George Santos must be expelled from Congress

Photo credit: Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images

This will be short because there isn’t much to say about the subject at hand, which is George Santos and his utter, total and complete estrangement from decency.

Here is the latest revelation about George Santos. He stole money from a disabled American veteran of the United States Armed Forces who was going to use that money to pay for his service dog’s surgery.

CNN @CNN

"How do you lie about that?" Rich Osthoff, a US veteran who claims Rep. George Santos stole $3,000 from his dying dog's GoFundMe talks to Don Lemon cnn.it/3XEnj3E

Let me repeat.

George Santos raised money to pay for veterinary surgery for a disabled veteran’s service dog and stole it.

He must be expelled from Congress because even though the institution has been desecrated, abased, debased, defecated and urinated upon, as well as betrayed by so many of its members, it must maintain some barely burning ember of standards and this is it. This must be it. There is no choice. There is a wretched scumbaggery inherent in George Santos as a human being that requires confrontation even if it means saying yes, he is in fact worse than the caricatures of creatures like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. It means saying that he is worse than the Nazi- sympathizing dentist Paul Gosar, who has been condemned and denounced by his own family. It means acknowledging that there is something different about George Santos.

He must go. Leader Hakeem Jeffries is from New York. He should hold a news conference with every Republican official from New York who has called for the resignation of Santos, and make the following commitment.

He should acknowledge that Santos is a much-needed vote for Speaker in Name Only McCarthy, and therefore he will make the following offer. The Democratic conference will hold a weekly lottery to designate an emergency Santos proxy who would commit to vote for whatever travesty Santos would have joined in supporting until the end of the congressional term. The price is that he is expelled. Gone. Out. Immediately.

Believe me when I tell you that I understand the opportunity to use Santos as a cudgel to define the MAGA majority as more disgusting than is comprehensible, but it is the wrong thing to do.

The Democratic Party’s leaders have to understand the consequences of profound distrust in the people who run government leads to deep distrust in government and the role of government to act. We live in an age of indecency, cynicism and absurdity that will yield in time either to renewal or epic tragedy. There is no possibility of renewal in this country beginning while the Santos cancer wears the member pin of a United States congressman two years after the Trump insurrection. His presence is an assault and desecration. Each moment he spends on the floor of the House is the equivalent of burning an American flag on it. Each moment lasts an eternity, and the disgrace and its stench are irredeemable.

George Santos’s conduct is criminal. He is a con man and a grifter. He is a sociopath. He is a fraud. He is a congressman whose presence disgraces the United States, as well as every person who serves with him.

This nation is 247 years old and there has never been a person of lower and more dishonorable character who has ever served in Congress. He is America’s greatest impostor, but there is nothing funny about it.

Lastly, think about the dog. The dog needed surgery because it was injured and in pain. Think about Santos’s cruelty. Think about his heartlessness.

When the time comes again that a great crisis descends on this country there will be no shortage of fools, loons, corruption, extremism, idiocy, ignorance, goofiness and self-interested performance artistry disguised as simple buffoonery on the floor of the US House of Representatives. It has always been so. It is the people’s house after all, and the truth is that a lot of the people are crazy. That’s okay. That’s the way it works. That’s the way it’s always been in America — right from the beginning.

There is no room for George Santos in that mix, and even though I have previously called for voters of his district to suffer in humiliation for two years, the truth is that Churchill was wrong when he said that “each country has the government they deserve.” Whatever may be the price of lassitude in a republic, it isn’t having George Santos as a congressman.

Expel him. Barring that, the Democratic minority should never let up. Ever. Paralyze the House until he is gone.

This disgrace must not stand.