Within the 17 minutes that Ziwe Fumudoh, recognized for her witty and acerbic interviewing model, engaged George Santos, essentially the most telling second was an earnest one.
“What can we do,” she requested Mr. Santos, “to get you to go away?”
“Cease inviting me to your gigs,” he replied.
“So the lesson,” Ms. Fumudoh, who had invited Mr. Santos to the sit-down, stated later, “is to cease inviting you locations.”
“However you may’t,” he replied. “As a result of folks need the content material.”
Mr. Santos was telling the reality. After his expulsion from the Home of Representatives earlier this month, the ex-congressman has by some means change into extra ubiquitous than earlier than. He now fees $500 for every video he information on Cameo, and has a non-public subscription service on X.com the place he has promised to share scandalous particulars about his former colleagues in Congress.
And his interview with Ms. Fumudoh was extensively anticipated.
However regardless of her efforts to pin him down on his use of marketing campaign funds, purported race-blindness and the seeming inconsistency between his embrace of drag tradition and assist for far-right anti-drag mandates, the interview broke no information.
Certainly, it solely additional showcased the transformation of Mr. Santos, who’s dealing with 23 felony counts, from a scowling and disgraced determine hounded by reporters right into a form of showman, keen to show that shame right into a form of low-level movie star.
Many visitors who’ve gotten into essentially the most hassle on Ms. Fumudoh’s present appeared to go on with out figuring out that the joke may be on them. And a few — just like the presidential and mayoral candidate Andrew Yang and the meals author Alison Roman — have had a lot to lose.
However Mr. Santos, who was expelled from Congress after an ethics report discovered proof that he had overtly stolen from his marketing campaign, has little to lose and little to cover.
He was even prepared to play on the pending felony case towards him for a gag — joking close to the top of the present about wanting to maintain Ms. Fumodoh’s signature for some later goal (presumably fraudulent).
Mr. Santos delivered ready traces about corruption in Congress and the potential for a future in politics. He was hardly ever placed on the defensive, taking some gentle warmth when he acknowledged he wasn’t conversant in queer luminaries like James Baldwin and Harvey Milk.
The efficiency marked a stark distinction from the determine he lower only a 12 months in the past, when The New York Occasions reported that just about the whole lot Mr. Santos had stated about himself on the marketing campaign path was a fiction. Within the rapid wake of that report, Mr. Santos largely shunned the media, rising solely briefly to confess to a few of the falsehoods and provide a lukewarm apology.
His first days in Washington have been marked by awkward silence, as he prevented reporters who chased him by way of the halls of Congress.
However his abbreviated tenure in nationwide politics seems to have ready Mr. Santos for confrontational exchanges, instructing him when to reply and when to take a cross.
“What recommendation do you’ve got for younger, various folks with character issues contemplating a profession in politics?” Ms. Fumudoh requested at one level.
Mr. Santos mounted her with a stare. “You’re cute,” he stated lastly, then, calling out to the manufacturing crew: “She’s so cute!”
Ms. Fumudoh hosted a well-regarded present on YouTube earlier than transferring to Showtime in 2021. That present was canceled earlier this 12 months, however Ms. Fumudoh resurrected the medium for a particular report with the previous congressman.
If there was any trace of remorse in Mr. Santos’s efficiency, it was not for any motion he has taken, however for what his shameless profile has price him.
“Home of Representatives or Home of Gucci?” Ms. Fumudoh requested at one level.
“You already know what? Home of Representatives,” Mr. Santos stated with a smile, including, for emphasis: “Slay the boots home down, Home of Representatives day by day!”
“Properly, not day by day since final Friday,” Ms. Fumudoh clarified, in reference to his removing.
Mr. Santos simply stared for a second, earlier than he replied: “Properly, no matter. Who cares?”
Who certainly.
Michael Gold contributed reporting.
