Why it kind of feels like George Santos is winning

By any objective measure, these are grim times for Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y. After a damning House Ethics Committee investigation found evidence of wildly inappropriate campaign spending, he promised he wouldn’t run for re-election in 2024. More and more of his Republican colleagues are angling to expel him from Congress in the week after Thanksgiving. Over it all hangs his September court date in a 23-count federal indictment. 

So why does it sometimes feel like the lying congressman from New York may still end up a winner? Or, at least, as much of one as he ever could have imagined? 

Looked at from a certain angle, Santos isn’t just an indicted politician on the cusp of disaster. He’s a star. His antics have made him a frequent main character on social media. The Ethics Committee report earned him another round of shoutouts on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” and the late-night shows. He is as viral as the stickiest contagion, his alleged usage of donor money for Botox and OnlyFans, a subscription-based site often used to host pornography, only making him seem funnier, eliciting reactions along the lines of “sorry but this classifies as a slay” after the news broke last week.

In much of his alleged fraudulent behavior, Santos has left a trail of financial victims behind him, including a once-homeless Navy veteran and dog owner, as well as a family friend, who is also a former roommate, who now lives in a Brazilian favela. (Santos has pleaded not guilty to all charges.) But the largely small-time nature of his hustles makes him seem closer to hilarious than hateful, at least from the distant perspective of the X user or TikToker. And though he is feeling the pinch of consequences now, he has also achieved a level of fame he has envied for many years. 

One of the most striking aspects of the reporting for my book about Santos, “The Fabulist,” was just how deep his love of celebrity runs. In his 20s, he often posted on social media breathlessly about the likes of Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga or Selena Gomez, often tagging them in hope of getting their attention. (See: “@mileycyrus i want clear skin!!!!!! help!!!”)

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His affection for Real Housewife Bethenny Frankel was another constant: He posted on Twitter from her talk show in 2014, and CNN unearthed video of him in that episode peeking under his chair to see if he’d won a QVC gift card. In 2022, during his second run for Congress, he was chatting with his Democratic opponent during a break in a TV debate and claimed that he’d been on that particular set before because Frankel was “a friend of mine.” 

“Well, that’s nice,” the nonplussed Democrat said. (When asked about Santos’ claim, a representative for Frankel said in an email that the reality star “is not familiar with him.”)

Santos didn’t just like watching the demigods who inhabited that world; he had dreams of that kind of fame for himself. On the 2022 campaign trail he once joked in a previously unreported tape that he’d “love to” be a celebrity, modestly allowing that he wasn’t. But the urge was there, including in his late adolescent years, when he was living on and off in his parents’ birth country of Brazil. This was the era when he dressed in drag and took on an alluring drag name: Kitara Ravache. Santos yearned to be one of the “Misses” at a dress-and-jewel-filled beauty pageant called Miss Rio de Janeiro Gay. He participated in either 2007 or 2008, depending on the recollection of people involved, but lost, Orlando Almeida, the contest’s organizer, told me. 

This was often the way with him: an ambition for big things but never actually reaching the mountaintop. Even as he ran for office, he did so in a congressional race that didn’t draw much attention. But after he won his race, The New York Times uncovered his vast string of biographical fibs. Then, his fame became universal. Then, he was both an answer to a clue on “Jeopardy!” and a joke in a New York City subway ad. And there were signs that he enjoyed the attention, even if the spotlight was glaring.

And why not? Since being sworn in, for Santos it has been a lot of fun and games and a $174,000 annual salary — even if that time ends soon. Santos may resign next week or get pushed out of Congress. He also could just keep shuffling along in office until he takes a plea deal or faces his trial date in September. But for someone who was so drawn to the bright lights, this period has its benefits over poverty, which he experienced, and obscurity, which once might have been his fate. Others, from O.J. Simpson to Sean Spicer, have returned from ignominy or simply embarrassment in American life before.

If he were to go to prison, Santos has plenty of the connections and conspiratorial bona fides necessary to start a far-right podcast afterward. He himself has talked about a book and TV. And if all else fails, there is always Cameo or ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.” Democracy might have lost out from all his machinations, but for Santos, infamy might be better than not being famous at all.