American politics is a circus. Within the enviornment of Washington, DC, lawmaking and lawbreaking is a fanatical form of leisure. Republicans have thrived on a eating regimen of chaos because the rise of former president Donald Trump, turning the efficiency of democracy into primetime viewing. “The fact of it’s, it’s all theater,” Consultant George Santos of New York stated on Thursday throughout a press conference on the steps of the US Capitol as he confronted expulsion from Congress.
Soaking within the carnival of media consideration that has stalked him since he arrived in DC in 2022, Santos—taking one final stand as a solo act this week—was predictably unmuzzled within the hours main as much as the vote that might determine his political future. “It’s theater for the cameras, it’s theater for the microphones,” he stated, referring to the playhouse of American forms and, sarcastically, himself. “It’s theater for the American individuals on the expense of the American individuals.”
In a short while, Santos had long-established himself into some of the fascinating carnival barkers of current reminiscence. By Friday he was out of a job.
As cameras rolled and on-line chatter swirled throughout social media about his alleged scams, there was nowhere for Santos to cover. Not that he wished to, after all. In a Areas dialog hosted on X, Santos was hellbent on exposing his congressional associates—“Felons galore,” he coloured them—for his or her alleged crimes. “I’ve colleagues who’re extra frightened about getting drunk each evening with the subsequent lobbyist that they’re gonna screw, and fake like none of us know what’s happening, and dump the American individuals,” he stated. The highlight was his alone, as was the extraordinary scrutiny that got here with it.
In October, a report filed by the Home Ethics Committee claimed that Santos had overstepped his authority as a member of Congress, accusing him on a number of counts of monetary fraud and felony exercise. The ethics report decided that Santos—amongst different misdeeds that already included expenses of wire fraud and conspiracy—used marketing campaign funds on Botox, the grownup subscription web site OnlyFans, and luxurious Ferragamo sneakers (choose pairs promote for greater than $2,000). True to kind, Santos stated the report was “littered in hyperbole.”
Equal components enigma and attraction, Santos courted controversy from the start of his tenure as a US consultant. There was an uncanny cadence to his private testimony: Nothing was precisely as he advised it. Even now, within the dim mild of his scandalous incumbency, the query of “Who’s George Santos?” stays unclear. The aura surrounding Santos, and the general public’s deep fascination with him, is owed to his personal innate aptitude for invention, which each feeds into the eccentricity of American politics and mirrors the immodest, however no much less savory, surrealism of actuality TV that we obsess over. Who doesn’t love a stunning plot twist and a riveting character arc?
