My god. This deliciously tasty excerpt:
In various campaign biographies, a résumé and interviews, Mr. Santos said he graduated from Baruch College in New York City, where he was a volleyball star on a championship team. He boasted of working at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs and amassing personal wealth. He claimed to be descended from Holocaust refugees; that his mother was in the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11 attacks; and that he lost four employees in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.
None of those claims were true.
Well, go big or go home. I’m sure he met Jesus Christ personally and he knows where Excalibur is hidden.
The real question is where tf were the journalists while Santos was running his campaign on these false claims?
Too busy playing horse race? Frantically trying to find something newsworthy about Hunter Biden’s laptop? Credulously glorifying some billionaire’s childish misconceptions?
Guess we’ll never know.
Well, he’s a representative for New York, in a district for New York City itself. Long Island and “technically” a tiny bit of NYC. (I have been informed that his district is mostly Long Island)
Let’s break this down into two parts, okay?
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Local journalism is dead, dead, dead, dead dead. Especially in big places like New York City, where everyone assumes that the New York Times will be covering things. They didn’t dig deep into Mayor Adams either, and that guy is under investigation now as well. They didn’t question his former police credentials after decades of police misconduct. Beyond that the NYT is more of a national newspaper than an actual local paper. I’m sure there are plenty of small independent news sources in New York City, but I’m also sure they’re mostly drowned out and ignored compared to how many people read something like the NYT.
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Corruption in New York City is literally, completely nothing new. Journalists have been failing to uncover unscrupulous activity for decades in this city. As I referenced mayor Adams above, this city filled with the rich, egotistical, and greedy, is a city built on the kind of lies George Santos peddles. How do I know? Because that city allowed Donald Trump to be a successful real estate developer using similar tactics. People have known he’s corrupt since forever, but plenty of his corruption was just ignored until decades later. Same with Rudy Guiliani and so on.
Now I’m not saying we should just give up. Local journalism is important to fight for, and NYC being a corrupt hell-hole isn’t a permanent foregone conclusion. However, my point is that NYT employs far fewer reporters than you think to cover an entire country, and the dearth of real local news sources all over the country is contributing to these kind of people succeeding, because the local press is dead in the water and can’t afford to send someone researching local corruption.
Pay for your local news, is what I am saying, I guess, and things might marginally improve.
He was a representative of long island not NYC, specifically the district my dad resides in so I get to poke fun at him for electing this absolute joke of an asshat lol
Checking the map it looks like part of it might be in queens so “technically” some part of it is NYC, but it’s mostly rich long island assholes. (I wish my dad was rich, he’s just lucky to have had a house in that area for a long time) lol
Ah yes, clearly we should simply accept that corruption is endemic, unavoidable really, and expect our press to ignore it.
Tale as old as time, I’m sure it’ll work out fine.
They have more important things to focus on anyway! Like Hunter Biden’s laptop.
And of course, Journalism’s collapsing payment model is entirely the public’s fault. Just give them more money you lazy bums!
In NYC construction, it’s well known that Trump businesses would get bids contracted, then call a meeting before kickoff and demand that the primes and subs lower there price or they won’t honor the contract. Some contractors would already have materials purchased and running the clock on the Net30s with their vendors. Trump Co. would basically tell them to go pound salt and try to sue if you want.
the NYT is more of a national newspaper than an actual local paper
These days, the NYT likes to think of itself as a tech company that also does some journalism. They’ve bought games like Wordle, they’re a podcasting company, they publish books…
The North Shore Leader, a small paper on Long Island, broke the scandal before the November election. By the time other outlets picked it up, Santos had been elected. Grant Lally joined Geoff Bennett to discuss.
Local media does need support.
Why are you blaming journalists and not the GOP for not vetting their own fucking candidate.
where tf were the journalists while Santos was running his campaign on these false claims?
There aren’t enough journalists to go around. There are hundreds of congresspeople and there definitely aren’t hundreds of journalists covering random unimportant congresspeople.
People have voted with their dollars, saying they don’t care enough about vetting congresspeople before they’re elected to actually pay the salaries of journalists to do that.
Wow, so It’s almost as if expecting unregulated capitalism to solve this problem is not working? How could that be?
Oh well, I guess we just need to ignore the problem until it gets better.
It’s about time!
As with most things American the more likely explanation is we played ourselves
At first, settlers had stuck to the edges of America, leaving the middle untouched, like a frozen pie in a microwave.
But Americans back then weren’t the humble, unassuming people they still aren’t today.
They believed in something called Manifest Destiny, the belief that all the land belonged to them and that God wanted them to go west and claim it back from the Native Americans he’d put there first by mistake.
-Philomena Cunk from Cunk on Earth.
Nah he’s a piece of shit from my neck of the woods, he more than likely saw what Trump was able to get away with and said “I live in prime Trump moron land, I can pull this off.” So he lied about literally everything and almost got away with it lol I know 100 other people who would try the same thing.
Most of us long islanders are absolute garbage selfish greedy assholes lol
Hey everyone, so here’s the deal with Santos aka Kitara Ravache: he’s totally heading back to Brazil, probably to chill on a reality show. But the real game plan? He’s gonna make bank selling some sketchy stuff and, get this, he’s got a pretty good chance of landing a gig as a deputy back there
Which two Democrats voted against expulsion and which two voted Present?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/01/us/politics/santos-expulsion-vote.html
[No]
Nikema Williams
Robert C. Scott
[Present]
Jonathan Jackson
Al Green
Their no votes were because they wanted due process and judicial conviction before kicking him out.
“Unfortunately, George Santos won a free and fair election and elections have consequences. He also has not yet been convicted of a crime and the ethics investigation is ongoing. It would be dangerous to set the precedent of expelling a Member of Congress who has not been convicted of a crime. When and if Santos is convicted of these serious offenses an expulsion resolution would be more appropriate. Let’s be clear – we have current members who have been accused of even more egregious crimes while the Republican majority continues to look the other way.”
“The Ethics Committee is charged with investigating alleged wrongdoing by members of the U.S. House of Representatives. In the past, I have been appointed to serve on multiple investigative subcommittees, and I can personally attest to the nonpartisan, rigorous and deliberative process conducted by the committee. In fact, the committee is expected to soon release findings and recommendations on the Santos matter. These resolutions were rushed to the floor outside of that deliberative process. In 2002, I voted to expel Rep. James Traficant but that was after he was found guilty in a court of law. Absent any report or recommendation from the committee, or a criminal conviction, these resolutions are premature. For the sake of the institution, we must stop the cheapening of the censure and expulsion processes for political expediency and get back to the process that we already have in place to appropriately deal with these matters.”
“We want to drag things out when people are blatantly lying because there is a sliver of a chance that it might set a precedent that clearly does not apply to the things we are worried about, like false accusations.”
If any of those processes took less time than the two year term of a Representative I might agree with them.
Which is bullshit, because his open, verified non-criminal lies should have been enough to have him expelled from Congress.
I guess we know which side of the truth these particular so called politicians are on.
According to NYT, Robert Scott of VA and Nikema Williams of GA voted No.
Al Green of TX and Jonathan Jackson of IL votes Present
Sheila Jackson Lee (TX), AOC (NY) and Dean Phillips (MN) have no vote recorded
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/01/us/politics/santos-expulsion-vote.html
I’m betting AOC is because they’re both from NY and they’re very close geographically. Definitely seems like a conflict of interest
She voted to expel him last time. I’m assuming she just wasn’t there today.
About fucking time. I’m shocked some Republicans still support the rule of law being used against their own.
