NEW YORK — Another day, another twist in the story of Congressman George Santos. The latest claims to emerge: Santos previously said that he was the target of an assassination attempt and that he was mugged on Fifth Avenue in the middle of the day.
So now the Long Island Republican is faced with a familiar question: Did those things really happen? Or are they more falsehoods (or as he has called them, “embellishments”)?
It’s not the first outlandish incident a politician has raised about Fifth Avenue, as former President Donald Trump said during his 2016 campaign: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and I wouldn’t lose a voter.”
But now it is the representative Santos in the spotlight. On the Rachel Maddow show on Monday night, there was a new video from a Brazilian Santos podcast recorded in December. In Portuguese, he affirmed for the first time that there was an attempt on his life. During the same podcast, he claimed that assailants attacked him in August 2021 in the heart of Midtown, at Fifth Avenue and 55th Street, in the middle of the day.
Santos said on the podcast that the thieves took his watch, briefcase and shoes.
Not only are most New Yorkers likely not to believe the claims (polls show they don’t trust Santos and want him to resign), but the NYPD said he has no history of any muggings or attempts on life. of the now congressman. Santos previously admitted to the embellishments on his resume, but said an ethics investigation would not deter him from the job.
The embattled Republican didn’t answer many questions in DC on Tuesday, though he and his team did deliver donuts and coffee as the “surprise.” that he had promised to journalists who have been hounding him for answers. Perhaps less surprisingly, the freshman congressman skipped the new members meeting with President Biden.
“I won’t attend, I didn’t have time. I wasn’t on my schedule, I’m sorry,” Santos said, adding that he will do “services to the constituents” instead. He did not explain what services prevented him from attending an event with the president, and his communications director did not respond to emails or calls requesting comment.
It comes after a poll, about half of which was made up of Republicans, showed that a large majority of New Yorkers want Santos to resign amid the ongoing scandal related to his record of lying, according to a new poll released on monday.
The Siena College poll, released Monday, found that 59% of voters are calling for him to resign, compared with 17% who said he should stay in office. (The rest did not know or had no opinion).
Nearly half of Republicans, 49% overall, called for him to go, as did 54% of those who identified as politically conservative. More than 7 in 10 suburban voters said he should leave office, a difficult result for Santos, whose third district is mostly suburban Nassau County.
To the extent that Santos had any “support” in the poll, it was among Latino voters, of whom only 33% said he should definitely resign, compared to 24% who said he shouldn’t. (Nearly half of the Latino voters surveyed said they didn’t know or had no opinion, far more than any other demographic group surveyed.)
Separately, Siena also asked voters if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Santos. At -40, he had by far the worst net score in the poll, even lower than Donald Trump’s -33.
“In effect, it’s a soap opera,” said Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, one of the New York Republicans who urged Santos, calling it “kind of delusional,” to step aside. “It’s very clear to me that he has emotional problems and needs help. And if he wants to put his life back on track, it starts with him resigning from Congress.”
While it has been parodied on “Saturday Night Live” and late-night comedy shows (Santos criticized the performances, saying in a Tweet that Jon Lovitz’s impression was “embarrassing, on him, not on me”), the embattled Republican standing on two committees in DC is no laughing matter for those who wish to see him out of office.
