George Santos scandal brings renewed attention to Biden's fabrications (Fox News)

Reporting from the Left: Top Republicans remain silent over George Santos campaign lies (The Guardian)

From The Flag: Santos, a Republican, was elected to represent a Congressional district on Long Island, in New York. Here’s commentary from both sides.

LEFT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Mega Fibbing From Republicans in This MAGA Era

• Most people can’t imagine going to such lengths to invent a fake backstory, which highlights how depressing this is.

• In this era of Donald Trump, Republicans have embraced the leadership of a lying conman – leading to Santos.

• Santos' arrival in Washington, DC represents a test for the GOP: do they have any integrity?

“The Sad Tales of George Santos” David Brooks, New York Times Opinion: “What would it be like to be so ashamed of your life that you felt compelled to invent a new one? … Most of us take the actual events of our lives, including the failures and frailties, and we gradually construct coherent narratives about who we are. … George Santos, on the other hand, is a young man who apparently felt compelled to jettison much of his actual life and replace it with fantasy. … He claims he never described himself as Jewish, merely as adjacently ‘Jew-ish.’ A self-described gay man, he hid a yearslong heterosexual marriage that ended in 2019. All politicians — perhaps all human beings — embellish. But what Santos did goes beyond that. He fabricated a new persona, that of a meritocratic superman. … Imagine how much inadequacy you’d have to feel to go to all that trouble.”

“In George Santos, the GOP gets the representative-elect it deserves” Eugene Robinson, Washington Post Opinion: “He did not attend the exclusive Horace Mann Prep school in the Bronx… He did not graduate from Baruch College… (or) climb the ladder of Wall Street success… 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’… Which apparently means not being Jewish at all. … The most honest thing House Republicans could do… is welcome Santos with open arms. The party embarked on the path of make-believe politics long before Santos came onto the scene. … For me, the key moment came when Republicans decided not to write a platform for the 2020 presidential election… They pledged only to enact whatever policies President Donald Trump might propose, ceding their political philosophy to a man who, by Post count, told more than 30,000 lies during his four years in the White House.”

One more opinion piece from the Left: Rep.-elect George Santos poses a serious risk to the GOP Jill Filipovic, CNN Opinion

RIGHT-LEANING SENTIMENT

Lyin’ George Santos Does the GOP a Disservice

• Republicans are lowering themselves to Democrats’ level by tolerating Santos’ lies.

• Because Democratic politicians lie about their background with such regularity, many Republican voters shrug at this Santos story.

• GOP officials reportedly knew Santos was lying about his background but did nothing.

“Is George Santos Believable-ish?” Merrie Spaeth, Wall Street Journal Op-ed: “The most damaging part of Mr. Santos’s story is that national Republicans knew the details of his official biography were suspect and did nothing. Senior Republican staffers have told reporters that these falsehoods were widely known and became a running joke. Didn’t your mother tell you that you’re known by the company you keep? She was right. By letting these falsehoods fester, Republicans planted themselves in the path of distrust. Who can believe anything George Santos says? What does his word mean? Do Republicans want him as the emblem of their new generation? … Mr. Santos seems to believe that if he keeps repeating that Democrats like Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren lied too, and that he only ‘embellished’ his background and ‘made a mistake,’ it will crowd out the well-documented lies. … And that’s the real shame.”

“What Should Happen to George Santos?” Jim Geraghty, National Review: “It has become de rigueur among conservatives to point out that the Democrats are gargantuan hypocrites when it comes to a political figure’s lying about his background — and they are. … Tom Elliott listed all of the tall tales, sketchy claims, likely hallucinations, and outright lies offered by Joe Biden over the years… he was arrested during a civil rights march; he spent part of a summer working as a tractor-trailer driver; he was arrested while trying to meet Nelson Mandela… Liberals are tying themselves in knots to explain how Biden’s false stories are mere exaggerations, or instances of Grandpa’s getting confused, while Santos’s lies require an automatic expulsion from Congress. … One of the reasons that pathological liars are attracted to politics is because there are partisans who are very eager to forgive and shrug at ‘normal politician BS-ing.’ … Imagine if we had an honest president. In that case, would Republicans want George Santos to take the oath of office on January 3?”

One more opinion piece from the Right: GOP's George Santos Test A.B. Stoddard, Real Clear Politics

FLAG THIS

Liar, Liar – How Well Can You Tell?

Over the summer, YouGov asked respondents about lying: 40% said they were either “good or excellent” at telling when people are lying to their face.

A separate survey determined 20% consider themselves “good or excellent” at lying to people’s faces, although 38% said they were “poor or very poor” liars.

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