You've probably heard the story of two guys — counterparts—from the Queens Borough in New York City who went into politics and, fittingly, have both been discredited and publicly humiliated.
One faces criminal charges and even much more legal trouble than that. The other gets expulsion, with court and prison ahead next year.
What separates Donald Trump from George Santos is the accident of birth:
Trump to an authoritarian father who made him hate losing at anything. When his dad died, Donald cheated his older brother on his inheritance.
Santos to a poor mother who taught him to dream and to reinvent himself. He even reinvented his mother's family.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or as Oscar Wilde amended it, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness."
Both men have exaggerated their wealth, education, and accomplishments in financial matters. Both are prone to impulsive and ill-founded public exclamations.
Trump with the urging of his parents and with the pocket money of a rich kid from Queens, also invented himself. No one can remember him from his college career, lending credence to allegations that he paid others to take his classes and examinations.
Santos, emigrated to America from Brazil, ingested The Apprentice TV program ethos, and modeled himself on Donald Trump. He claimed stints at banks like Goldman Sachs, an advanced degree, with a family fortune that could help him fund his campaigns with thousands of dollars. He invented an education and presented himself on the campaign trail as a wealthy man. In the tumult of today's American politics, no one bothered to adequately fact-check these claims.
They share two critical attributes of all con men:
Absolute self-confidence in what they invent, and
Shameless about what is said or written about them.
Trump claims to be nearly a professional-level golfer when he is a mulligan addict when it comes to playing a round. Santos invented a soccer career. Both concluded that politics was an easy game. For Trump, it was a branding exercise, win or lose. For Santos, it was a gift to elevate his lifestyle.
Blame for all of this runs deep into American society in the 20th century. both political organizations in New York City skipped due diligence and attention to detail, allowing Santos to win in a usually Democratic Congressional district. Initial claims of fraud by a weekly newspaper went unexplored until the New York Times debunked his biographical claims. But it was too late.
Did Santos blink? Of course not. He doubled and tripled down.
Given their thin but fractious majority in the House of Representatives, Republicans would not reject his seating. Now, finally, a report from the House Ethics Committee confirms what we have all known for two-plus years: Santos is a liar and a crook. Probably not the only House member with those attributes, but certainly the most obvious.
Congressional investigators traced some of the funds to services he performed for outside clients, noting that the timing and other circumstances of the payments raised "serious questions" about whether they were unlawful campaign contributions. Nine months of the investigation was both damning and comprehensive. Investigators found evidence of widespread misconduct throughout Santos's congressional campaigns, from fictitious loans to brazen grift.
Santos says he won't run for re-election, but House members may still try to expel him again. Like Trump, he faces legal troubles in the coming years. That he remains in Congress highlights the low standards for being there. The parallel partisanship of voters means they know little about whom they elect. Partisan craziness trumps rational thought, which describes the ascendant Fascist side of the Republican Party.
None of this is accidental. Campaign rhetoric has one side clamoring to end Constitutional government, putting this decade into the highest levels of deplorable political conduct. It has been a periodic occurrence in the last 250 years. In 1792, founding father Alexander Hamilton, who understood rich people of that period, warned President George Washington:
“When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanor—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty— when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day— it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may "ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”
By; Kenneth Tiven