When I was in high school in Boulder, Colorado, there was a guy (I'll call him J) who we were all friends with. J was likable, kind, and funny. He was also a pathological liar. He boasted about unbelievable things, like playing bass for Chicago while they were recording at the nearby Caribou Ranch studio. Everyone knew J was a giant fibber, but we all thought it was funny. (When I saw J ten years after we graduated from high school, he told me was the CEO of a large Silicon Valley company.)
In some ways, George Santos reminds me of J. I don't think Santos can restrain himself from lying. It's a condition, I suppose. Does Santos know he's lying about his education, his employment, his former career as a drag queen, his arrest record, his charity work? No one but Santos knows.
The difference between J and Santos is J never tried to cheat or steal from any of us. He was a good guy. Santos is not a good guy, and he's smart enough to realize that the current GOP will give safe harbor to liars, hypocrites, secret fetus aborters, grifters, sex criminals, con artists, cheaters, and thieves, as long as they stick to the talking points and vote along with the Ultra MAGAs.
Santos has given conflicting stories about 9/11 and his mother. In his December 2021 version, he said, "My mom was a 9/11 survivor. She was in the south tower, and she made it out. She got caught up in the ash cloud. My mom fought cancer till her death."
As you might guess, Santos' mother wasn't even in the United States on 9/11. Immigration records show she was thousands of miles away, in Brazil, between 1999 and 2003.
The GOP is loaded with sociopaths because the people who elected them seek leaders who embody their own morally bankrupt beliefs and values.
