A Portrait of a Fictitious Candidate, George Santos: The Washington Post and WABC Radio Revisited

George Santos, on the other hand, is a young man who apparently felt compelled to jettison much of his actual life and replace it with fantasy. As Grace Ashford and Michael Gold of The Times have been reporting, in his successful run for Congress this year he claimed he had a college degree that he does not have. He claimed he held jobs that he did not hold. He claimed he owned properties he apparently does not own. He claims to have not committed check fraud, though court records show he did. He claims he never described himself as Jewish, merely as adjacently “Jew-ish.” A self-described gay man, he hid a yearslong heterosexual marriage that ended in 2019.

Santos has faced scrutiny over discrepancies in his employment and education history, as well as other public claims he has made about his biography. In interviews with WABC radio and the New York Post – the first times Santos has spoken publicly about the controversy – he acknowledged that he had fabricated some facts.

I am not a criminal. Not here, not abroad, in any jurisdiction in the world have I ever committed any crimes,” Santos said in an interview with WABC radio host John Catsimatidis.

I’m not a fraud to get down to the nit. I’m not a criminal who defrauded the entire country and made up this fictional character and ran for Congress. I have been here a long time. I mean, a lot of people know me. They know who I am. They have done business with me.

I don’t know why, but a lot of the people overstate in their resume or twist a bit. He said that he was not saying he was not guilty of that.

Santos also admitted that he never worked directly for the financial firms Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, as he has previously suggested, but claimed that he did do work for them through his company, telling the New York Post it was a “poor choice of words” to say he worked for them.

I did not graduate from any higher education institution. I’m embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume,” he told the Post, adding that he owns up to that and that “we do stupid things in life.”

KFile: CNN’s Associated Investigates the Case of Andrew Santos, a Jewish Refugee from Belgium and a Democratic Presidential Candidate

CNN’s KFile also reported last week that claims by Santos that his grandparents “survived the Holocaust” as Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium who changed their surname are contradicted by sources including family trees compiled by genealogy websites, records on Jewish refugees and interviews with multiple genealogists. The lawyer for Santos did not speak to CNN.

Santos told the Post that he did not claim to be Jewish. “I am Catholic. I said I was jew-ish because I knew my family had a Jewish background.

CNN reached out to the leadership of the House Republicans after the admissions of Santos. House GOP leadership was silent amid last week’s revelations. Kevin McCarthy wouldn’t answer CNN’s questions if he was concerned about misrepresentations.

Santos defeated Democrat Robert Zimmerman in a newly drawn district covering parts of Queens and some nearby Long Island suburbs, flipping control to Republicans, who dominated the New York suburbs on their way to winning a House majority.

In his first campaign, he lost to Tom Suozzi and in his recent one he faced criticism for his attendance at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Washington and a video he claimed to have written.

A Self-Assured Narrative for a Lifelong, Accurate, Dynamical, and Diverse Self

A reasonably accurate and coherent autobiographical narrative is one of the most important things a person can have. If you do not have a real story, you do not have a real self.