New York Representative-elect George Santos speaks during the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Annual Leadership Meeting at the Venetian Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nev., on November 19, 2022.(David Becker / Getty Images)
Republican Representative George Santos seems to have lied about everything: his ancestry, his education, his career, his charitable work, his medical history, and other things. Many people have taken delight in the Santos story as an over-the-top example of a con man who rose to the top.
But Moira Donegan, a columnist for The Guardian, pushed the discussion about Santos deeper in a recent column by asking what purpose Santos’s lies serve and what we are to make of a political system where a liar like Santos can flourish?
The Santos story is about more than just one fibber, but a deeper and more systematic corruption. I was happy to talk to Moira on this episode of The Time of Monsters to tease out the meaning of the scandal.
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Jeet HeerTwitterJeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.