Politics

Lying Rep. George Santos said he’s a modern-day Rosa Parks. He didn’t get the response he expected.

Rep. George Santos
Rep. George Santos Photo: Shutterstock

Despite facing 13 federal charges related to fraud, being forced to give up his committee assignments after most of his life story turned out to be fabricated, and constantly facing ridicule and protest online and in-person, out Rep. George Santos (R-NY) appears to have a very high opinion of himself.

Santos appeared on Mike Crispi Unafraid podcast and railed against his critics, saying that their criticisms of him for lying, fraud, and allegedly being a thief are the same sort of oppression that Black people faced in 1950s Alabama.

“I’m gonna call them out. You want to call me a liar? I’ll call you a sellout,” Santos told Crispi, who got second place in the Republican primary in a 2022 U.S. House race in New Jersey.

“I mean [Sen.] Mitt Romney, the man goes to the State of the Union of the United States wearing a Ukraine lapel pin, tells me, a Latino gay man, that I shouldn’t sit in the front and that I should be in the back,” he continued. “Well, guess what? Rosa Parks wouldn’t sit in the back and neither am I going to sit in the back. That’s just the reality of how it works.”

“Mitt Romney lives in a very different world, and he needs to buckle up because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride for him.”

He was referring to an incident that occurred at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address this past February.

Members of the press saw a confrontation between the two Republicans from a distance and later that evening asked Romney what happened. He said he told Santos, “You don’t belong here.” This happened two months after Santos’s past was exposed in multiple news reports.

“I didn’t expect he’d be standing there trying to shake hands with every senator and the president of the United States,” Romney continued. “Given the fact that he’s under Ethics investigation, he should be sitting in the back row and staying quiet instead of parading in front of the president and the people coming into the room.”

Santos complained about the interaction over the following week, telling reporters that it’s “not the first time in history that I’ve been told to shut up and go to the back of the room, especially by people who come from a privileged background, and it’s not gonna be the last.”

“And I’m never gonna shut up and go to the back of the room.”

On Twitter, people disagreed with Santos’s characterization of himself.

Santos has pled not guilty to the federal charges that he faces.

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