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Feb. 20, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
46:24
20230220_piers-morgan-uncensored-george-santos-exclusive
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Time Text
Lying Politicians and Truth 00:09:19
Live from New York, this is Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Well, good evening from New York City and welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored from the Big Apple.
Now, lying politicians are nothing new.
Boris Johnson famously fibbed with impunity.
Donald Trump definitely has a problematic relationship with the truth.
President Biden tells some absolute whoppers too.
Although frankly, it's not always clear if he knows he's doing it.
Well, my guest tonight might just top the lot.
Congressman George Santos, elected a Republican representative here in New York last November, has been branded the biggest liar in the history of politics.
I've called him out for this repeatedly on my show.
So you can imagine my surprise when George Santos agreed to sit down with me right here in New York earlier today for a one-on-one exclusive interview about everything.
What follows is an extraordinary interview in which I take on one of the most infamous political figures in the world right now, Whopper by Whopper.
I ask him why he lies.
I'll humor you this.
I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat for Congress and I got away with it then.
I take him to task about falsely claiming to be Jewish.
They'd always say, I was raised Catholic, but I come from a Jewish family, so that makes me Jew-ish.
He didn't come from a Jewish family.
I asked him if he wants to come clean.
He left a detailed voicemail saying that he was going to get a baseball bat, bash my husband's brains in, and I was going to watch it.
Then he was going to splatter mine all over the floor and he wasn't going to stop until there was nothing left.
Extraordinary revelations from an extraordinary figure.
It's a riveting interview with a man who's fibbed his way to global notoriety and it ends up being something more like a confessional.
I've been a terrible liar.
I mean, would you be prepared to say that?
Sure.
Like I said, well, I've been a terrible liar on those subjects.
So was he a Wall Street hot shot?
Was his mother in the Twin Towers on 9-11?
Did he graduate from college?
Was he a volleyball star at that college?
Did his grandparents survive the Holocaust?
Is he even remotely Jewish?
In a moment, I take George Santos through every one of his lies, one by one.
But first, here's a quick look at the self-declared embodiment of the American dream.
Who is George Santos?
I'm George Santos, first-generation American, son of immigrants.
George Santos to me is a bunch of lies.
It's been a bad week for George Santos.
Or as he calls it, a good week.
He's a pathological liar.
My grandparents survived the Holocaust.
Embellishing is saying you get an A when you get an A minus.
Lying is saying you graduated from a college you didn't even attend.
I never said I was Jewish.
I said I was Jew-ish.
Hey, guys, I'm Jew-ish.
Remember, I was raised Catholic.
Truth is, I'm a part-time Jewish-ish.
Someone has to explain, George Santos.
Someone has to explain this phenomenon in case you've been living under a rock.
My mom was a 9-11 survivor.
She was in the South Tower, and she made it out.
I am George Santos, Mr. Walder, if you're nasty.
The whole country is wondering what is the truth about George Santos.
Joined up by Congressman George Santos.
Well, I feel like I know you.
You've become this extraordinarily well-known global figure, albeit not necessarily for the reasons you may have wanted.
How are you dealing with all this attention?
You know, Pierce, becoming even well-known wasn't ever a desire, right?
I ran for office to be a legislator, not to be a quasi-celebrity, as we jokingly say all the time.
Washington, D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people.
But it's just been an adjustment, but just trying to get the work done.
Look, the media is going to give me all this coverage.
What I'll do is I'll use it to the advantage of uplifting my legislative priorities for the American people.
So that's how I'm going to try to use that to my advantage at this point.
How are you dealing with the complete loss of your anonymity?
And what's it been like for you to be George Santos on the streets in America?
Well, it's uncomfortable.
Think about it this way.
Just last night, my husband and I went out to the movies.
And as I'm walking from getting the tickets to get to the concession stand to get to the theater, that's George Santos.
It whispers all across the movie theater.
So it's just very strange.
Does part of you like it as much as part of you finds it uncomfortable?
I can't stand it.
And a lot of people think I love it.
I just can't stand it.
It's something I'm going to have to learn how to deal with because as you said earlier when we were talking before taping, once that genie's out of the bottle, you can't put it back in.
So you need to learn how to live with it.
And just, that's what I'm doing.
If you'd known what was going to happen to you in terms of the ferocity of the attention, you know, you've currently got eight different official investigations into you.
You know, people have called you the biggest liar in the world.
You know all this stuff.
If you'd known what was going to happen, would you have still wanted to run for office?
Absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
So me running for office was me trying to be a good servant to the American people, me giving back what I've been able to reap as a reward from, you know, this is the greatest country on earth.
And I know we can disagree, agree to disagree on that.
Second greatest.
We succeeded.
So I think it's the greatest country on earth and I'm very thankful for it.
So I just wanted to give back.
But if I knew that it would come at this cost of sacrificing my safety in many cases and my privacy, I wouldn't have done it.
Like I said, you're well known now around the world.
In the UK, people know you, but it's not for the reasons, like I said, that I suspect you would have wanted.
Let me just ask you, I guess, directly, who is the real George Santos?
I mean, you've even used a number of pseudonyms in the past.
Who is the real George Santos?
So it's a great question.
My name is George Anthony de Volder Santos.
Pretty long name.
And I've gone by Anthony my entire life almost because my mother called me Anthony.
That was her chosen name.
Dispute of parents of what to name the child.
So I ended up with two first names, two last names.
But George Santos is, I'm just a regular person, Piers.
I'm flawed like every other human being.
I've made mistakes.
I've made strides.
I've accomplished something that not many people are able to accomplish, which is to come from abject poverty and be able to make something and work something out for themselves.
I have to sit down and endure people say things about me that are absolutely not true, or they're just making out of cloth because it fits a narrative, or some desperate journalist trying to make a career off for themselves off of my name today.
This is what I've become subject of desperate journalism, journalists trying to build a journalistic career for them.
All right, let me stand up for the media.
Please do.
You've also been subject to proper interrogation because you're a congressman.
Of course.
You're one of the most important political figures in America, as any serving congressman is.
And what the media has done is they've looked into your background, looked into your life, and they found a number of things which simply aren't true.
And we'll go through some of it a little later, but I'm not sure blaming the media will fly particularly in your defense because the media's done its job.
You may not like it.
It might be bruising.
It might be ferocious.
I think when the American media come for you as a politician, there's nothing quite like it in the world, outside of probably the British media.
So I'm not pretending for a moment it's been easy for you.
But I do think it's a bit lame to blame the media.
They've done their job, and you, if I'm honest, have made it easy for them.
Of course.
Look, I'm not saying they're not doing their job.
There's a difference between doing their job and a difference between making a witch hunt out of something.
The moment the story broke from the New York Times, It took me three days.
It was right around Christmas.
On the 26th of December, I sat on with the New York Post, had an hour-long interview.
They decided to go out with barely any, if anything, of what I told them and just continue to go under the downspiral assumptions.
I've tried to sit with many members of the media like I'm doing with you now and have a thorough conversation, but they're just not interested.
They're not interested in covering de facto what actually occurred, what actually, what are facts.
Well, I am.
I am.
And all I would urge you to be is you may as well be completely honest now.
Of course.
Because I don't say there's any upside in continuing to fuel the media narrative that you're this terrible liar, right?
So, you know, I'm very, listen, I don't have a horse in the race.
I'm not an American citizen.
You're not my Congressman.
You don't serve me.
It's not my hard-earned cash going on supporting you.
So in that sense, I'm slightly detached from this.
All I can say is in the UK, we're aware of you because there's been this constant running theme now for months on end that you tell a lot of whoppers, as we would call it, in the UK.
The George Santos Resume 00:14:10
And so I think it's a good chance, Congressman, to just try and work out where the truth lies.
Because why not?
There's a claim that you said you attended the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, New York, during your first years of high school, but had to leave in your senior year because your parents fell on hard times in 2008.
Is that true?
Did you attend that school?
I attended it for a brief period of time and then went back to the public school system and then dropped out of the public school system and attained a GED.
I was always very truthful of not completing high school due to financial difficulties.
I mean, the spokesman for the school told CNN there's no record of you ever attending.
Why would that be?
I challenge to see what name they're looking under.
If you look at my entire history of education, it was not under the name George Santos.
What name did you attend that school?
A variation.
It was either George DeVolder or Anthony DeVolder.
I wouldn't know I was a minor.
I don't know which one.
CNN, I believe, checked all the variants of the names that you've used, and there was no record the school could find of you ever attending.
I was there for six months of ninth grade.
In what year would that have been?
2004.
So for six months, you were indisputably at the Horace Mann School in the New York City.
And then moved into the public system.
And then in 2006, I attained a GED due to just circumstances.
Why would the school not be able to find a record of that?
I don't know.
What name should they be looking for?
I would say George DeVolder.
That's how it's on my GED certificate.
You've gone under George DeVolder, Anthony DeFolder?
Well, officially, the only two names I've ever used on documentation has been George DeVolder or George Santos.
So there should be a record of one of those at that school.
Of course.
Second claim was that on the campaign website that you graduated with a degree in economics and finance from Baruch College in 2008.
I'll save you that I did not attain a college education.
That, regrettably so, is one of my biggest regrets in life.
So that was a lie.
Absolutely.
And I admitted to it, and I've made peace with the fact that I made a bad choice in making that decision.
It wasn't easy.
What's the simple explanation for why you met?
Why would you lie about something like that?
Expectation on society, the pressure, couldn't afford it.
Decided I wanted to run for office, although I had built a very credible business career.
And I just didn't have that part of my biography that I could not give anything to.
Did you not think that you'd be cool?
You know, I just went with it.
I didn't think.
I mean, if you're going to make up a lie, are you thinking at all?
I just think it was a stupid decision on my part.
Very stupid decision that I regret every day.
Especially because I can so sorry to cut you off, but especially because I can prove the chops and the backing without the education, but this stems more deeper into the political apparatus and the political culture of New York State.
And that would take a lot more time than this program to go over to explain that.
No, no, no, I can imagine.
Listen, I understand the desire to want to be more impressive with your record than you are.
I'm bemused that you would be naive enough to think that you could run as a politician in New York in particular and not expect to get what happened to you, which is a massive come-uppance when they discover this stuff isn't true.
Stupid.
Stupid.
Well, coming next, did George Santos lie about his mother being in the Twin Towers on 9-11?
That's coming up.
That was the Empire State Building here in New York.
You're watching me live.
But we're going to go to the second part now of my incredible interview with notorious political liar George Santos, a New York congressman, who a little earlier today sat here as I asked him about some of his more controversial whoppers.
One of which, perhaps the worst of which, if it turns out to be untrue, is that he claimed his own mother was in one of the Twin Towers on 9-11.
But was she?
You claimed on your resume to have gained a master's in business at New York University with a GMAT of 710.
Which would indicate academic excellence, but that's not true, right?
Well, the reality is I don't know where that GMAT comes from.
I never put that out on my website or my bio.
But you didn't get a master's in business.
No, no, but I'm just saying that.
The GMAT was on your resume, I think.
Which the resume was never furnished or supplied by me.
Who supplied that?
I have no idea where that came from.
Well, someone did it on your behalf.
I'm not saying no.
I didn't supply it, and nobody associated with me supplied it.
That came from the GOP, and I'm still trying to understand where that came from.
You never got a master's in business at New York University?
No, like I said, no.
Right.
I mean, again, did you not think people would find this out?
You know, Pierce, not after I. You're not running to be like a reality TV show.
No, no, no, I understand.
You know, if you were going on Celebrity Apprentice, which I went on, right?
It doesn't matter.
You can embellish stuff about yourself.
Nobody cares, right?
But to run for Congress of the United States and to just tell blatant lies about even your academic record, I'm just struck, not necessarily that a politician would lie, but that you would think no one would find out.
Well, I'll humor you this.
I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat for Congress, and I got away with it then.
And I guess.
Right.
Well, that's honest.
Stupid.
So you thought, actually, they're not going to find out.
No, I didn't think so.
But to that effect, it's embarrassing.
It's humbling to have to admit your faults as a human being.
And I, you know, I wish, genuinely, if the media put the equal amount of efforts and resources, and I'm not saying this as villainizing the media, but just let's keep it fair, on all 435 members of the House and 100 members of the Senate, I think the American people would have more clarity of who represents them in Congress.
I'm not saying I'm not sure.
But I would say, listen, I think the media, both at local level and national level, have pretty well been forensic about everyone that's in Congress, right?
I mean, maybe not to quite the degree you've had to sustain it, because they knew with you they had basically a wounded animal.
And if they kept going long enough, they would probably find a load more.
Right.
You know, it's human nature.
I mean, you also claim to be a Wall Street hotshot who worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.
Your CV, again, your resume, boasted of doubling revenue on a project at Goldman's.
Is any of that true?
So this is where the resume doesn't, where I can defend my work career.
I work for subsidiary groups and outside of those companies.
You never worked at Goldman's or Citigroup?
Not at them as a direct employee, but I did work for them on the LPGP side through conference organizing, fundraising attempts and marketing of those fundraising.
But you weren't an employee then.
You weren't a Wall Street hotshot, right?
I can argue I've done very well in Wall Street.
But not for Goldman's or Citigroup?
Not directly for the Wiggle Transgramme Trust.
Neither of them told the New York Times that neither of them has any record of you ever being employed.
I've never worked directly for them.
I was never on their books, but I've done work for them through other companies that I work for, yes, sir.
Your campaign bio claimed you ran a foundation called Friends of Pets United in New York and New Jersey that saved 2,500 dogs and cats over a five-year period.
Is that true?
That's true.
But I wasn't alone in the operation.
I had, there was a multitude of people.
We were all volunteers.
I was the operator.
I was one of the, I think we were seven founders, if I'm not mistaken, between New York and New Jersey.
My advocacy in animal welfare and animal rights stems from my childhood.
I've always been very compassionate towards animals.
I own four dogs at home.
They're all rescues to one sort.
I call it the home of misfits.
They're all unwanted, three legs, heart murmur, you know, issues like that.
And now everybody is, after all the revelations about the organization, I wasn't in charge of any of the...
I mean, the weird thing is there were no social media accounts for it.
No tax records.
Those were all deleted.
Well, there were no ones that anyone could find.
No tax records, no evidence of the charity being registered in either New York or New Jersey.
They did run one fundraiser with a rescue group in New Jersey in 2017 for which you charged a $50 entry fee, but the group which staged the event said it never received any funds.
And I can attest that that is not true.
The funds all ran through the group and the post of the facility was who was in charge of all of our filings.
So this came to a surprise as much as possible.
But what happened to the tax records, to the social media?
I wasn't in charge of any of that.
It was never set up as a charity even.
Well, I wouldn't know that.
I was the operator.
I was the guy putting cats out of the streets into my car, taking them to get.
No, I understand that.
So I wasn't in charge of that.
I don't know.
When you say you're the operator of this foundation, and there's literally no record of any of it, it doesn't lend much credibility to your operational skills.
Like I said, I wasn't part of the administrative part of the group.
We were seven people.
Everybody had their own tasks.
My task was, George, go pick up this dog, go pick up this cat.
That was my task.
Go deliver this adoption.
That was my involvement with the organization.
And I, quite frankly, did it well.
I still get a lot of message supports from people who adopted from us during the period of time I was involved.
Who would have all the records?
I don't know who would have all the records.
You're one of the seven people that you work with?
I would assume somebody has records.
Let's turn to, I mean, I think some of the stuff like that is an arguable point, potentially.
Some of the stuff about your family life has caused, I would say, more offense if, as people believe, it wasn't true.
And I want to turn to something that's obviously very personal to you, and that's your own mother.
And this question of whether she was working, as you claimed, in her office in the South Tower of the Twin Towers on September the 11th, and then passed away, as you said, a few years later when she lost a battle to cancer.
Now, there is no record of your mother, Fatima Devolder, ever having worked in the Twin Towers.
So was that true?
That's true.
Why is there no record of her work?
I don't know where people are looking or what they're looking for.
But there is a, as you know, because of what happened afterwards, there's a record of everyone that worked there.
There's no doubt about who worked there.
I'm sorry.
Well, there's no doubt about who was there.
There's no doubt of who worked in the buildings on the...
There was a full record done of it.
Yeah, I know.
I'm very aware.
So the way that I look at this, and I've rested this case before, and respectfully, please, I won't debate my mother's life as she's passed in 16.
And I think it's quite unsensitive for everybody to want to rehash my mother's legacy.
Well, well, okay, but hang on.
Here's what I would say to that.
They're only doing that because you put this on your campaign website.
I think if a politician is going to use the fact of his mother's death on 9 as a result of 9-11.
She died a few years later.
It was actually 15 years later.
15 years ago.
She's going to claim that she was in one of the towers on the day of that terror attack.
I don't think it's unreasonable for the media to investigate that.
It's true.
And there is simply no evidence that your mother ever worked at the World Trade Center at all.
The NBC News looked into this and said the only known employer she had was at an imports business in Queens that folded in 1994.
New York Times said she worked as a nurse in Brazil.
Two genealogists found documents that said your mother returned to Brazil by September 2001, that she was actually not even in America at the time.
She applied for a visa to enter the US in 2003, stated in the application she hadn't been in the US since 1999.
So all this points to her not being anywhere near the Twin Towers on September 11th.
And I do think it matters because it's such an emotive part of modern American history.
So I'll simply ask you, did your mother work there or did you just get that wrong?
No, my mother was...
I was 13 years old in September 11, 2001.
I was in the United States, so my mother was here because she had full custody of both her children.
So it's.
So did she lie on her visa application?
I don't know.
I was a child when these things were being done, so I have no clue.
And I have no recollection of my mother having obtained a visa if she had a green card and then applied for citizenship later in life.
So that's alien to me.
Now, you're asking also things that I wouldn't know.
I didn't know my mother had a business in 1994.
So I'm just letting you.
But specifically on the point of why nobody can find any evidence that your mother worked at the World Trade Center at all, ever.
Could you just got this wrong?
I mean, are you telling me that I got wrong what my mother told me?
I don't know.
Is it possible she misled you?
I don't believe so.
She wasn't one to mislead me.
But there's no record that she was there that day at all.
I stay convinced.
And there's a record of every single person that was in both those towers.
I stay convinced that that's the truth.
Well, coming next tonight, George Santos doubles down on incendiary claims about whether his grandparents survived the Holocaust.
Live pictures of 6th Avenue there in the middle of Manhattan on President's Day here in the United States.
This is Piers Morgan uncensored live from New York City.
A little earlier today, I sat down with embattled congressman and prolific fibber, George Santos.
And one of the most serious claims about him is that he fabricated an entire Jewish heritage, including falsely claiming that his grandparents survived the Holocaust.
Here's what he had to say.
You claimed in a conservative podcast in May 2022 that your grandparents survived the Holocaust.
Battling a Fabricated Heritage 00:03:42
Your campaign bio, again, claimed that they fled persecution during World War II.
And you told Fox News that you have Ukrainian heritage on your mother's side.
Now again, multiple family records show your maternal grandparents were born in Brazil, and a genealogist told CNN there's no sign of Jewish and or Ukrainian heritage and no indication of name changes along the way.
So this is the one that I'll battle to my grave to the point that I've already ordered those DNA test kits and I've done four of them so far and I'm just waiting for their returns and I'm very curious to share those with everybody because I grew up with the story was my grandfather was born in Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union, migrated to Belgium, met my grandmother in 1940 or 1941.
They fled to Brazil where they falsified a lot of their documents to claim they were born there.
Now look, we're talking about a time in history where this was a very common occurrence in the name of survival.
And this has happened to other people and they were able to uncover it and then apology letters were written.
I've seen this happen in the community, in the Jewish community, in organizations.
And I will be that same story because I'm working on that right now.
Okay, but you would understand that if that wasn't true, if your grandparents hadn't survived the Holocaust, that would be a pretty awful thing to do.
Why would I play with that?
That's right.
I'm one of the most staunch pro-Israel, most staunch pro-Judaism people in Congress today.
Well, so much so you claim to be Jewish, but you're not Jewish.
I never claim to be Jewish.
I've always made a party favorite joke.
You tend to be Jewish, half-Jewish, a proud American Jew, a Latino Jew, and a non-observant Jew.
They're all direct quotes from you.
You're not.
You're a Catholic.
I'm me.
I'm a Catholic.
Pierce, I've always made this as a party favorite joke, and I've done it on stages across the world.
What's funny about falsely claiming you're Jewish?
No, no, no, not falsely claiming I'm Jewish.
I would always say I was raised Catholic, but I come from a Jewish family, so that makes me Jew-ish.
But again, it's always been a party favorite.
Everybody's always laughed, and now that everybody's canceling me, everybody's pounding down for a pound of blood.
It's just because you're not Jewish.
Well, I never said I was.
Everything said you were.
And I would always say, but my grandparents are Jewish on my mother's side, so I'm Jew-ish.
That was always a joke.
Everybody used to laugh it up.
I said it to a room with a thousand people in November.
People were hysterically laughing.
It was funny to them.
They loved it.
I don't think Jewish people find it funny.
They were Jewish.
I was in a room with the Republican Jewish people.
If you'll find it funny that a U.S. Congressman who's a Catholic with no apparent background of any Jewish heritage whatsoever other than you say you have it, no one can find it.
I think a lot of Jewish people would find that offensive.
I begged it for when we were at the RJC in November.
The problem you have, Congress, it seems to me, is that you admit to certain big lies and then you deny other big lies.
And the problem people have is they don't know when you're lying and when you're telling the truth.
I'm not even sure now because how can I be?
Like I said.
Because you've claimed on campaign bios you went to this school and this volleyball team and achieved this degree and big Wall Street, big hitter and all these things turn out not to be true.
So when you now look me in the eye and say well actually no, this is true, I don't know what to believe.
No, I understand and look, that's a position I've put myself in, right?
My credibility is what I'm going to have a hard time in a long road to recover.
And I stand clear and I stand certain that I'll be able to do that.
Okay, let me ask you this.
In an interview with New York Public Radio following your election, you said you lost four employees in the Pulse nightclub mass shooting in 2016.
I reported on that.
It was horrendous.
Drag Queen Claims Denied 00:11:03
But none of the 49 victims at that Orlando club were to any of the companies that you've named in your biography.
You said you lost four employees.
Those are the people.
Not four people who worked for you, four employees.
Bad choice of words, and I'm not the only one guilty of that, but that's essentially the raw story of what happened.
Could find any connection between any of the 49 victims and any of your companies.
So where is the evidence for that?
I would venture calling the company and asking them on the ground.
The media have done that.
No, they haven't.
They haven't been able to obtain any contact with the company.
Well, nobody can find any evidence.
It is true.
Like I said, I'm reporting based on what was reported to us that morning.
You angrily denied.
This is another one where it's quite interesting because I don't know why you would deny it when it was clearly turned out to be true, particularly after all the fury that had gone on.
But you angrily denied being a drag artist after a Brazilian drag queen posted a picture of herself with you.
You said the most recent obsession from the media claiming I'm a drag queen or performed as a drag queen is categorically false.
It is.
It's not, though, is it?
Pierce.
See the picture.
Hold on.
I go out.
So if I was a drag queen, I was the poorest drag queen in the world because I had one outfit in one day.
I'm not saying you're...
The shortest lived career.
I'm not saying you're a good drag queen.
I'm just saying you clearly dressed up in drag queen.
Once?
Oh, sorry, okay.
That's like me saying.
Rudy Giuliani.
I'm not a murderer.
I only killed one person.
No, I understand.
But Rudy Giuliani dressed up in drag.
It's not a what about her, is he a drag queen?
I've got a lot of questions for Rudy Giuliani.
Here's my point.
You dressed up in drag.
Look, here's my point.
No, here's my point.
Why deny it?
I didn't deny it.
Why attack the obsessive media for publishing a truth?
Because the media is not telling the truth.
The media is portraying.
You just imagine they are.
They're portraying to the American people that I'm a drag performer, a career drag queen, which is offensive to drag queens, by the way.
And I'm pretty sure most of the drag queens in New York says that you're not going to be able to do that.
Here's why they think that.
Here's what they think that.
Not just because you've admitted you dressed up in drag.
But a 2011 Wikipedia bio for a user named Anthony DeVolder, one of your pseudonyms.
Claim that my point came that following a successful drag career, you landed roles on Disney Channel shows like Hannah Montana and a role in a movie called The Invasion starring Uma Thurman.
Now, either you did that under your pseudonym, which you have told me you use, or somebody has gone away and created their own Wikipedia bio using one of your pseudonyms to invent all this.
Why would they do that?
I had no notion, idea, or even I didn't know this Wikipedia page existed.
Why would someone invent you and pretend to be you?
I mean, 2011.
Anyone knows who you are?
I'm making this very clear.
I have no clue.
I have no ownership of that page.
Weird, though, right?
Weird.
Someone...
Pierce.
This is 12 years ago.
Pierce, my point.
No one knows who you are.
I never, A, never tried to be an actor, never pretended to be an actor.
B, I was never a career drag queen.
I did once.
I dress up in drag.
Once that we've seen photographed.
I mean, is it likely...
I mean, again, look, I don't care if you dress up in drag.
It doesn't mean he odds to me.
No, I don't care.
Look, you can.
Here's my question for you.
A, it's unlikely you did that only once, if I may be so, but you can say that.
It's just that only once have we got photographic evidence, right?
Pierce, I think it's just, to me, it's almost amusing that people are trying to fight me of being something that I'm not.
That, quite frankly, if I were to say, oh yeah, I'm a drag queen, that would probably give me redemption points, which I'm not willing to take it because then I'd be admitting to a lie just to cover myself for the media.
So I feel like what you guys want me to do is admit to something I haven't done.
Let me tell you what I want you to do.
I simply want you to be honest.
I don't give a damn.
Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you.
Well, listen, I think I'm being very strict.
You have come in here, right, and you've sat opposite me and we're going through all this and you're giving me answers, right?
And that's your credit to do it.
You didn't have to, so I appreciate you doing it.
But you reportedly told donors you were a producer on Spider-Man and Broadway.
Is that true?
No, I never said that.
Not true.
I never said that.
I'm still trying to ask.
I've asked the reporters, tell me who the donors were that I actually...
That's categorically untrue.
I never said to anybody I produced a Broadway show, and if you look at the timeline, I think I would have been 21 years old.
Well, you've claimed a lot of things in your life, Congressman.
One month after you were elected, you claimed on a Brazilian podcast you'd already suffered an assassination attempt and that you described being mugged on Fifth Avenue in 2021.
I was mugged on Fifth Avenue in 2021.
Was there any police record on that?
No, there was no police record.
You didn't report it.
There was no police in sight.
2021, this was zombie land out here.
Oh, but did you report it?
No, I did not.
I got up, went into the car, defeated, upset, because I had experienced one of the most horrific things.
They took my briefcase and my shoes.
Who did?
Two guys.
Your briefcase?
Big guys.
That's it.
They jumped you on Fifth Avenue.
That's it.
I was crossing the street, not fifth, pardon me, sixth.
And if that reported fifth, sixth, because I worked on 55th and 6th Street building.
You know, Pierce, I don't know.
I felt defeated, embarrassed.
I'm a six-foot-tall guy that couldn't defend himself from a briefcase in my shoes.
Do you know how humiliating that is?
Do you know how much fear gets instilled in you?
I just finished running across the street into the garage where my car was parked, picked up my car and left.
I'm lucky my phone was in my pocket so I could just do the phone payment on the, or else I wouldn't have money to take my car to the car.
And what about the assassination attempt?
When was that?
It wasn't an assassination attempt.
It was a death threat.
This is poorly translated Portuguese to English language.
It was a death threat.
It was a death threat.
It was several death threats.
Nobody tried to kill you.
No, and I've never claimed somebody tried to kill me.
These were several.
We had a several series of death threats following.
So this Brazilian podcast has you saying already suffered an assassination attempt.
Well, that's been badly translated.
This is poor translation.
So we go back and we listen to the original.
Please do.
It wouldn't have you saying you'd already suffered an assassination attention.
I encourage you.
Yeah?
Yep.
So it wouldn't have you saying those words.
It has me clearly saying that I suffered death threats throughout the process of running for office, something along those lines.
But no assassination attempt.
Okay, look, here's the thing.
Here's the thing, Congresswoman.
Here's the thing.
You may as well just be completely honest now.
Well, that's what I'm being.
I'm telling you, I'm not going to react.
Show yourself to the public, to their mercy, to say, I've made up all this stuff about myself, right?
I'm incredibly sorry.
And I fall on the sword of your forgiveness.
Because you're now facing eight different investigations.
Who knows where they're all going to lead?
There's all these questions about your financing, your campaign expenses.
All of it on the face of it looks dodgy.
But your biggest problem is going to be persuading people of what the truthful answers are.
I have a question for you, though, and if I may.
You say there's eight investigations.
I haven't seen a formal investigation be open yet.
The media keeps portraying to the American people that I'm being investigated through the wazoo.
And that's all I keep asking.
At least report it factually.
Just please tell the people because what this alludes to is people thinking that I'm a criminal, that the DOJ is coming after me.
And then we start receiving, again, death threats at my office.
Just two weeks ago, we had a credible death threat from a man with a rap sheet as long as you can think of from the state of Florida calling us and leaving a deal.
The man was so psychotic.
Saying what?
He left a detailed voicemail saying that he was going to get a baseball bat, bash my husband's brains in, and I was going to watch it.
Then he was going to splatter mine all over the floor, and he wasn't going to stop until there was nothing left.
The genius left a voicemail on my office number.
We sent it to Capitol Police.
They did their job.
They found him.
He has a rap sheet.
He's been arrested and charged?
Well, no, I don't know where the point of the investigation is, but I know who he is.
I have his rap sheet.
The Capitol Police know who he is.
This is something that's highly concerning to the safety of me and my family.
It's not the media whipping up the anger against you.
There's so much sensationalism in the world.
Well, that's why it's been good for clarity on this.
One of the more serious allegations against you, I felt, was that you stole money from a disabled veteran who contacted you to help fund life-saving surgery for his service dog.
This is a man called Richard Osthoff.
He says that you raised cash on GoFundMe, but refused to hand over the money.
And AP says the FBI is now investigating this.
What is the truth of this?
I've never met this man.
A lot.
I've been abundantly clear.
I feel for him.
I feel for his story.
I am as compassionate and as passionate about helping veterans and animals as the next guy.
When I read this, it just hit me like a bag of bricks because I don't know him.
And most people who know me, who truly know me, Pierce, knows that if he had met me, his dog would have received the surgery.
He wouldn't be homeless.
The fact that he was homeless and anybody trying to help him addressed, wouldn't address the homeless issue was a bigger problem for me.
And I mean that wholeheartedly.
So you've never set up a GoFundMe page?
No, I've set up dozens of GoFundMe pages.
No one will find one that relates to this.
Let me make this very clear.
I've set up numerous GoFundMe pages throughout the years for animals and needs.
Many of them who were not managed by me.
They were managed by other people.
But because I was the main account holder on the Facebook page, it would all go to the city.
So you're not denying there could be a GoFundMe page?
I'm not denying there could be a GoFundMe page, but I'm denying...
What happened to that money if there is?
Like I said, I'm not denying if there's a GoFundMe page and if they're going to present me with one, I'm not going to deny that.
But I've never met him.
I've never took on this case and I never took the money from his dog.
Well, next, the final part of this extraordinary interview.
Will Congressman George Santos apologize for being a terrible liar?
We get live pictures there of the Statue of Liberty here in New York City, a great symbol, of course, of freedom and democracy.
And appropriate that President Biden is today in Ukraine with President Zelensky.
He's just left, in fact, but was there this morning defending and helping Zelensky and the Ukrainians defend democracy and liberty and freedom.
Good for him.
Well, in my last part now of my remarkable interview with Congressman George Santos, the big remaining question really was simply this.
Could I get him to apologize for being a terrible liar?
Private Life Questions Arise 00:06:33
Let me ask you just about your, I guess your private life to a degree, which has been put through the minstrel, as you know.
It seems from everything that's appeared in the media, just your chance to clarify this, you're now, you're married.
Yes.
Although there's no record of that marriage having happened.
I'll actually show you the wedding certificate once we're going to be able to do that.
Where were you married?
I was married on November 30th, 2021.
Where?
In Nassau County.
So it's all registered there.
Yeah.
Because no one's found any record.
It's there.
It's there.
Okay.
And you were previously married to a woman?
I was married to a woman, yes.
For how long?
It was on and off, a couple of years.
It was a personal, private, messy part of my life and something that I refuse.
And I will not, and respectfully, and I hope you don't take this personal, but I will not indulge anybody to get into my personal life because it's irrelevant to what my job as a legislator is.
My personal sex life is not something that I'm going to use for entertainment and tabloids.
And here's what I would say to you.
Listen, I agree with you, but I would say that someone who has made a big play, I think, of being the first openly gay Republican who was non-incumbent to be voted into Congress, you know, you've made no secret of your pride of being that.
That's about your sexuality.
So I think it's reasonable for the media to just try and establish what your life has been like.
I never campaigned on that, ever.
No.
On being gay.
You talk proudly about it.
Well, when asked, but that was the media's obsession with this campaign was, oh, it's the first time two gay men ever go head to head for U.S. Congress.
But I never campaigned.
It wasn't a campaign issue.
It wasn't even a footnote on my website.
I'll simply ask you, I mean, do you feel you've always been a gay man?
No.
No.
My life was, it wasn't straightforward.
I was very much in love with someone and we got married and it just didn't work out.
It's a very important thing.
Did she know that you might be gay?
I don't think so, no.
And it got messy.
Pierce, like I said, I'm not going to rehash my sex life on television.
What reaction have you had to being a gay Republican congressman?
The Republicans have never discriminated against me.
Matter of fact, it's the Democrats who often come after me for being a gay Republican, and they use that to criticize me.
It seems to me, I mean, you've been very honest there about your private life.
You know, and I don't want to rake over it all.
I'm not going to do any further.
But you have been, it seems to me, very honest.
And I would applaud you for that.
But it begs the question, why not be as honest about everything else in your life?
You've got a lot of people calling you the world's worst liar in political history.
That's fine.
Wanting to trash you.
I beg differ because Joe Biden's in the White House, but that's just me.
I've seen you tweet that.
I've seen you tweet that.
That's just me.
You know, Mitt Romney, one of the senior Republican senators, came up to you at the State of the Union and said you shouldn't be glad-handing people down the front.
You should be out the back hiding in shame.
And he also said that you should stand down.
It wouldn't be the first time somebody told me to shut up and go to the back of the room, Pierce, and it's not going to be the last.
Is it right, though, Congressman, that you should be able to have told so many lies and remain in Congress?
Or do you think the American public are entitled to somebody who is more truthful sitting in one of the great seats of power in the country?
I think that the Americans who voted for me will get to judge me in two years.
And they make that ultimate decision.
Not the talking heads, not politicians, not party leaders.
Do you think you want to run again?
I don't know.
And this has, let me make this very clear.
If you talk to people who knew me before any of this ever happened, they always asked, so what's next?
I said, I don't know if I'm going to run for re-election.
That's always been a thought.
I believe in term limits.
That's number one.
Number two, I came to this job.
I wanted to see if I could accomplish the bare minimum for the American people, which was my thought.
You come into this job very naive, thinking that you're going to conquer the world and you're going to do everything good for the American people.
And when you hit Washington, D.C., you learn that it's just not so straightforward.
And that's what I want.
I want to be able to overcome the political red tape of Washington, D.C. All right, but what do you say to people watching this?
You go, all right, of course you do, that's fine.
But what about all the lies you've told?
I mean, would you stare down the camera and just apologize?
I've looked inside the camera and I've said sorry.
And I have no problem saying sorry and asking for forgiveness of the American people watching at home and everyone abroad.
Because I think that if you can ask for forgiveness and have the humility to accept and admit your errors, I think that's the first step.
Now, it's amazing how I don't get that same courtesy like everyone else does.
And you've been through this, Pierce.
It seems like there's a different, there's people who are granted that opportunity to apologize and redeem themselves, and there's people who are thrown into the fire pit, and the media and everyone else around them are hell-bound on making sure that that person's life is hell.
I'm in the latter part.
I don't get the opportunity to ask for forgiveness and gain forgiveness from people or sympathy.
You supported Donald Trump over what many call the big lie about his term election.
I don't think he had the election stolen from him, but have you heard from Donald Trump?
No, I have not.
Not at all?
No.
Have you heard from other senior Republicans supporting you?
I have many Republicans who have been supportive.
I have a great support system within the party of people who are, you know, walking me through this very difficult time in my life.
And they've been, you know.
Mitch McConnell?
I've never met Mitch McConnell.
I saw him at the State of the Union with.
Kevin McCarthy?
Kevin McCarthy's been a great leader for the Republican Conference.
Does he think you should carry on?
I haven't had that discussion with him.
Really?
No.
Can you go around as George Santos now and persuade other politicians to help you with stuff?
Or are they all like, you know what, just get cleared or we're not interested?
So I have two bills that we're working on right now and that we're getting folks to subscribe to and we're working on good bills for the American people.
And I'm not having a hard time.
I mean, I'm not going to say it's easy, but it's not abnormal from the difficulties that every other politician has trying to get people to subscribe to their ideas.
And I'm navigating the process well.
The one difference between me and the ordinary person is I come from struggle.
I come from abject poverty, as I've always said.
So my life is different.
Do you, though?
Proof Is In The Pudding 00:01:32
I do.
How can I be sure?
Well, I think that the proof is in the pudding.
Both my parents were immigrants.
I don't know what the pudding is.
I'll tell you what the pudding is.
Both my parents were immigrants.
I was born in a public city hospital in 1988 in Jackson Heights, Queens, in a basement apartment where I beg differ that I think the rats were bigger than me when I was born.
So true stories, I've submitted enough evidence on that.
I say this every time.
What can you give the American people?
You're not going to carry on lying.
I've made that abundantly clear that I want to be the most transparent member of Congress and deliver the most transparent everything that goes on.
Look, if I...
Lying stops now.
It stopped a long time ago.
Well, Congressman, I'll say this about you.
You came in to Piers Morgan uncensored and you faced the music and I appreciate that.
I appreciate you.
And I'll be interested to see what the public make, because in the end, it's not down to me what I think of you or anyone else in the media.
It's down to the American people whether if you decide to run again, whether they're prepared to actually vote for you again.
Yep, I think, like I've always said, this is going to be decided by the people who hired me, not no one else.
So that's when I'm going to face the music.
Thanks for coming in.
Thank you, sir.
I appreciate you.
Extraordinary interview there with a politician.
Who knows how much of that was true or otherwise, but at least he had his say.
Tomorrow night, David Boyes, who was the lawyer for Virginia Dufray, the woman that Prince Andrew paid all those millions to, breaks his silence one year after that settlement.
It's an extraordinary interview.
Tune in tomorrow night.
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