Rep.-elect George Santos had a difficult time explaining away the discrepancies in his résumé during a Fox News interview with Tulsi Gabbard, who came down hard on the New York Republican for his recent controversy.
As Santos conceded that several lies he made about his credentials were “a mistake,” Gabbard — a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and the guest host of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” — refused to let him off the hook on Tuesday, pushing him on the definition of integrity and his “blatant lies.”
“My question is, do you have no shame?” Gabbard asked at one point.
Santos, elected in November to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District, on Long Island, came under scrutiny last week when The New York Times published an investigation calling out inconsistencies in his background. On Monday, the congressman-elect told the New York Post that he had indeed lied about several of his credentials, admitting to having never worked “directly” for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup and not graduating from Baruch College, nor “from any institution of higher learning.”
Santos in the lead-up to the midterm elections had also fabricated elements of his family’s history, including that his mother was Jewish and that his maternal grandparents escaped the Holocaust during World War II. After referring to himself publicly as “half Jewish” and a “Latino Jew” during his campaign, Santos conceded to the New York Post on Monday that he is “clearly Catholic.”
Gabbard on Tuesday night pressed Santos on the details of his Jewish heritage, asking him to explain a letter his campaign had sent out in which the congressman-elect refers to himself as a “proud American jew.” Santos doubled down on his claim that although he was raised a “practicing Catholic,” his “heritage is Jewish” and has always considered himself “Jew-ish.”
Gabbard repeatedly called out Santos’ “blatant lies” throughout the interview, frequently cutting him off and redirecting her questions as he tried to deflect by bringing up alleged lies Democratic politicians have told and highlighting issues he had campaigned on. She specifically came down hard on the congressman-elect at one point when he contended that “everybody wants to nit-pick at me” but said he still remained “committed in delivering results for the American people.”
“The results that people are looking for are called into question when you tell blatant lies. Not embellishments. And this is, I think, one of the biggest concerns, congressman-elect, is that you don’t really seem to be taking this seriously,” Gabbard said. “You’ve apologized, you said you’ve made mistakes, but you’ve outright lied. A lie is not an embellishment on a résumé.”
The real issue, Gabbard continued, is how the “American people can believe anything that you may say when you are standing on the floor of the House of Representatives, supposedly fighting for them.”