George Santos, the human, has been round since 1988. However George Santos, the nationally recognized, notoriously deceitful Republican congressman, has been round for under about six weeks.

Most individuals have been launched to that Santos in mid-December — a less complicated and rather more boring time. The midterm elections have been over. Congress was in a lame-duck session, making ready for brand new management because of the GOP’s incoming sliver of a majority. And the dominant GOP storyline was Kevin McCarthy’s quest to change into Home speaker.

A number of weeks and plenty of information cycles later, any management Republicans as soon as had over the narrative of their resurgence has been utterly co-opted by a single freshman lawmaker from New York.

There’s been a variety of distinctive reporting about Santos that has uncovered the serial liar behind the faux résumé. However there are a lot of different members of Congress who deserve the obsessive scrutiny being leveled at a man who’s plainly utilizing the media to additional his personal superstar — and having enjoyable doing it.

The dead-winter information cycle has solely fueled the breathless protection of Santos, who received caught mendacity about his schooling, profession, funds, dwelling preparations, faith and identify. Not solely did Santos make up a complete persona, he touched the third rail of issues first rate folks by no means, ever lie about: the Holocaust and 9/11. And for those who thought it couldn’t get any worse, Santos literally stole money from a dying dog.

Since The New York Instances got here out with its initial investigation into Santos, the information cycle has been churning a gentle drip of latest revelations, starting from doubtlessly legal (Santos’ marketing campaign logged a statistically unattainable variety of $199 bills) to purely entertaining (Santos has a Brazilian drag alter-ego and enjoys a good bop!) to ridiculously speculative (Santos apparently wore a stolen $520 Burberry scarf to a “Stop the Steal” rally) to nauseatingly Beltway-centric (Santos has been noticed throughout D.C., including at a popular karaoke bar near Capitol Hill.)

For six weeks, it seems like we’ve discovered an excessive amount of about Santos and in addition nothing in any respect. Each twist of the Santos saga is sort of a new episode of a present you’re being compelled to observe as a result of all people else is — like Tiger King, however it’s 2023 and there are not any tigers, solely fraud.

The product is a cartoonish rendering of an allegedly corrupt congressman, one who is outwardly so money-obsessed that he’ll promote out your pet and lie about his personal mom for clout. Santos even blasts journalists for doing their jobs, when he isn’t trolling them with doughnuts and chicken sandwiches, a gross ploy to string alongside the folks hounding him for solutions, of which there are nonetheless none.

It shouldn’t come as a shock that Santos is consuming up the eye. He’s been impersonated by a number of comedians on late-night TV — performances that Santos winkingly called “terrible” in a tweet. At a current fundraiser for McCarthy, Santos reportedly told people that he, not McCarthy, was the most famous person in the room. In what was typically seen as one other trolling of — his colleagues? journalists? human decency? — Santos, who lied about being Jewish and a descendant of Holocaust survivors, delivered a speech Friday on the House floor commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Presiding over a tenuous GOP majority, McCarthy has strenuously resisted telling Santos to resign. A month into the brand new Congress, Santos has change into the first noise distracting from the truth that Home Republicans haven’t delivered a substantive coverage agenda to deal with all the issues they talked about throughout their midterm election campaigns, like fixing the financial system, un-indoctrinating “woke” colleges and combating crime.

The crime situation was one thing Santos campaigned on efficiently to swing a battleground seat in a race that was principally framed as a matchup between two out homosexual males, Santos and Democrat Robert Zimmerman. That race will go down as the largest collective fumble of the media, political operatives and their vetting constructions. “We knew this man was shady, that he was engaged in some sketchy stuff and there was some factor of grifter fraud across the marketing campaign — to what prolong, we didn’t know,” one Democrat concerned within the race advised HuffPost. “However a lot of the protection was ‘Right here’s two homosexual candidates’ — what does that inform anyone?”

The urge for food for extra Santos drama has swept up even minor characters in his life. A couple of weeks in the past, I spoke with Gregory Morey-Parker, a Santos buddy first quoted by The New York Times as a former roommate. Morey-Parker, who now lives in Massachusetts, advised me the Instances contacted him as a result of it seen he had commented on one in every of Santos’ outdated Fb posts. He mentioned that he and Santos first met to pursue a romantic relationship, and when that didn’t work out they remained pleasant. The 2 briefly lived collectively on the dwelling Santos shared along with his mom and sister in Jackson Heights, within the Queens borough of New York Metropolis. This was roughly a decade in the past and just for a number of weeks whereas Morey-Parker was on the lookout for an condo. He couldn’t recall the dates or Santos’ precise tackle.

He mentioned it was clear to him that one thing wasn’t fairly proper about about his buddy “Anthony” (Santos has passed by the identify Anthony Devolder). “Issues weren’t making sense. They weren’t including up,” he mentioned, alleging that Santos, who has claimed in monetary disclosures that he’s wealthy, didn’t work.

Morey-Parker went on to present many, many, many different interviews. We saved in contact. Then 5 weeks into the Santos information cycle, I received a remaining textual content from him: “Thanks for reaching out. I presently don’t have any additional feedback on Congressman Santos. Finest Regards, GMP.”

Round this time, I additionally spoke with Grant Lally, a former GOP congressional candidate and writer of the North Shore Chief, a Lengthy Island newspaper credited with being the one information outlet to sound an alarm about Santos earlier than the election. Lally is one other former free Santos acquaintance who has discovered himself very in-demand not too long ago. The 2 first met at a Lengthy Island diner in 2020. Lally described Santos as “evasive, surprisingly boastful and really insecure.” For an individual looking for mentorship and a political endorsement, Santos acted surprisingly, Lally recalled, slouching again in his chair and “having fun with himself tremendously” whereas “having consideration paid to him.”

Although Santos is regarded with curious detachment by his colleagues in Washington, he’s seen as a pariah again dwelling. Lengthy Island Republicans are already clamoring for his substitute, in two years or sooner, ought to Santos resign or face indictment. The GOP appears to be taking its mission more seriously now. “We simply elected this man and who’s he?” Lally mentioned, describing the preliminary shocked response to Santos’ unraveling. “The overall notion is that he wasn’t severe and Zimmerman was severe. However elections produce unusual penalties generally.”

Barring the revelation that Santos has invented the treatment for most cancers, there’s little expectation that he’ll win one other time period, positioning him to change into one of the vital infamous one-term congressmen in historical past. That is likely to be precisely what he desires.