It’s not simply his grift and self-importance that made Santos such an ideal avatar of the MAGA ethos. Much more important was the defiance he confirmed as his flagrant wrongdoing was revealed and the best way that defiance endeared him to a few of Trump’s most avid supporters. In December 2022, after Santos was elected however earlier than he took workplace, The New York Instances reported that he’d lied about his training, purported profession in finance, household wealth and charitable endeavors and that he’d been charged in Brazil with utilizing stolen checks. Santos’s response was, as Chiusano writes, to “submit by means of it,” making an ideal present of shamelessness each on-line and in actual life.
A lot of the MAGAverse beloved it. Greene grew to become a loyal good friend. As New York journal’s Shawn McCreesh reported in March, at a Manhattan party for the Breitbart editor Emma-Jo Morris, Santos was “the ‘It’ woman. His wrists are bedizened with bling from Hermès and Cartier, and fawning followers line up for selfies.” A month later, The Intercept’s Daniel Boguslaw described Santos being feted at a bar in Washington: “A milieu of younger conservatives, operatives and Home staffers had been assembling to howl within the next-gen mannequin of Donald Trump’s societal wrecking ball, and the identify on all people’s lips was George Santos.” A tough-core MAGA group referred to as Washington, D.C. Younger Republicans posted about Santos’s “inspirational remarks” at that occasion, together with his insistence that his enemies should “drag my chilly, useless physique” out of Congress. Gosar chimed in with an admiring response: “Based mostly.”
Adam Serwer famously wrote that, in relation to Trump, “the cruelty is the purpose,” however possibly the criminality is as properly. Rule breaking is vital to Trump’s transgressive attraction; it situates him as above the strictures that govern lesser males whereas making a permission construction for his followers to launch their very own inhibitions. That’s an enormous a part of the rationale his a number of indictments appeared to solely solidify his Republican help. Certain, a few of his backers in all probability recognized along with his epic persecution advanced, however that alone doesn’t clarify the worshipful enthusiasm amongst a few of his followers for his mug shot. (“He seems laborious,” gushed the Fox Information host Jesse Watters.) Slightly, many individuals on the suitable thrill to shows of impunity from individuals who share their politics. Within the late Sixties and Seventies, the left-wing counterculture lionized outlaws just like the Hells Angels for his or her revolt towards a hated institution. Right now, as Santos’s rise to iconic standing demonstrates, an identical antinomianism has taken maintain amongst alienated conservatives.
In fact, the devotion of a part of the right-wing demimonde was not, in the long run, sufficient to save lots of Santos. Greater than half of the Home Republican caucus, and most of its leaders, stood by the disgraced swindler, and Greene referred to as his expulsion “shameful,” however not like Trump, Santos by no means amassed practically sufficient energy to power Republican institutionalists to swallow their disgust with him. Apart from, because the Tennessee Republican Tim Burchett — who voted towards expulsion — stated of voters in his district, “Folks don’t like the very fact he’s homosexual.”
