American politics is a circus. In the world of Washington, DC, lawmaking and lawbreaking is a fanatical form of leisure, a warped experiment that, in recent times, has taken on the veneer of blind zealotry. Republicans, particularly, have thrived on a weight loss program of chaos because the rise of former president Donald Trump, turning the efficiency of democracy into primetime viewing. “The reality of it is, it’s all theater,” Representative George Santos of New York mentioned on Thursday throughout a press convention 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 mentioned, referring to the playhouse of American paperwork and, sarcastically, himself. “It’s theater for the American people at the expense of the American people.”
In a short while, Santos had original himself into one of the vital fascinating carnival barkers of latest 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 needed to, after all. In a Spaces dialog hosted on X, Santos was hellbent on exposing his congressional associates—“Felons galore,” he coloured them—for his or her alleged crimes. “I have colleagues who are more worried about getting drunk every night with the next lobbyist that they’re gonna screw, and pretend like none of us know what’s going on, and sell off the American people,” he mentioned. The highlight was his alone, as was the extreme scrutiny that got here with it.
In October, a report filed by the House Ethics Committee claimed that Santos had overstepped his authority as a member of Congress, accusing him on a number of counts of economic fraud and legal exercise. The ethics report decided that Santos—amongst different misdeeds that already included prices 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, and a real grasp of spin, Santos mentioned 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 is George Santos?” stays unclear. The air of secrecy 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?