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?”
“Stop inviting me to your gigs,” he replied.
“So the lesson,” Ms. Fumudoh, who had invited Mr. Santos to the sit-down, mentioned later, “is to stop inviting you places.”
“But you can’t,” he replied. “Because people want the content.”
Mr. Santos was telling the reality. After his expulsion from the House of Representatives earlier this month, the ex-congressman has in some way grow to be extra ubiquitous than earlier than. He now expenses $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 broadly anticipated.
However regardless of her efforts to pin him down on his use of campaign funds, purported race-blindness and the seeming inconsistency between his embrace of drag tradition and help for far-right anti-drag mandates, the interview broke no information.
Certainly, it solely additional showcased the transformation of Mr. Santos, who’s going through 23 felony counts, from a scowling and disgraced determine hounded by reporters right into a type of showman, keen to show that shame right into a type of low-level movie star.
Many friends who’ve gotten into essentially the most bother on Ms. Fumudoh’s present appeared to go on with out figuring out that the joke might 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 openly stolen from his marketing campaign, has little to lose and little to cover.
He was even prepared to play on the pending legal case in opposition to him for a gag — joking close to the top of the present about wanting to maintain Ms. Fumodoh’s signature for some later function (presumably fraudulent).
Mr. Santos delivered ready strains about corruption in Congress and the potential for a future in politics. He was not often placed on the defensive, taking some delicate 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 reduce only a 12 months in the past, when The New York Times reported that almost every little thing Mr. Santos had said about himself on the campaign trail 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 supply a lukewarm apology.
His first days in Washington have been marked by awkward silence, as he avoided reporters who chased him via the halls of Congress.
However his abbreviated tenure in nationwide politics seems to have ready Mr. Santos for confrontational exchanges, educating him when to reply and when to take a cross.
“What advice do you have for young, diverse people with personality disorders considering a career in politics?” Ms. Fumudoh requested at one level.
Mr. Santos mounted her with a stare. “You’re cute,” he mentioned 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.
“House of Representatives or House of Gucci?” Ms. Fumudoh requested at one level.
“You know what? House of Representatives,” Mr. Santos mentioned with a smile, including, for emphasis: “Slay the boots house down, House of Representatives every day!”
“Well, not every day since last Friday,” Ms. Fumudoh clarified, in reference to his removing.
Mr. Santos simply stared for a second, earlier than he replied: “Well, whatever. Who cares?”
Who certainly.
Michael Gold contributed reporting.
