George Santos

…Are Santos’s lies, after all, any more far-fetched than Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him via a vast, undetected conspiracy? Are his lies about where he worked and went to school any more nefarious than the claim that Covid vaccines kill people, or that drag queens are scheming to molest children at public libraries?

“Perhaps Santos’s real sin is not in lying, but in telling the wrong lies. He didn’t regurgitate the same fabrications as the rest of his fellow Republicans – the ones about marginalized others. Instead, he merely lied about himself. And crucially, he lied about the one thing that seems to really matter to Republican leadership: he claimed to be a member of the monied elite, when he wasn’t…

“And indeed it’s hard not to suspect that there might be something wrong with the man, aside from the moral turpitude – a delusional tendency or break with reality that precipitated all these fictions. But it would be a mistake to think that George Santos’s pathologies are his alone. His lies are the product of a [Republican Party] that incentivizes dishonesty, punishes sincerity and is rife with opportunities for petty crooks...”

-Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist