A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - George Santos is a Terrible Person and the Embodiment of the American Dream

00:00:00.160 Hey Heath, George Santos here. I'm so proud of you for coming out as a furry and I just wanted to tell you that your friends and family all accept you and they're all excited about your fursona, which is awesome to be a beaver puss, a beaver and a platter puss.

00:00:21.260 So let me tell you, they all love you, Beaver Puss.

00:00:26.240 Don't you ever get your head down and don't you ever, ever let anybody tell you what you

00:00:34.580 can and can't be.

00:00:35.680 I'm so proud that the corporate folks at Arby's gave you the go ahead to go to work in your

00:00:41.380 persona.

00:00:42.500 So if you could just, you know, live it up and be as perfect as you want, just keep doing

00:00:49.460 you and yiff yiff yiff bye hello hello and welcome back to a bit fruity the show where we try to tell

00:01:01.780 the truth but not the whole truth it was always going to end this way it was always going to end

00:01:07.480 with a podcast episode and we're here we've arrived we're at the santosode welcome everyone

00:01:12.420 sit down, strap in, grab a beverage. I'm excited to experience America together. I'm Matt Bernstein

00:01:20.360 and I am joined today by, you know, it has long been a dream of mine to call anyone a friend of

00:01:29.060 the show. And now 10 episodes in, I am joined by a friend of the show. Kat Tenbarge is here. You

00:01:35.740 might remember her from our second episode, which was about Amber Heard. She, well, I mean,

00:01:42.680 I'll let you introduce yourself. Well, first of all, it's such an honor to be the inaugural

00:01:48.140 friend of the show. I'm a journalist. I currently work for NBC News, and I write about technology,

00:01:57.400 culture, and influencers. Of which George Santos is one, you would argue.

00:02:03.540 in a way he's all three yeah so all right we're gonna have an analysis of george santos but i

00:02:13.620 want to explain like why we're here today why we're doing this today so last night i was at a

00:02:20.560 bar and this guy came up to me and he was so so so nice shout out if he's listening but he was like

00:02:26.140 i love your podcast and i was like oh my gosh thank you so much i'm actually recording tomorrow

00:02:30.540 about I'm doing the George Santisode and he was like I'm sure you're gonna have a different take

00:02:35.760 than everyone which was a really great compliment but I want to be clear that like I am not above

00:02:42.440 drama for drama's sake I have loved following this as much as the next person not at all times as like

00:02:49.860 an esteemed cultural analyst but because he's a mess and I love to indulge in mess it's my job

00:02:58.720 as a homosexual it's my right but you know we're we're here today because we love mass and also 0.75

00:03:04.960 because like i have some theses i would like to conjecture you do too yes mine are about the

00:03:13.420 american dream yours are about influencers which some could argue i've argued epitomize the american

00:03:21.380 dream yeah but before we do any of that we are going to walk through george santos's life and

00:03:28.760 this won't be like most of the episode and i will try to keep it as brief as i can while hitting on

00:03:34.000 the relevant points because i feel like people at this point know that george santos is synonymous

00:03:38.500 with like politician and scammer and know that he lied about some stuff but like i think his

00:03:44.060 biography is important in illustrating how he became this like camp figure but also how he is

00:03:51.040 genuinely a bad person like i've seen a lot of i've gotten a lot of messages being like you really

00:03:56.180 you know you shouldn't continue to talk about him because he's a bad person we're losing that truth

00:04:01.020 in all of this and so i am pleased to say up front that i am not at all interested in laundering this

00:04:07.660 man's image i also think and you tell me where you are at on this but like i think the most harm that

00:04:15.240 he has been able to do has already happened he was already in congress yeah he was already like

00:04:19.740 you know, signing things that are anti-LGBT things and like petitioning to make the AR-15 the

00:04:26.760 national gun. Like I think he has had more power than he will ever have again.

00:04:32.400 Yeah, I agree with that. I think that in a way he will always have the potential to continue to

00:04:38.800 scam because there will always be potential marks like for his future if he does have any future

00:04:45.000 scams but at the same time there is a certain form of accountability in being known and i think that

00:04:53.680 he was previously able to operate thanks to the fact that nobody was paying attention to him

00:04:58.920 and now it's almost impossible to hear his name without associating him with this alleged bad

00:05:07.160 behavior right and so in that way i think he has reached like the peak of his potential to scam

00:05:14.520 but then knowing how other influencers and celebrities have actually built their brand

00:05:20.640 around being a bad person and having a bad image, there will always be the potential for more.

00:05:26.600 Right. Right. So, all right, let's go back to the beginning. So I want to start

00:05:31.240 with George Santos as the world came to know him a little over a year ago. In 2021, he began his

00:05:41.660 second attempt at campaigning for Congress for New York's third district. So he's running for

00:05:46.740 the House of Representatives. He's running for a seat on the House of Representatives.

00:05:49.860 And New York's third district is the wealthiest district in New York state and the fourth

00:05:54.940 wealthiest in the country, which is really interesting. George Santos, he, you know,

00:06:00.320 like all candidates for Congress and for any political office, he has a story about himself.

00:06:05.880 And the story that he runs on is as such. He went to Horace Mann for primary school. And Horace Mann is a prep school in New York. Like many prep schools, its tuition is ridiculously high. I looked it up and its current annual tuition starting in kindergarten is $62,000 a year. I mean, you're paying for private college tuition every single year from the time that you're like five.

00:06:28.360 he withdrew from horace man do you know why he withdrew or why he says that he had to withdraw

00:06:36.360 from horace man no so he he he says that he withdrew from horace man in 2008 so at that

00:06:49.200 point i guess the stock market the financial crash the financial crash yeah yeah so he basically said

00:06:55.060 his parents fell on hard times in the 2008 recession and that's why he had to leave

00:07:00.080 horace man which is every detail of his story is so calculated because right it's not just

00:07:10.460 insignificant details to explain you know why he might have dropped out at horace man at a certain

00:07:14.940 point it's like he dropped out because of the american recession right it's like something

00:07:20.840 that you'll see as a running theme through george santos's story that he tells is that every hardship

00:07:26.780 he's ever faced is the hardship of america right he didn't just drop out because like his he had

00:07:33.880 to move or something or his parents job moved or he dropped out because he was affected by the thing

00:07:38.320 that was like most notably affecting the united states of america and in that way his every part

00:07:44.820 of his story that turns him into a victim is like synonymous with american victimhood he's the

00:07:50.780 forrest gump of victims yeah exactly so he ends up uh graduating with a degree in finance and

00:07:58.480 economics from baruch which is a college here in new york city and then he i think he says he got

00:08:04.540 his master's at nyu yes which master's in business administration okay master's an mba right yes

00:08:12.140 um he works at two big banks two huge financial institutions goldman sachs and citigroup and then

00:08:20.060 he runs his own company called devolder um which is one of his middle names we come to learn which

00:08:28.360 in his words is it's a consulting firm essentially but at this point he says that he made over the

00:08:34.340 course of having that business he made three and a half between three and a half to 11 million

00:08:38.740 dollars uh from devolder he ran his own animal rescue foundation called yep the dogs are not

00:08:48.460 getting they're not they're not coming out of the story unscathed he is called friends of pets

00:08:53.580 united he says that between 2013 and 2018 the organization saved 2500 cats and dogs we're

00:09:00.500 gonna return to that his mom died in 9 11 which is again it's this thing of like every bad thing

00:09:08.700 that's ever happened to the United States

00:09:10.560 has also happened to George Santos.

00:09:12.400 Specifically.

00:09:13.180 Specifically, and therefore,

00:09:14.180 there is no differentiation

00:09:15.360 between the story of the United States

00:09:17.060 and the story of George Santos.

00:09:18.540 Kind of genius branding.

00:09:19.900 It is so genius,

00:09:21.340 but when you work backwards

00:09:22.880 and you look at all of these things in hindsight,

00:09:25.120 it's absurdly unbelievable.

00:09:27.100 Yes, yes.

00:09:27.940 It's like, he might as well have signed

00:09:30.620 the Declaration of Independence.

00:09:31.760 Right.

00:09:32.820 He was there, in the back.

00:09:37.480 His... 0.59

00:09:38.700 grandma was a holocaust victim yes which again will return to all of these things he said he had

00:09:45.680 four employees killed like four of his personal employees at his job were killed in the pulse

00:09:50.560 nightclub shooting which didn't happen to anyone no no did anyone have four employees that were

00:09:56.000 killed in that did pulse even have four employees that were killed in the full time i don't think

00:09:59.480 so no yeah he said his five-year-old niece was once kidnapped from a playground in new york that

00:10:06.580 she was playing at do you know why he speculated that she was kidnapped because he was criticizing

00:10:12.360 the chinese communist party yes so they allegedly came and kidnapped his niece correct but they did

00:10:17.980 get her back correct yeah and we can we can laugh about this because like everything else in the

00:10:22.860 story this didn't happen his his niece was never kidnapped but it's again it's like it wasn't just

00:10:30.260 that his niece was kidnapped it was that she was kidnapped because he was being patriotic and

00:10:35.820 criticizing the chinese communist party and so that's what happened um he has a jewish background

00:10:41.400 santos a famously jewish name and then it's like there's some like a couple add-ons here

00:10:47.680 do you know about his his entertainment stints in oh god what was it sweet life of zach and cody

00:10:53.760 yeah and the other one hannah montana oh he had he had small roles in hannah montana and the

00:11:00.880 Suite Life of Zack and Cody which again it's so interesting that he ever got away with saying 1.00

00:11:05.500 any of this because like these are pretty easy things for that regular degular person to fact 0.96

00:11:10.800 check to just look up yeah check IMDB he also said that he was a producer in the Broadway musical 0.69

00:11:18.000 for Spider-Man a few years ago which I thought was an interesting choice because Spider-Man was like

00:11:23.680 notoriously a Broadway flop and there were a lot of like stunt injuries that like hurt the

00:11:30.720 actors it's like one of the most infamous broadway musicals of all time yeah but maybe there's like

00:11:36.380 a maybe there's a reason he chose that one part of me thinks that some of these details would make

00:11:42.780 you think he's telling the truth just because it would be so unusual for someone to lie about

00:11:46.980 something like that right like if he claimed that he executive produced like the lion king on

00:11:51.500 broadway people would be like that seems incorrect but it's like oh that was me with spider-man

00:11:57.720 afraid of the dark you're like oh well people wouldn't want to admit to that so he probably

00:12:02.040 isn't lying right it's like you have to have a few calculated fails in there yes yeah it's like he's

00:12:08.040 being humble but even in the failure and even in being humble it's still like i humbly failed at

00:12:14.800 producing a broadway show right which takes a certain amount of power and money even if the

00:12:19.220 show doesn't end up panning out yes it's almost like he's trying to appeal to rich people by being

00:12:24.900 like just like you i have my rich successes and my rich failure right right right like right

00:12:32.300 it's like being like oh yeah one time in 2011 i crashed my yacht how embarrassing yes that's

00:12:38.980 exactly what it is it's something that i find just really interesting about him is there when i was

00:12:46.800 researching for this episode like people will delineate between the things that he said about

00:12:52.600 himself that were meaningful lies like where he worked and where like his educational background

00:12:59.000 and then the lies that like why would he lie about that that's such a silly thing to lie about like

00:13:03.060 he he lied that he was on the volleyball team at baruch which is just like such a specific and

00:13:08.620 like theoretically meaningless detail but i think like what he's doing is not just lying about

00:13:13.580 specific things it's inventing the the myth of his person he's myth making he's myth making

00:13:20.080 where every detail matters because it's not your cre... I don't know. What do you...

00:13:24.900 It's not like you're lying to get something specifically. It's not like you're trying to

00:13:30.060 say that you got an A on a specific test so that you can impress a specific professor.

00:13:34.940 It's like he's building an entire false life story. Every lie of his builds up to this greater

00:13:42.740 purpose of presenting a different person than who he actually is. So it's more than just a lie.

00:13:49.040 it's like a pattern of lying and it's not lying by omission either which a lot of people

00:13:54.700 politicians notably do lie by omission like frequently but he is like taking it to a whole

00:14:00.740 other level and in essence it's just every single word that comes out of this man's mouth

00:14:07.380 everything he says about himself is untrue he's fictional George Santos is a fictional person

00:14:13.140 he's fictional and that's interesting too because when he was confronted by reporters um initially

00:14:18.340 so okay this is the story that he tells and he gets elected he gets elected the the election was

00:14:24.460 last november so a little over a year ago and he gets elected to represent new york's third

00:14:30.400 district in the united states house of representatives and then i think it was only

00:14:33.760 like a few days after he was elected and like you know the hatchet had been buried yes that

00:14:40.180 the new york times started reporting like hey we looked into like this stuff and like we don't

00:14:45.860 think he went to school where he said it or like we called Goldman Sachs and they were like no we

00:14:49.640 have no record of this guy yes and so it kind of started once nothing could be done about it yes

00:14:55.300 as far as him being serving in political office the lie the lie started to get revealed and

00:15:00.700 something that he said pretty quickly when like pressure was mounting on him to respond to that

00:15:04.920 allegation he was like I embellished my resume it's true I embellished my resume who doesn't

00:15:10.540 which i agree who doesn't but that's not what he was doing right he invented someone he invented

00:15:16.280 someone and it's also such an interesting like it points to a lot of local failures like a lot

00:15:23.600 of accountability processes that we just assume are there are not because the fact that he was

00:15:29.700 able to win this race which is not an insignificant local office like he ran for the u.s house of

00:15:37.160 representatives, a federal position that doesn't just give him the ability to make decisions for

00:15:42.600 his jurisdiction, but also for the entire country. Right. It makes him one of like the 500 most

00:15:48.200 powerful politically powerful people in the country. Yes. And it's so fascinating that it

00:15:53.200 took the election actually happening for a national news outlet to even pay attention to this guy at

00:16:00.740 all. And there were some local outlets that had questions about his credibility. There was like

00:16:07.120 a local paper that put out an editorial endorsing his Democratic opponent, saying that he seemed

00:16:13.780 fraudulent. He seemed like he was a liar. And so that really coincides with the failing of local 0.99

00:16:20.560 media and just the lack of attention that's been paid to local media. But it also points to a lot

00:16:26.440 of issues with our electoral process, because reading up on how this election took place,

00:16:31.560 the local Democratic challenger for Santos in 2022 had a decision to make in the few months

00:16:39.300 before the election. They had like a small pool of money and they were deciding to either do

00:16:44.840 opposition research on Santos or to like use that money to campaign. And they used it to campaign.

00:16:51.980 So it just goes to show like he really kind of got away with it through a series of just

00:17:00.360 circumstances like they could have if they'd had a little bit more money they could have done both

00:17:05.220 they could have paid for opposition research and they could have done more radio spots

00:17:08.540 and the fact that he was able to kind of find these they're not loopholes it was just like

00:17:14.880 by chance yeah he kind of like squeezed his way in there and that's troubling right because this

00:17:21.300 could absolutely happen again it could absolutely happen because it wasn't just like he i mean i

00:17:25.800 think he is a little bit of a mastermind in his own way but also a lot of people are scammers yes

00:17:30.280 And this was like a structural failing on a lot of levels.

00:17:33.140 Absolutely.

00:17:33.880 That's what's I think one of the most interesting things about it is he was very conniving and crafty to like find himself in this position.

00:17:43.780 But a lot of people had to be essentially looking away and a lot of priorities had to be displaced for him to be able to win this election.

00:17:52.140 So who is George Santos?

00:17:55.660 Well, Kat, let me take you back to the beginning.

00:18:00.280 It's July 22nd, 1988.

00:18:04.720 The air is warm.

00:18:07.220 Taylor Swift has yet to be conceived.

00:18:08.860 Taylor Swift has yet to be conceived.

00:18:11.200 I think.

00:18:12.140 We're like right around the point of her being conceived.

00:18:17.060 I like to think that there's something magical about the idea that George Santos was born during the conception of Taylor Swift.

00:18:23.920 Yeah.

00:18:24.280 He just barely existed in a pre-Taylor Swift world.

00:18:27.180 we live we live in a state of affairs such that everything exists somewhere on the timeline of

00:18:35.600 taylor swift yeah so we're in jackson heights queens george anthony devolder santos is born

00:18:41.280 his mom is a brazilian immigrant who works as a housekeeper his dad was a house painter so

00:18:48.340 you know real working class people um he says now that he was poor and lived in a rat infested

00:18:54.480 apartment which the interesting thing about that is that in new york you don't even have to be poor 0.91

00:18:59.660 for your apartment to be rat infested like you can be middle you can be rich and your apartment

00:19:04.500 is rat infested we've all had rat infested apartments in new york you can hear them in

00:19:08.200 the walls yeah yeah when you go to sleep at night it's like they're skittering around up there

00:19:12.980 they're just they're roommates when you live in new york um he attends uh he so he did not attend

00:19:19.760 poorest man ever. He attends public primary schools in Queens and eventually gets his GED

00:19:26.240 before moving to Brazil. And there's no evidence that he ever went to college, right?

00:19:31.860 He never graduated with any degrees. No. Wow. Work. He's kind of a revolutionary.

00:19:38.140 Yeah. You know, in some ways he's proving you don't need to go to college.

00:19:41.620 Yeah. He is kind of, he is, yeah, he's going to lead the revolution. So he moves to Brazil at

00:19:48.880 some point during his young adult years the timeline here is fuzzy you know all of these

00:19:53.640 people who like knew him then have spoken to the press at this point and like there is no consistent

00:19:59.240 timeline but essentially he moves to brazil at some point in this these young adult years with

00:20:04.960 his mother and his sister his mom is working odd jobs to get by she would bounce like all three of

00:20:13.920 them would bounce from like apartment to apartment to avoid having to pay rent they were having their

00:20:18.340 electricity cut off like it's it's a rough time it's a rough time for them george santos even then

00:20:24.400 he always had a reputation of being like tricky you know which first of all a lot of kids just

00:20:29.860 have yeah and that's normal but you know he would tell people at this time that he was well off

00:20:34.520 that he was you know that and he would spend money as if he was well off and when people would kind

00:20:41.900 of side eye that because his mother's obviously struggling they as a family are struggling he

00:20:46.660 would say well my dad is an executive back in new york now for all we know his dad is still a painter

00:20:52.880 right he's a house painter he's not an executive right there's nothing wrong with being a house

00:20:56.160 painter but he's not an executive the myth making had started at this point the myth making had

00:21:01.320 started the thing about his lies at this time is that they feel like a coping mechanism yes like

00:21:07.040 like lying for survival yeah and to some extent if you are existing under a system that doesn't

00:21:13.000 meet your basic needs then for many people lying does come from that as a survival mechanism yeah

00:21:20.080 and it's like he was used to the process of like you said like they would move from house to house

00:21:26.040 when bills were unpaid so it's like he's already kind of been molded by this living environment

00:21:31.740 of like deceit yeah because that's the only way that he knows to live that's the only way he's

00:21:38.060 been able to live thus far and like george santos like i think right now which we'll get to but like

00:21:44.020 i think this is the first time he's ever been wealthy yes i think even through his election

00:21:48.820 and his tenure in congress i don't think he's ever really had tons of disposable income right and

00:21:53.980 it's like you see through the various financial investigations like what they found and sort of

00:21:59.300 the evidence is that he was constantly portraying this life of of wealth but in reality he would

00:22:06.220 call like a staffer and say like i have no money in the bank like they would some of the fraud that

00:22:11.540 you know the alleged fraud that emerged from his campaign existed because he would say like i'm

00:22:17.180 bankrolling my own campaign like hundreds of thousands of dollars but then that money wouldn't

00:22:21.100 actually exist right so fraudulent loans and checks and things would stem from that right

00:22:26.360 and like look ultimately he turned into a dangerous individual but i think if we just

00:22:33.640 go back to this time where his lies were basically only for himself the people who knew him at the

00:22:39.380 time who have since spoken publicly about knowing him at the time have said like we always knew that 0.99

00:22:44.280 he was kind of full of shit yeah like he doesn't have the money that he's saying he does right 0.99

00:22:49.480 but maybe it's charming that he does these little lies or maybe we just we just let him we're letting 1.00

00:22:54.660 him be a little delulu yeah we're letting him be a little delulu and if that helps him get by

00:22:59.680 then whatever and like i feel like we've all known people like that exactly sometimes you have a

00:23:04.020 roommate who claims to know a lot of famous people and at first you're like well i have no reason to

00:23:09.240 not believe you but over time you're like okay if you really knew all these famous people then why

00:23:14.740 do you live in a six bedroom apartment yes then why are we roommates if you have all of this going

00:23:20.380 on then why are we roommates yes but it's like at some point you realize like okay that's the story

00:23:25.580 that you're telling yourself about yourself to cope with the fact that that is not the life that

00:23:30.380 you have, that that's not the life any of us have. Yes. And I don't think that's a great quality in

00:23:34.980 anyone, but it's like a way of coping with the fact that like reality is not that good.

00:23:38.360 It's a very American personality trait, I think. How so? In that I think a lot of people who have

00:23:45.080 succeeded under American capitalism and this idea of American exceptionalism do so by inflating

00:23:52.280 their own characteristics, their own history. And for a lot of people, this turns out to be

00:23:58.180 very successful. A lot of successful corporations come from this place of like, we're going to

00:24:05.540 sell an illusion to people. And a lot of times, illusions in America are very successful.

00:24:11.220 Fake it till you make it.

00:24:12.380 Fake it till you make it. And this idea of entrepreneurship and just presenting yourself,

00:24:19.240 I mean, that's to really break capitalism down. A lot of it is if you're succeeding, you're kind of pretending that you're better than everybody else. And in order to build this sense of like, I deserve more wealth than you and you should work for me and like, I should get 98% of the profits. That has to come from a place of inflating one's own ego. That has to come from like an inflated sense of self-importance.

00:24:43.700 I mean, you have people who started out remarkably wealthy and will even obscure that fact because the idea of having worked to attain something is even more powerful than just having attained it.

00:24:58.180 Yes.

00:24:58.760 And it's like, I think about like Donald Trump and like, I don't know, Kylie Jenner, like these, the kind of myth making that they do around the very real money that they have now, but that they on some level always had.

00:25:12.720 Yes.

00:25:13.700 But it's not just compelling that they're rich.

00:25:15.840 It's compelling that the idea that they started from the bottom.

00:25:19.580 Yes.

00:25:20.080 The whole Kylie Jenner fake billionaire story is so fascinating because it's like...

00:25:25.160 Wait, do you want to explain that?

00:25:26.360 Yes.

00:25:26.940 Very briefly.

00:25:28.160 We're not going to derail too much because we're still in Brazil.

00:25:31.260 Yeah, we're still at the beginning of George's biography.

00:25:35.160 But Kylie Jenner, the Forbes cover where they said she was the self-made billionaire is so fascinating.

00:25:42.840 The youngest.

00:25:43.880 The youngest self-made billionaire.

00:25:46.040 She wasn't self-made and she wasn't a billionaire.

00:25:49.820 And it's just so interesting that you have somebody who has been really successful,

00:25:56.040 is one of the most followed people on social media, is a huge A-list celebrity,

00:26:00.960 but that's still not enough.

00:26:02.660 Right.

00:26:02.840 They need to both posit themselves as a victim and a winner simultaneously.

00:26:07.220 That's where you get the self-made part from because that's obviously not true.

00:26:11.220 and that's what everyone criticized at the time of the cover was like well obviously she's not

00:26:15.080 self-made but that wasn't it that wasn't the only part of that that was a lie 1.00

00:26:19.000 Forbes years later came out and said she also wasn't a billionaire

00:26:23.840 she wasn't self-made or a billionaire right and so if this is like what we have being reported

00:26:31.080 by an accredited journalistic institution like Forbes what does that leave the rest of us well

00:26:36.500 george santos is what it leaves the rest of us exactly shall we continue on so okay we're still

00:26:42.380 in brazil in the mid-2000s in brazil he starts and this is a story that you the listener may

00:26:48.580 recognize uh he starts dressing and performing in drag yes as kitara ravache that's his drag name

00:26:56.060 and at this point he's like getting involved in the local lgbtq community where he lives he's like

00:27:01.420 handing out pamphlets going to events and stuff and and like he's performing in drag but not

00:27:06.420 as a way to make a living he's kind of just in and of the drag community there like you know he'll

00:27:12.620 just dress in drag to go to festivals and things like that which is funny because ultimately when

00:27:18.100 he's in office he gets exposed for all these lies that are that but the thing that really sets a lot

00:27:22.040 of republicans off is that these photos come out of him in drag yes which given the culture war

00:27:27.640 that we're living through right now about drag queens and gay people this is the thing that

00:27:32.360 people are like oh now he has to answer for it yes and what's interesting is he is swarmed by

00:27:39.040 journalists outside of his office in dc and he famously says hold on i have the quote written

00:27:44.220 down they ask him about it and he says no i was not a drag queen in brazil i was young and i had

00:27:50.160 fun at a festival and i love that i love that like i'm just i've i've used that as an excuse

00:27:57.640 for things many times since i'm like no i wasn't caught robbing a bank guys i was i was young and

00:28:02.280 i had fun at a festival couldn't we all say the same we've all had fun at a festival i wasn't

00:28:07.320 that was his version of the meme that's like so women can't have hobbies right exactly exactly

00:28:13.640 god forbid a man has is young and has fun at a festival god forbid um i don't know i love this

00:28:21.620 part of george santos's life i find it like he's in his early 20s late teens early 20s he's like

00:28:28.420 exploring drag for the first time in a way that i think a lot of like young queer people and young

00:28:34.500 queer men can identify with like exploring that not only that part of your identity and yourself

00:28:40.780 but of your community finding community with other queer people around you like i don't know

00:28:45.540 i'm like what if he had stayed here what if he like stayed a a member of this like queer community

00:28:51.880 that he was in and like got a normal job and like continued participating in drag as a lot of these 0.66

00:28:56.260 people do well into their middle age right i don't know that's nice i wish it could have stayed here

00:29:01.080 yeah but then we wouldn't be doing this podcast episode so unfortunately yeah things did not stay

00:29:06.640 there and i need to put an episode out every tuesday so thank god i'm kidding i'm kidding

00:29:13.580 You can't make jokes anymore without the woke mob canceling.

00:29:18.100 But even then he's lying about things that feel insignificant,

00:29:21.740 but he's just,

00:29:22.840 again,

00:29:23.060 he's always lived in his own reality. 0.98

00:29:25.940 And so he like beef with other drag Queens, 1.00

00:29:29.120 which is just something drag Queens do. 1.00

00:29:31.620 So that's fine. 0.86

00:29:32.240 But he would be with other drag Queens. 1.00

00:29:34.500 He would say like, 0.74

00:29:35.240 Oh,

00:29:35.340 I performed at this club. 1.00

00:29:36.700 And then the other drag Queens, 1.00

00:29:38.120 other local Queens would be like, 1.00

00:29:39.200 no, 1.00

00:29:39.600 like you definitely didn't like you didn't perform at that club.

00:29:42.020 I know who performs at that club.

00:29:43.140 and it wasn't you and so even in his drag queen career he's he's myth making yes so at this time

00:29:50.300 people are also again people are always kind of wondering like where are you getting this money

00:29:54.300 from you know people don't even know if he has a job we still don't know like if he had a job

00:29:58.600 during this time right but what did happen once is he in 2008 george santos walks sounds like the

00:30:05.820 beginning of like a terrible joke like george santos walks into a boutique but george santos

00:30:12.820 walks into this boutique in brazil and he buys thirteen hundred dollars worth of like clothes

00:30:16.760 and shoes and he pays with them with two checks he walks out the shop owner is like feels like

00:30:24.380 something's off he's like you just dropped a lot of money and so he calls the numbers on the checks

00:30:30.220 and they don't work and uh the names that jory santos writes on these checks is a guy who was

00:30:37.080 dead oh so that's you know he that's one way to buy a bag he had not yet mastered the art of the

00:30:47.160 scam at this point he's he's kind of getting his his toes wet the shop owner contacts the police

00:30:52.800 and again this is all in brazil the the police end up trying to find him for three years

00:30:57.380 and so in 2011 they finally put in a request for his arrest because they you know have the

00:31:05.020 level of detail required to do that yes and he is already back in the u.s it's very catch me if you

00:31:11.420 can yes it's also this is so interesting because in the fake timeline at this point he was saying

00:31:18.480 that he was leaving the horseman prep school because of the financial collapse but in reality

00:31:25.240 like his fake timeline he was also making himself younger right because he's actually a man

00:31:30.180 but he's presenting himself as like a school boy in 2008 but he's actually like a grown man well

00:31:36.540 that's a very american thing too we have we have to lie about being a little younger here

00:31:40.460 okay this is where like because at this point again his lies are mostly affecting himself

00:31:45.880 yes i feel like the brazilian shop owner is a turn and then this is a real turn so he in 2010

00:31:52.880 so a year before he ends up leaving uh to go to new york his mom so again his mom never really

00:32:00.020 has much money and she also she also didn't die in 9-11 she she is alive no i think she's now she's

00:32:07.020 dead oh yeah she's alive she was alive she's alive at this point yes yes oh yeah she she was

00:32:11.740 in brazil during 9-11 she was like firmly like not even in the country um you know so i don't even

00:32:18.300 can't clarify that any further his mom in 2010 nine years after 9-11 introduces george santos

00:32:26.500 to her friend adriana she has money but she's kind of down on her luck she has money because

00:32:32.820 she inherited a bunch adriana meets george santos and the two of them are like pals like she finds

00:32:39.760 him super charming which everyone throughout george santos's life though the details are

00:32:44.680 contested yeah everyone agrees that he was always very good at talking to people yes he could always

00:32:51.560 talk people say that he had the gift of gab and so adriana and george they meet and they love each

00:32:57.620 other and george is like there's nothing for us in brazil we gotta get to the u.s we gotta go to

00:33:02.960 new york anyway somehow she agrees and so adriana her daughter and george move to new york they get

00:33:11.800 an apartment on the upper east side she's paying for everything and she's like running out of money

00:33:16.980 and at this time like so it's 2011 2012 george santos like gets a job he's working as a customer

00:33:25.540 service representative for for dish for dish tv which i just can't think of a more bland job

00:33:33.100 he's making 12 an hour and yet all the appropriate right

00:33:37.260 he's making 12 an hour but like during his lunch breaks he would go on shopping trips

00:33:44.000 and his co-workers are like how yeah how adriana ends up so so everything starts devolving from

00:33:51.000 here adriana later goes to the press and says that during this whole time george santos is

00:33:55.160 stealing from her yes and stealing her jewelry stealing her money george his then boyfriend

00:34:00.420 adriana and her daughter are living together and george is confronted by adriana and his boyfriend

00:34:05.940 about the stealing and all of that he you know categorically denies everything adriana ends up

00:34:12.040 having to move back to brazil in i believe 2016 she and her daughter moved back to brazil totally

00:34:18.400 broke and they still live there um she lives off government subsidies yeah she never spoke to george

00:34:26.620 santos again and so that's you know it's dark it's dark it's really dark in 2017 george santos

00:34:33.680 starts working at this company called linkbridge investors he was making a 55 000 salary and then

00:34:39.500 after that he works at harbor city capital yes which he does talk about on the campaign trial

00:34:45.280 but like in a way that is totally false what do you know about harbor city capital the sec said

00:34:50.560 that it was like a ponzi scheme yes yeah yeah it was a ponzi scheme so you know that checks out

00:34:55.140 in 2021 he starts the devolder organization we made it we made it to the true thing but it's

00:35:01.260 still not so he claims he's managing 80 million dollars in assets for rich people at the devolder

00:35:06.680 organization. He said that he was receiving a $750,000 salary. He used the Devolder company

00:35:14.080 to lend his own campaign $700,000. Red flags if you're a campaign finance investigator.

00:35:23.860 But then whoops, on the company's financial disclosure, which you have to submit,

00:35:29.360 there were zero clients listed. Uh-oh. A little weird. It's an unfortunate thing when that

00:35:36.220 happens. Now, post George Santos' investigation of every part of his life, it's estimated that

00:35:42.980 the company's annual revenue was $50,000. And it's now dissolved, I believe.

00:35:48.980 Oh yeah, it's now dissolved.

00:35:49.880 Because they didn't file the correct forms needed to keep this alive.

00:35:54.240 Correct. On Wikipedia, it says, at the time that Santos filed his 2022 financial disclosure

00:35:59.300 statement, Devolder had... Guess how much money Devolder had in its company bank account?

00:36:04.100 oh i think i read this was it like four dollars four dollars yeah yeah four dollars which does

00:36:09.760 wendy still do the four for four it's just famously difficult to lend your campaign

00:36:20.280 seven hundred thousand dollars if you only have four four dollars you're gonna run into some

00:36:26.760 things there but um yeah so that catches us up to the rest of the story he's gets elected

00:36:33.520 to Congress in 2022 on the fake story. And then he has a, you know, his time in Congress is

00:36:40.140 mostly made up of people discussing his controversy, which becomes available after

00:36:45.060 he was elected. And then he ends up getting ousted, not for the lies, but for the lies that

00:36:51.620 he told rich donors about where their money was going. And so that's his life. And what do you

00:36:59.160 make of it? So much. So much. One thing that I think about it that I think is so interesting

00:37:05.140 is throughout his life, George's family really loves conservative politicians in Brazil. And

00:37:14.280 growing up, family members of George's have said the TV was always on in their house and it was

00:37:20.580 always playing this news network, a Brazilian news network that leans conservative. And at one point,

00:37:26.760 he would even have claimed to work there as a journalist which was never true but like that

00:37:31.000 was one of the small lies like small lies that he told people when he lived in brazil was that he

00:37:35.880 had worked for this network at one point so he has this fascination and adoration for conservative

00:37:43.200 tv personalities and then when he gets into the u.s politics he loves trump right and i do think

00:37:51.960 that you can see how Trump kind of paved the way for a personality like George Santos to have so

00:37:58.240 much success. Because even now, even in his post-Congress career, which is just kind of

00:38:05.580 beginning, he has succeeded in a lot of the same ways that I think Trump has, where the substance

00:38:11.680 of what he's saying, the political substance, if there is even any, doesn't matter as much as if

00:38:17.460 he's funny or not. And I think I can see why people would get sucked into the George Santos

00:38:24.260 lifestyle. And I can see why you would be his friend. And I can even see why people give him

00:38:29.080 money because he's so funny. And a lot of times, I think for better or for worse, in some cases,

00:38:36.660 worse, if you can really tell a joke, if you can really make someone laugh, if you can turn whatever

00:38:43.460 you're doing into something that's comedic, then people will find value in that. And they might

00:38:48.000 even support you even if they disagree with the substance of what you're saying. And this is

00:38:52.520 something that Trump is so good at. Trump can make even his strongest, staunchest political

00:38:57.800 opponents, I think he can make them laugh. I mean, something that I think about a lot when

00:39:02.400 I think about the trajectory of his tenure in Congress is that he wasn't removed for the lies

00:39:08.480 that he told about his biography.

00:39:10.040 Right.

00:39:10.400 And look, I'm not like politically knowledgeable

00:39:12.900 to the extent that I would know if that's possible or not.

00:39:16.260 But we do know that he was, you know,

00:39:17.800 he was eventually removed

00:39:19.000 because of the campaign finance lies.

00:39:21.180 Yes.

00:39:21.680 Which were specific lies.

00:39:23.000 Yes.

00:39:23.720 That affected specific people

00:39:25.220 and the feelings and egos of specific people.

00:39:28.220 Yes.

00:39:29.080 It's so interesting.

00:39:30.060 I think that George Santos seemingly

00:39:33.200 did not become a politician

00:39:35.060 because he had any substantive goals for policy in mind.

00:39:41.520 Why do you think he became a politician?

00:39:43.740 Such a good question.

00:39:45.240 I think that he was enamored with the way that he saw politics on TV and on social media.

00:39:52.680 I kind of think that he became a politician for attention.

00:39:56.600 It was a way for him to get stature.

00:39:59.620 It was a way for people to say his name, to know who he was.

00:40:02.980 And it was a way for him to actually not only exist in these upper class spaces defined by

00:40:11.200 wealth. He didn't just exist in them because he was a politician. He had leadership in them.

00:40:16.120 But his trajectory as a politician, there were really high ranking Republicans who loved George

00:40:22.580 Santos. Elise Stefanik is one of them. She not only helped him get elected, but then in Congress,

00:40:30.780 she would defend him. And the Republican Party in Congress used him for votes. They were not

00:40:39.100 gunning to get him out of there after all this was discovered because he helped them have a majority

00:40:44.260 and he would also help them pass or have the desired target of votes for specific policy

00:40:51.080 proposals. As a Republican in this district, he was useful to that. He was a vote. He was a vote.

00:40:56.380 right but substantially he did not bring anything to the table right right that's what i mean like

00:41:01.920 his his whole kind of political career was just marked by his celebrity it was and the you mentioned

00:41:08.640 it earlier but like when you look at policies that he supported or things that he introduced

00:41:13.180 they weren't things that had they wouldn't even have had uh like gen like consequential effects

00:41:20.760 Like one of the things that he co-sponsored, I believe, or co-introduced was making the AR-15 style rifle the national gun of America, which means nothing.

00:41:32.280 It means nothing.

00:41:32.760 It's symbolic.

00:41:33.700 Yeah.

00:41:34.080 Totally symbolic.

00:41:35.320 Yeah.

00:41:35.760 So it's like he existed there as like some sort of culture warrior.

00:41:39.000 Yeah.

00:41:39.560 More than he was actually a politician.

00:41:41.940 I was on Capitol Hill.

00:41:43.900 I almost made a joke.

00:41:45.120 On January 6th.

00:41:46.120 No.

00:41:48.320 I actually.

00:41:49.520 So.

00:41:49.740 George Santos was.

00:41:50.760 was he yes oh work i mean that that makes sense yeah he i mean he wasn't in the capital like

00:41:57.900 as far as i know he wasn't in the capital but he was at like the trump stop the steal rally

00:42:03.780 and he was tweeting like this is amazing right right right i know i was gonna make a joke so

00:42:09.640 we're recording this the day or two days after the breaking news of the um the senate twink

00:42:16.620 scandal yes the senate twink scandal which maybe that'll be maybe that'll be a bonus episode on

00:42:22.040 the patreon i was at the capitol uh a couple months ago and i was speaking with uh representative

00:42:27.380 lauren underwood and she said something to me that really stuck out which is some people do

00:42:32.220 this job because they want to serve their constituents and some people do this job

00:42:35.480 because they want a tv show afterwards which was i was like very shocked that even like a liberal

00:42:41.300 yeah representative would say something like that about the place that she works i mean it's such a

00:42:45.360 searing indictment of what Congress has become. George Santos, his lies were exposed. And then

00:42:52.220 he was just kind of like, I mean, before the campaign finance stuff, he was gunning for a

00:42:56.560 second term. Yeah. And I very well think that he could have. Oh, absolutely. Part of the reason why

00:43:02.040 I think that regardless of the lies is because I think that like he represented what the vast

00:43:08.380 majority of America already thinks about politicians. Yes. We already think that they're

00:43:13.480 all liars yes we already think that they're all you know narcissists on some level and living on a

00:43:21.500 fundamentally different plane of reality than the rest of us and so like what made this all the more

00:43:27.400 different and like i don't know if anything did and i think when you look at oh my god maybe they're 0.98

00:43:32.780 gonna clip that out of context and be like matt's an idiot because he thinks every politician is 0.61

00:43:36.080 basically george santa i don't think that but i do think on some level he just played into this 0.98

00:43:42.060 like the caricature of what we already believe yes that's like in the same way that i think you

00:43:47.320 could say a lot of the same things about trump like he presents as what you think a politician

00:43:53.320 is versus what a politician actually is and in the same way like george santos it's the appearance

00:44:00.240 that matters more than the actual substance so for george santos he was successful because he

00:44:05.480 had this appearance of being wealthy and this appearance of being conservative and having a

00:44:11.700 conservative upbringing and being molded by wealth. And the truth didn't really matter as

00:44:16.960 much. Even now, even now, when you look at how people respond to George Santos, when he admits

00:44:22.800 his lies, it gets a laugh from the crowd. Like when George Santos is like, I actually didn't go

00:44:28.360 to Harvard Business School, but doesn't everybody lie on their resume? Like people love hearing that.

00:44:33.600 And I don't think it's because they admire lying. I just think that for a lot of people,

00:44:39.120 something that seems funny is just that's like a really dominant emotional reaction to have

00:44:45.780 and it's like if you're gonna laugh at something then that's going to leave a positive impression

00:44:50.160 even if you don't actually approve of what is going on well so what do you make then of his

00:44:57.120 fame now because he has he's more famous than he ever has been yes he's making more money than he

00:45:03.400 ever has been yes and he's charging initially i think he was charging under a hundred dollars per

00:45:08.080 video that is now up to five hundred dollars and vanity fair reported of last week that he was

00:45:15.300 making eighty thousand dollars a day it was reported that in one day or maybe not in a day

00:45:22.120 but in like let's say one 48 hour period on cameo which is roughly two days he made more in like the

00:45:29.100 first 48 hours than he made in the entire year of being a congressman in office right and and

00:45:34.340 that eighty thousand dollars a day is his own self-reporting yes like he said but they saw

00:45:39.840 they got the receipts the cameo receipts were provided so it was actually fact-checked that

00:45:45.180 he was making that much money what's interesting is i read that and i was like i have no reason

00:45:49.660 to believe george santos ever again in my life of anything he says and i fully believe that he's

00:45:54.060 making $80,000 a day. And just so my slate can be clean on this issue, if you are listening to

00:45:59.380 this right now, do not buy a cameo from George Santos. This is not a good person. This is not

00:46:05.020 a person I haven't, I'm interested in giving money or lending legitimacy to his schemes to

00:46:12.180 get money. Regardless of what I say or think, there are a lot of people giving him money right

00:46:16.240 now because it's camp it is and it really goes back to the fact that he was able to trick so

00:46:24.020 many people into giving him money in the first place like going all the way back to his mother's

00:46:27.980 friend who had inherited this money from her parents dying he convinced her to give him a lot

00:46:33.160 of money and he's convincing i mean when you go on cameo you can see like the people who are on

00:46:40.120 cameo which it's a fascinating platform like looking at the types of people who are on it

00:46:44.100 and how they make money. But so when you go to their profile, you can usually see a few examples,

00:46:49.120 like they will post a few examples of the videos they've made publicly so that you can see what

00:46:53.600 you're getting. And some of the videos that George Santos posted publicly, he's addressing the people

00:46:58.780 who bought them. So you hear a little bit about these people who are buying these cameos from him.

00:47:03.220 And at least one of them was an actual NYU MBA student, because in the cameo, he's like laughing

00:47:10.600 about how like he's like you know the piece where i pretended to go to college right he's like

00:47:14.980 making a cameo for the person i was pretending to be yes but it's like you think to yourself like

00:47:19.580 why would this and like why is this nyu student sending him hundreds of dollars but it's the same

00:47:26.160 exact reason why donors gave him money for his republican race and it's the same reason why

00:47:31.860 roommates and friends were giving him money like he that that gift of speaking that gift of talking

00:47:38.100 to people. He still has it. And it really works. And it doesn't even matter if you know he's a

00:47:43.980 scammer or not. People are still going to give him money. Do you think the fact that he's a

00:47:48.520 scammer is in and of itself something that people admire because having carried out a scam like that

00:47:54.440 is still an accomplishment? It's still an achievement? I kind of think so. And I think

00:47:58.380 that's something that most people would not admit or even necessarily realize. But I do think that

00:48:06.180 to some degree when you look at the way scammers have become so prominent in our culture

00:48:11.100 right in a positive way right right we have like the anna delvey yes i mean we have entire podcast

00:48:16.480 devoted to entire tv shows dedicated to like scammers like what what what do you make of that

00:48:21.060 i think that when we see those sorts of like tv shows when we hear about what these people do

00:48:26.280 we recognize that part of the scam it's like they are doing something like they're not just

00:48:32.260 like sitting there and getting money. When you think of a person who's already rich making

00:48:37.260 hundreds of thousands of dollars off of interest on the money that they already have, there's

00:48:41.580 nothing impressive about that. There's nothing entertaining about that. They're not working for

00:48:45.360 anything. When you hear a story of someone successfully scamming thousands or millions

00:48:50.080 of dollars, that's interesting because they did something to make that money. It wasn't legal.

00:48:55.980 It wasn't ethical. It wasn't moral. But I think that in the same way that we have this sort of

00:49:02.860 American myth-making that we value, we also absolutely value the efforts of these scammers

00:49:10.640 because we think it's interesting, but we also clearly recognize it as they are working.

00:49:17.020 Because every day, the people who are already billionaires, every day they make more money

00:49:23.180 that most of us will ever see in our lives just off of interest just off of the money sitting in

00:49:27.780 there they're not doing anything for it they're not working for it but we recognize that scammers

00:49:32.160 are working there's like so much media like there's that movie that came out with aubrey plaza

00:49:37.500 where she yes you know the one and like watching that movie it's like you're watching her become a

00:49:44.640 criminal and emily the criminal emily the criminal yes as you watch emily pursue being a criminal as

00:49:51.480 her new career, you see that she is working hard. You see the risks that she's taking. You see the

00:49:56.540 work that she's undergoing. And you feel like you're kind of rooting for her in a lot of ways.

00:50:01.920 You're rooting for her to scam this successfully because you know that she's motivated by very

00:50:06.600 human and very universal sentiments. She needs money. You recognize that. And so in a lot of 0.89

00:50:12.620 ways, I think looking at American culture right now, it's almost like scamming has been valorized

00:50:18.660 more so than what we look at as less impressive, the sort of passive income that is legal.

00:50:26.520 But that is to us, I think, less aspirational than even scamming itself.

00:50:31.780 Right. I think in some way we all aspire to, I don't know, achieving a life for ourselves that

00:50:38.840 can exist, at least in the United States, that can exist independently of like the soul crushing

00:50:45.100 yes structure of capitalism yes that keeps us chained and watching people kind of leap forward

00:50:53.580 and try even if you know i i i have no interest in propping you know these specific people up

00:51:01.480 you know people like george santos who have hurt people in the process yes who have hurt a lot of

00:51:05.280 people and he had hurt a lot of people even if he hadn't become a far-right-wing politician

00:51:09.060 Which, by the way, do you think he actually has far right beliefs?

00:51:13.100 I do. But I think that they are. It's so interesting because it's like when you look at his real biography, his parents were immigrants. His mother worked, lived and died as a very low class individual whose work and labor was being exploited by systems outside of her control.

00:51:34.240 And you would think that that would result in somebody having progressive beliefs, like championing people like his own mother.

00:51:43.060 Yeah.

00:51:43.280 But what you actually see in reality, like when you really look at how people's political beliefs are shaped, I think that more often than not, people would rather see themselves aspirationally, like somebody who grew up in this position would more likely vote for perhaps Donald Trump because they aspire to be him.

00:52:03.140 And I think that is really a lot of like the motivating psychology behind George Santos and people who continue to give him money is it's this aspirational culture and it has become aspirational even as we recognize that they're not telling the truth, that they are criminals, that they are scamming.

00:52:21.460 There's still that sense of aspirational nature to it.

00:52:24.260 And I think, you know, what we had said earlier about how George Santos is like the idea of a corrupt politician, like he's what you imagine politicians already are.

00:52:33.720 He's the cartoon version.

00:52:34.820 He's the cartoon version.

00:52:36.180 And I think in a lot of ways, these scammers who we've like kind of held up as a society, it's like people already think that they, people already know that our current environment, economically, socially, politically is corrupt.

00:52:51.060 So if everything is already corrupt, if we already are living in this corrupt system, then why wouldn't you appreciate and aspire to be this sort of scammer? It's like a symptom of greater disillusionment in all of these institutions that has resulted in somebody like George Santos being the type of person who you would send $500 to instead of just being like, oh, well, this person is like a criminal.

00:53:16.700 they should go to jail. But I also think that you can hold these beliefs at the same time.

00:53:20.780 There's in the same in the same breath as having this like greater disillusionment with the system.

00:53:25.260 I also think that a lot of people trust authority figures to do what needs to be done or what's

00:53:31.780 right in the case of George Santos. So it's almost like their decisions as a consumer don't really

00:53:37.480 matter. Like it's like, well, why wouldn't I get a cameo from George Santos? Like I'm not the ethics

00:53:42.820 committee right it's not our job to punish him but it is at the end of the day it is truly like

00:53:49.340 mind-boggling that somebody would pay him hundreds of dollars yeah and again like please don't i

00:53:57.200 hope you don't i hope you don't but i also feel the same way about when people buy a new jeffree

00:54:02.260 star palette okay you know what so pat and i were on the phone before we started recording this and

00:54:10.620 she made a claim to me that i found fascinating which i now want you to explore which is that

00:54:18.600 you see virtually no difference between george santos and jeffrey star yes and it brings me no

00:54:23.000 pleasure to admit that this is like at least the second time that jeffrey star has come up

00:54:28.580 on my podcast in episodes that have essentially nothing to do with him that makes sense i think

00:54:35.920 that the comparison first started to come to me when i was really looking at the history of george

00:54:42.640 santos's lies and the lies that he told included things like pretending he was richer than he

00:54:49.260 actually was making up claims about his mother like his bylaw like literally in essence faking

00:54:55.640 his own mother's death and for for the narrative yeah for the narrative and i was like who does

00:55:02.460 this behavior remind me of the first person that comes to mind is jeffrey star and he's not the

00:55:07.880 only influencer who does this but he is one of the influencers who i think has done this in some of

00:55:13.240 the most egregious ways possible okay in what way because i will tell you like my understanding of

00:55:18.040 jeffrey star you know i have a deeper understanding of jeffrey star than i would like to publicly

00:55:22.460 admit in this moment but jeffrey star is a beauty guru yes who like moved from la to wisconsin and

00:55:28.280 he loves to like show off his wealth in really extravagant ways yes he used to be like a myspace

00:55:34.300 musician yes kind of and now is like fabulously wealthy selling makeup yeah at one point in the

00:55:41.080 in at one point in myspace's history i think he was like the most friended person okay which would

00:55:46.960 be equivalent to like the most followed person on tiktok today and as social media networks have

00:55:52.200 risen and fallen and MySpace is dead and TikTok is new, Jeffree Star has always managed to

00:55:59.260 maintain influencer status, which is no small feat. He's one of the few people, I think,

00:56:04.960 maybe one of the only people who was both MySpace famous and TikTok famous.

00:56:11.280 Right. Yeah.

00:56:12.220 It's kind of staggering. And one way that he has done this is through constant myth-making,

00:56:17.800 most of which is not true so like for example with the george santos my mom died in 9-11 claims

00:56:24.780 it made me think of how for years online jeffree star would like show pictures of his aunt and

00:56:31.640 claim that it was his mother and then in like 2018 maybe roughly he admitted that that was not

00:56:38.360 his mom and that he was actually like ashamed of his family and so he just lied to everyone

00:56:42.740 and pretended that his aunt was his mom for years.

00:56:46.260 And people, I think, just kind of were like, okay, and moved on.

00:56:49.900 You look at his whole life laid out.

00:56:51.580 You're like, that was a weird thing to do.

00:56:54.220 Right.

00:56:54.720 But that's, I mean, that's what I was saying about like the quote unquote significant lies

00:56:58.960 versus the seemingly insignificant lies is that there are no insignificant lies.

00:57:02.700 They're all of equal importance because they are all about the creation of an entire story

00:57:09.580 of a person that may or may not be you.

00:57:12.340 Yes. And I think similarly to George Santos, I mean, they're both queer men who have at times, I think, lied for survival in the sense that when Jeffree Star was like getting his start, I think that he really did face a lot of discrimination and bigotry in his real life for being gender nonconforming, for being queer, for being gay.

00:57:34.180 And I think that lying became sort of a defense mechanism for him.

00:57:38.660 And then later in life, it became something that was very profitable for him.

00:57:42.700 But he lies so much.

00:57:44.500 Which George Santa, I mean, that is the same.

00:57:46.620 All right, I'm understanding the parallel.

00:57:47.900 And no matter what, even though it's been years and years since Jeffree Star has started to admit and actually fact check himself and be like, yes, I did lie about XYZ.

00:57:58.760 Yes, this was not true.

00:58:00.560 And he's done this in various capacities.

00:58:02.080 despite all of that his fandom still remains strong and people are still willing to give him

00:58:08.100 money and it makes you ask why and then you look at his fans and a lot of them have this very

00:58:14.520 aspirational relationship with jeffrey where they admire him for this behavior why do they admire

00:58:22.280 him because it made him money and it's like if the the ends for a lot of people justify the means

00:58:28.540 But both Jeffrey Starr and George Santos, with George Santos, we know for sure with Jeffrey, it could go either way.

00:58:39.960 It's speculative.

00:58:41.360 But both of them appear to have gone to great lengths to create the appearance of wealth.

00:58:48.080 And it's unclear how much wealth they actually have.

00:58:52.620 Like with Jeffrey, I don't really know because there is no ethics committee for YouTubers. 0.58

00:58:57.260 so we're never probably 0.86

00:58:58.900 there really should be

00:59:00.220 but if George Santos had just become a YouTuber

00:59:03.820 then

00:59:05.480 it's unclear if any of these lies would ever catch up

00:59:07.960 to him and now he can

00:59:09.900 be a YouTuber and get away with it all

00:59:11.800 right

00:59:12.480 I think

00:59:15.060 Jeffrey Starr and George Santos

00:59:17.580 would make a fantastic couple

00:59:19.640 I think we're going to see them on a TikTok

00:59:21.220 that's my 2024 prediction

00:59:22.900 on TikTok Live they're going to be battling

00:59:25.460 Oh, totally.

00:59:26.720 Because Jeffrey's like every day is like one of the top TikTok live stream battlers.

00:59:31.520 He like has found a new medium to succeed in yet again.

00:59:36.520 Along with George Santos, there has been a recent trend over the past few years of celebrity

00:59:43.720 figures literally going to jail, but retaining their reputation and status in celebrity.

00:59:50.820 so we have jen shaw being i think one of the more recent examples real housewife real housewife jen 1.00

00:59:57.220 shaw who def like the things that jen shaw did were horrible didn't she like scam old people

01:00:03.640 out of money or she defrauded the elderly it doesn't get much worse than this when i read

01:00:11.720 about what jen shaw did and then i look at the bravo fans who still love her i'm just like

01:00:17.540 what are we doing but at the same time i understand the camp value well in all the real housewives

01:00:26.100 because ultimately like someone's makeup is good but this is this is my question right it's like

01:00:32.560 there are a lot of people online even with me making this episode there are people who will

01:00:38.720 message me saying that i'm like you know laundering his image or making light of the actual truly very

01:00:47.240 bad things that he did and like all of these people were talking about like jeffrey star

01:00:51.120 in his own way jen shaw anna delvey george santos like they have all done bad things they've all

01:00:57.500 hurt people and then they become these kind of not not jeffrey star jeffrey star will never be

01:01:01.800 a camp icon but the rest of them like there's this camp element yeah where we like they become

01:01:07.300 icons right people dress as anna delvey for halloween like is that a bad thing is it an

01:01:13.580 is it an indictment of like us as consumers of these stories? Can people do whatever they want

01:01:20.640 as long as they are funny enough to get away with it? Right. That's one of the big questions. And I

01:01:26.220 think that it's something that you have to look at like a very, like it's up to us as consumers

01:01:31.800 and people who a lot of times are making these people money. Like we don't like to think of,

01:01:38.320 I think a lot of times, especially with internet culture, people don't like to think of themselves

01:01:41.800 as the ones who deserve to be held accountable, but as a viewer, as a listener, as somebody who

01:01:48.740 is putting on the Anna Delvey costume, as someone who is paying for the cameo, it's like you are

01:01:54.460 the building blocks of this person's success. So it is sort of like an introspective, like turn

01:01:59.520 it in on yourself question. It's also a question of institutional systemic failure because in theory

01:02:07.280 it's not anyone's fault that George Santos became a congressperson. It's the United State

01:02:12.480 government's fault for enabling this person to become a U.S. congressperson. Right, for desecrating

01:02:18.380 what it means to be a politician to the point where he can. And he wasn't the first. I think

01:02:25.240 Trump in a lot of ways set the stage for George Santos and more, like more to come. Is there a

01:02:31.440 moral responsibility on us to forcibly fade George Santos into obscurity? Or are we allowed to erect

01:02:39.980 a statue of him? Because that was what I was going to do after we stopped.

01:02:45.640 I think one thing that gets lost a lot is sort of the distinction between like talking about

01:02:52.520 someone or criticizing someone and then like platforming someone or supporting them. And it's

01:02:57.540 hard because through social media, they become one in the same. Like even if you go to a YouTube

01:03:03.980 video and leave a comment expressing your displeasure with what's being said, in a lot of

01:03:08.780 ways, that's a useful metric for the YouTuber. Right. Because you're still watching, you're

01:03:13.320 still commenting. Like a click is a click, a view is a view. It doesn't matter if it was positive

01:03:16.800 or negative. And so in that kind of environment, it's easier to sort of shirk the responsibility

01:03:22.600 and just be like, well, someone, if I don't pay for a George Santos cameo, someone else is going

01:03:28.960 to. I think there's an element of personal responsibility. But I also think that like

01:03:33.440 much in almost every case, personal responsibility is used to eclipse broader systemic failures.

01:03:40.740 And I think that the George Santos story includes a lot of that as well. Because ultimately,

01:03:46.660 if you get scammed, for most people, there is no recourse. For most people, there is no recourse

01:03:51.740 for being scammed and so that's like kind of one of the bigger questions is like well how did he

01:03:57.020 get away with all of this george santos was the sixth serving representative to ever be removed

01:04:03.580 right he was sixth to ever be removed in the middle of his term yes from the house of

01:04:08.280 representatives and yet when he was removed it's again he he has he has the myth of himself he has

01:04:17.100 the the ongoing kind of like villain story of himself as the main character which i think he

01:04:22.200 is yeah and he there are these pictures of him walking down the capitol steps in this like big

01:04:28.220 overcoat that's he's not wearing but it's strapped just around his shoulders and he you know one of

01:04:33.980 the reporters as george santos was walking out was like what do you what message do you send to the

01:04:39.360 rest of your or not your constituents your colleagues uh your fellow congress people and

01:04:43.740 he was like to hell with them and you know he aspired to political office i don't even know

01:04:49.880 that's what he was aspiring to or maybe political office was just a symbol for him was a symbol for

01:04:55.160 him and a step to what he continues to aspire to through cameo and all these other sorts of like

01:05:01.020 you know celebrity image building things but like he got kicked out of congress historically he got

01:05:06.060 kicked out of congress and still do you think he got what he wanted yes i do think he got what he

01:05:12.200 wanted which was to be known I think that when it goes back to the very beginning like something we

01:05:19.100 said at the very very beginning of this podcast was a lot of children lie and it's like well why

01:05:25.420 do children lie a lot of times to put on my child psychologist cap which I don't actually have

01:05:30.040 qualifications for children a lot of times lie for attention because as a child you do not have

01:05:37.400 autonomy. You are, as a child, you are generally only able to do things within the realm of what

01:05:43.980 your parents or guardians allow you to do. And so a lot of times children lie just to get attention,

01:05:49.540 not because they're bad people or they want to hurt you, but they have a very human need for

01:05:54.080 attention. And what I see in George Santos is I see somebody who his desire for attention does

01:06:01.240 not seem like it will ever be capped. I don't think he'll ever reach a point where he's like,

01:06:05.760 I'm finally satiated with the attention that I have. Same with Jeffree Star or many of these

01:06:12.120 influencers. They never go away. If what they wanted was respect or if what they wanted was

01:06:18.280 a certain amount of money or a certain follower count, then eventually they would go away,

01:06:22.380 but they never do. They remain on the internet because they want that valve of just getting

01:06:29.940 attention, whether it's positive or negative. Yeah. George Santos said, I am the embodiment

01:06:34.660 of the american dream do you think he is in some ways i think he is yeah i think he totally is yeah

01:06:40.920 and i think george santos is as truthful or as much of a lie as the american dream allows

01:06:48.460 absolutely because when it when you boil down like what the general consensus of what the american

01:06:54.160 dream is when you boil that down it's the idea that if you work hard then you can be successful

01:07:00.000 but i think we all know we know that that's not true we know that that's not true we know that

01:07:06.260 the people who work the hardest are often never recognized for their work you could even say that

01:07:10.660 about george santos's mother she worked hard yeah really hard and all she has to show for it is

01:07:17.440 dying in 9-11 oh god that's the end i think that's the end i'm sorry

01:07:31.120 oh kat thank you so much for being here today where my first friend of the show

01:07:40.120 friend in real life and friend of the show oh where where can people support your work where

01:07:44.840 can people find you you can find me i'm still on twitter i refuse to call it x um i'm still on

01:07:51.460 twitter but it is a dying platform so you can also find me on instagram tick tock and then i'm also

01:07:59.080 on threads in blue sky and you report on nbc news and my job job well and i report for nbc news

01:08:07.620 kat thank you so much for being here thank you the listener for making it this far i hope that

01:08:15.200 you i usually say i hope that you learn something i don't even know what there is to like take away

01:08:22.700 i hope you had a good time i hope you had a good time you can't we can't always be morally 0.89

01:08:28.460 righteous educators on this podcast i just hope you had a good fucking time and um yeah if you 0.82

01:08:33.700 like the show and you want to support it you can i don't know give us a rating or share it with your 0.93

01:08:39.260 friend or just don't do any of it above i'm glad that you are here and uh keep telling the truth

01:08:43.960 or you know or don't see which one gets you further until next time stay fruity

A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - December 20, 2023

George Santos is a Terrible Person and the Embodiment of the American Dream

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