On with Kara Swisher - Stay Tuned with Preet: The Many Lies of George Santos

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

On is off for the holidays, so today we have an episode of friend-of-the-pod Preet Bharara's podcast Stay Tuned with Preet. In this episode, Preet is joined by author Mark Chiusano for a deep dive on our favorite (or least favorite) Washington fabulist: George Santos. Mark Chiusano is the author of The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos. He joins Preet to discuss Santos’s lifetime of lies, and what his ascension to power says about our political system. On will be back with a fresh episode on January 4, 2024. Listen to Stay Tuned with Preet every Monday and Thursday: https://link.chtbl.com/staytuned Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, everyone. We hope you're having a good break and a great end to your year. The On Team is off, so we wanted to play you an episode from a colleague and friend, Preet Bharara's podcast, Stay Tuned. Here he is in conversation with author Mark Chisano, taking stock of George Santos and why there's so much grift in politics. From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned in Brief. I'm Preet Bharara. George Santos' time in Congress came to an end on December 1st, after he was expelled over ethics violations. Santos still faces 23 charges in federal court, including for wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering.

in federal court, including for wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering. As we all now know, he has lied over and over and over again about, well, everything. In a new book called The Fabulist, The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos, Arthur Mark Chiasano does a deep dive on Santos and the life he built on lies. This didn't just start when he eyed a bid for the U.S. Congress. It's been a lifelong habit. So why does he lie? And what does Santos' election to such a powerful position say about our political system? Mark joins me to talk about his reporting and the stories about George Santos he uncovered along the way. Mark, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. So I guess my first question is, and maybe it's an obvious answer, what drew you to this story such that you decided to spend all the time and energy it takes to write a book?

You know, Santos was always kind of a strange figure. And I sort of encountered him in 2019 when I was writing for Newsday, and I was just doing kind of a very short little intro on him for our newsletter. And, you know, even in that first conversation, things were weird. He said that he was launching his campaign that very day, but he was actually in Florida at the time on business. It's a very strange thing to be doing if you're running for a New York seat, right? And, you know, he said his filings were about to come on online, but they weren't there yet. So, you know, we had all these questions. And I wrote about him here and there, you know, over the next few years, and he kept doing weird things. So always interested in him

as a figure. But even after kind of everything about him came out and he was fully exposed as a liar, I wasn't sure that this was a sort of story with staying power until he gets actually, you know, put in his seat in Congress and isn't pushed out. Right. And then I thought, oh, you know, something different is going on here that this guy who's been lying and scheming to this level is staying in Congress and isn't able to be pushed out. That's saying something different about American politics. It's interesting you say it's saying something different about American politics when the subtitle of your book is The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos. So is he different or is he very American in a certain

tradition of lying? I think he's a very American figure. I think he is bringing a very old strain of a very old American tradition into the social media era of American politics. He, you know, he's different from other sort of politicians who've gotten into trouble for one reason or another, I think, because he kind of does everything at an 11. You know, it's not just that he makes up every single thing about himself. Yeah, it's not a white lie. It's also not, you know, a single lie. You know, I write in the book about Douglas Stringfellow, right, who is a post-war member of Congress, lied about his World War II record. Pretty quickly, that gets found out while he's running for re-election, and then he bows out, and he's kind of never heard from again. This is sort of like the opposite of the George Santos story.

You know, first of all, that he brazen through. And also that it's just like it's not one thing. It's not just a volleyball. Did you use brazen as a verb? I love that. Yeah, I think. I don't know. Am I allowed?

Is that all right? I don't know. I'm going to have to look at he brazen through. I mean, you know, the other one that is pretty direct. The other way I've been thinking about it is that he kind of keeps posting through to, you know, to use the social media term. So just to remind folks, we've been taking it as a given that people are aware of the demonstrably proven lies that George Santos has told. Could you give us just a rundown of the things we've heard in the press even before the vote in Congress that he's known for lying about? Totally.

One of the big ones is college degrees, right? He has admitted himself that he didn't go to college, didn't complete college. He has also lied about having grandparents that fled the Holocaust. He has this kind of zany story about playing volleyball in college and being a championship volleyball player. He wasn't. He also has talked about being a media person that he worked at Globo, which was kind of a big media outfit in Brazil. That wasn't true either. It's just kind of one thing after another with him.

It's very hard to find the truth. thing after another with him. It's very hard to find the truth. I'm so confused about how he got elected and what kind of failings there have been in our system, as I said in the intro. Was there no vetting? I mean, if this person had been selected to be a cabinet official or even a U.S. attorney or a district court judge, the vetting process would have found out about many, many of these lies. In the ordinary course, I guess, there's no formal vetting agency for political candidates, nor should there be, but usually it's the press. So let me put to you the question I asked in the intro. What does it say about our system that he was able to get elected, notwithstanding his body of mendacity? I think that what's interesting about Santos is that he has so

many kind of things wrong with him, has told so many lies that there actually were a lot of questions raised about him before the campaign, you know, during his two campaigns. I was writing about some of these kind of sketchy things that he had going on in his story. The Daily Beast did some really good stuff about his employment history, North Shore Leader, you know, there were sort of things out there. And even the, um, DCCC, the, uh, campaign arm of the Democrats that is kind of supposed to look into these things, uh, for, for their candidates. Yeah. Whoever was responsible for oppo research, whoever was responsible for oppo research on

George Santos, and maybe it's what I know, so I don't mean to cast aspersions, but boy, shouldn't they be taking a second look at their protocols? So it's an interesting thing because I agree with you. They missed a lot. And I write in the book about how, for example, like one very easy one was the colleges. And that is something that you can call and colleges will typically tell you, right? So that was a big miss. But they caught a ton of things. They found a lot of weird things about him.

For example, his kind of sketchy pet nonprofit, which it turned out wasn't registered. And that was like the beginning of the great finds that the New York Times had that sort of showed how kind of sketchy his background was. They found a lot of things. The problem was that all these people that were kind of poking into Santos before he was elected didn't connect the dots, didn't say, oh, everything about this guy is wrong. It's not just that like five or six things are wrong. And that is why we have George Santos. Correct me if I'm wrong, but do you have a psychology degree? I do not. No. Do you feel like, well, the reason I'm asking, because it seems like this is not

so much a political story or a pop culture story. It's kind of a psychology story. Have you learned anything in the writing of the book about George Santos' mental state and whether he can be classified as having some kind of disorder? Or is he just a dude who lies? I did. I mean, you know, and we're sort of careful about armchair diagnosis these days, which I think is right, you know. So I'm going to offer an armchair diagnosis with the caveat that obviously I've not diagnosed him. With the caveat that obviously I've not diagnosed him. But one sort of one thing that people have pointed me to in the mental health world is something called pseudologia fantastica, which is basically the idea that someone might actually believe their own very lurid lies.

Something that is, you know, goes beyond something that you tell, a lie you tell for personal gain, mere personal gain. You know, it's sort of bigger than that. It's about heroism, something huge. It's often people talk, you know, make up stories about their war records, for example. And I do think there's something like that sometimes going on with Santos. You know, I, it's funny. I, there's so many lies and I hear a new one every day, literally this morning. Since writing the book? That's true. Yeah, exactly. Someone called me today, a person who had been trying to reach and hadn't been able to, knew Santos on the campaign trail. And he told me this great story about how he was kind of friendly with Santos. Santos was very nice to his kids and then comes over for dinner one night and is just claiming that he knows a person that this individual was mentioning, you know, like an acquaintance of this individual. And Santos is saying, yeah, no, totally.

I know them. I'm connected to them. I'm fully, fully aware. And he absolutely wasn't. You know, there was just no way he knew this random guy. And the person who's calling me is saying like, I pressed Santos. I sort of said, I know you're lying.

Why can't you just admit it? And he just refused. So you and your book go back in time to George Santos's childhood and you even make mention of his own mother's observation. Can you talk about what this sort of long arc in history of his lying has been? Yeah. This has been a pattern with him. I think he's a man who's full of patterns. He's been kind of grifting for a long time. This was not something he started doing when he ran for Congress. And the lies were there early on as well.

Well, I was told this wonderful line that his mother said, the way his mother described his lying, I think sort of says a lot about what he was doing. She said, you know, when confronted with the lie, she said something like, oh, Anthony and his stories, you know, his stories. And I do think that's kind of what they are. They're not just mini little quick lies that you misspeak and then you kind of keep going with it because you're embarrassed. They're very elaborate, lurid stories. So there's another guy on the political scene who lies a lot, not quite in the same vein, but his name is Donald Trump and he's been proven to have lied again and again and again. Is there any relatedness between George Santos' aversion to the truth and the way Donald Trump misstates the truth? Or are they different? I think there is.

There's one obvious similarity, which is that Santos himself models himself after Trump. You probably recognize it. Listeners recognize, you know, his speech patterns are kind of similar. Somebody started throwing around five million. I didn't say five million. Somebody said five million. I didn't say 5 million. Somebody said 5 million. I think it might have been the Harvard report. There was a report from Harvard. Actually, studies point that most people lie on their resumes. It's just,

unfortunately, it's the reality. Yeah, but you lied about everything. Well, not true, right? You lied about your mom. Not true either, but again, I never said my mother died on 9-11. I never said that. That was never said. He types the same way. He even kind of steals the memes that Trump uses sometimes for social media. He was kind of following Trump around during his early campaigns.

He would try to see him, see sort of the extended members of the Trump universe when they cycled through Queens. He would film them and learn from them, I think. So he is sort of looking directly at Trump and seeing how he can pattern himself after Trump. I also think that Trump kind of left some space for Santos, right? That these lies existed, that someone who was demonstrably lying and didn't face much, you know, much accountability for it. I think that that kind of showed Santos, oh, I might be able to get away with this. But what's funny is Santos didn't model himself after Trump, you know, as an initial matter, because as you said, he's been lying and telling these Anthony stories from childhood. So did he

remake himself in some way when he decided to become a political figure and after Trump came on the scene? Did he use Trump as a convenient sort of parallel for himself? Because his lying precedes the rise of Trump lying. I think that he has used the Trump bombast in a way. That was a slightly different tone of lying maybe than what he was doing earlier. But I also think that he was always pretty conservative, I would say. Family members kind of indicated as much to me, friends who knew him early on. But he really kind of embraced some of the kind of MAGA positions, I guess, once Trump came on the scene and once politics became sort of the place to be in American culture. You said something interesting

recently, sort of bearing on this theme, quote, what's interesting to me is the Santos story shows that even a regular person can be lying and shameless and get to office. And that is in some senses almost scarier than someone like Trump being able to do it. End quote. What did you mean by that? Well, I think it's not that surprising if we step back a little and say, you know, how did Trump get to office, right? Sure. He was not qualified in the way that previous presidents have been, but he was well known around the country, right? He is a household name. He has this TV show. He doesn't have as much money as he says he had, but he has a decent amount of money, right? He

can kind of, he knows people who he can call to get more money as well. George Santos had none of these things, right? He had very, very little going for him. And yet he was able to kind of warm his way into the political system, by the way, also often by saying that he had money and by kind of making connections in the financial world. And I think that is a little bit different than the Trump case, because Trump is not really replicable. You know, it's a little hard to run the Trump playbook without being Trump, but if George Santos can do it, that means others can as well. Is George Santos replicable?

George Santos is truly, truly one of a kind in terms of like a character. I think, you know, I just think that people would get tired doing all the lies that he does. You know, I don't think you could sort of say, I'm going to be George Santos today. Does he have any legacy? Like What's the legacy of George Santos or his ordeal and his expulsion? I wonder if people look at him and say, wow, I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did. You know, I feel like right now we're sort of saying, well, at least he got pushed out of Congress. That sends a message. But it was a long time. Yeah. Well, that's a great question. I'm glad you raised it. I mean, was it possible that he could have survived this vote or was it inevitable once the ethics committee came up with its conclusions, even in the face of this indictment?

I think it was possible. You know, I was sort of reporting on the, you know, the like kind of little bit of the vote count that morning. And it was not very clear that there were going to be enough votes to expel him. Republican leadership totally went the other direction, right, to protect him. And that was after this pretty, pretty wild House Ethics Committee report, right, which had a lot more information. To be charitable to the Republicans on this, was that almost exclusively because of the narrow margin that they have in the House that they can't afford to lose even a crazy sociopathic liar? Right. So I guess what they would say is that it was a question of precedent, right? And you don't want to push someone out before convicting them. However, I think that the committee report really makes that argument

problematic. Because those were conclusions, not allegations at that point. They were conclusions, and they were conclusions based on bank records, right? This is not sort of just interviews that someone did. Yeah, I don't think it's crazy to have voted against the expulsion of George Santos after the indictment, because we have the presumption and, you know, there's a sitting United States Senator of the other party who has been indicted on federal charges and he has not been expelled. So I get that. And obviously many members must have felt the same because there were two votes where they're not. Yeah. Both sides of the aisle too. Yeah. This was not, this was a bit before the, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so there were a couple

of votes that failed. This one succeeded. What do you make of the discussion, because I have a hard time with this, already speculation about what George Santos' second act might be and why should he have a second act? Or should everyone have a second act? Well, it's a free country, right? And he's already, you know, incredibly, he's doing his second act already with Cameo,

apparently making a lot of money off it. I feel a little nervous that I may have incepted a second act into his head by someone asked me this question and I said Dancing with the Stars. And then another reporter told him that I said that. And he at first said, no, no, no, certainly not. But then he thinks about it and says, no, no, certainly not. But then he thinks about it and says, well, if I need the money. So now I think that's in his head and he's looking at that as well. You know, I feel like we have to remember how serious his legal challenges are, right? This is not a period that's going to last forever. So I think his second act will have to wait until after his court date, right?

His trial, if he gets that far. Do you think people maybe didn't take this as seriously as they might have? This is just a theory on my part. And, you know, I don't know what you'll think of this. Because the guy kind of presents so comically. In the first place, you mean? Like when he was running or after? Well, even after.

I mean, he's, I don't quite know how to characterize it. He doesn't cut a scary figure, right? There's something kind of totally totally about it. It's sort of, he's kind of comes across like a silly man. Does that, did that mitigate the level of feeling and anger about someone elected to Congress who lied so much? I think that's definitely right. There was this perception that, you know, somewhat victimless crimes. I would push against that, right? Because I write in the book about some victims. Right.

Because the lies were so outlandish, and it does reach the point of farce sometimes, right? It was farcical. And he has a sort of, he's a very charismatic man and it's a fun story. You know, I mean, I wrote in the book about how he's in Brazil participating in a beauty pageant, you know, this is kind of the style of stuff that he's interested in. So that's a lot of fun. But, you know, and I wrote a piece about this a few weeks ago, while he was in Congress, he was continuing to do some sort of zany things that are different when you're in Congress versus when you're just a member of the public.

He would go on X Spaces, which is this audio platform, and say some of the wildest things, like saying that we should move into a police state in the U.S. after the Hamas invasion of Israel, you know, go door to door in this very vague way. These are things that are, I think, a piece of his, they're kind of part and parcel with his lying. And those things are not so fun. You know, it's not such a joke. Did you learn something about human nature in the course of writing this book? I think that it is harder to find out that someone's lying than I thought it was in the first place. We all think we're really good judges of liars, and I think that we're kind of not. so many people who sort of said that they wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, you know,

even after that they found out he was lying. It's just, we can't believe that someone is going to keep lying to us over and over and over again. Mark Giussano, the book is The Fabulous, The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing, and Very American Legend of George Santos. Thanks for spending some time with us today. Thanks for having me. very American legend of George Santos. Thanks for spending some time with us today. Thanks for having me. For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines, become a member of the Cafe Insider.

Members get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I host with former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com slash insider to sign up for a trial. That's cafe.com slash insider to sign up for a trial. That's cafe.com slash insider. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at Preet Bharara with the hashtag AskPreet. You can also now reach me on threads, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That's

669-24-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters at cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tadishore. The editorial producer is Noah Ozolai. And the Cafe team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Jake Kaplan, Nat Wiener, and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I'm your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.