So, liar extraordinaire George Santos has ties to Florida! Where’s the surprise?
To partially quote our illustrious governor, a fibber himself, this is the state where truth “comes to die.”
The New York congressman may claim the current title of Most Prolific Liar in the Lot, his biographical whoppers running deep across cities and continents. But lying in Florida has become acceptable political practice for the state GOP.
It’s strategy that wins elections all the time.
Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, for example, launched her campaign against former University of Miami president Donna Shalala with a television ad claiming, in her own voice, that “my American journey started here with five dollars in my pocket” — as if she had been born in Cuba.
Fact: She was born in Miami.
Her lie exposed, she never bothered to pull the ad off the air.
Sen. Marco Rubio, too, repeatedly lied about his Cuban past, saying his parents came to the United States fleeing the Castro regime.
Fact: They were economic immigrants, pre-Fidel Castro, as a book revealed.
Spot the trend — and the common ground — with Santos?
For the Cuban Americans, the lie is tapping into the open wound of being exiled from the homeland — something these first-generation Americans aren’t. Santos, of Brazilian heritage, was born in Queens.
They all want to make their biographies soppier than they are to appeal to voter sensibilities. In Santos’ case, he lied, among other things, about his mother fleeing the World Trade Center towers in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, then dying from the cancer she suffered afterward.
All lies are despicable, but none is more dangerous than those Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis machinates.
He has fine-tuned the art of turning incidents into trends against which to legislate and debunked science into health policy.
His characterization of the efficacy of masks earned him a pants-on-fire falsehood rating. And he fashioned one mother’s complaint about the handling of her possibly non-binary teen into sweeping anti-gay law in education.
Then, there’s Florida itself.
The state, capital of Medicare and Medicaid fraud, attracts an eclectic array of the George Santoses of the world.
There are people with a fast tongue like lobbyist Roger Stone, who could summon the media like no other and turn any false interpretation of facts into marketable truth. Before Hurricane Ian, he was selling Donald Trump to beach-goers on Sanibel Island.
Then, there’s the fake Saudi prince who conned investors out of $8 million in 2017. If the story sounded familiar to some of us, it was because an alleged sheikh also paraded himself through town and swindled people in the 1990s.
Legendary stuff.
So it was no surprise that a Miami Herald investigation into Santos’ campaign finance reports found that he spent time traipsing through the state in 2021 and 2022, from Miami to Orlando, and filed $17,000 in campaign expenses that are, at best, questionable.
Who stays at the $700-a-night W in South Beach for a mere $199.99 a night — which just happens to be the amount you can expense, according to the campaign financial report rules, without a receipt?
Among the possible scenarios is that he was trying to make an easy buck off a stay someone else paid for. And, in that case, he needed to disclose that as an in-kind contribution.
I’m only surprised that there was no expense filed for Sunday brunch at DeSantis’ favorite place to shame in Miami, the R House in Wynwood, where drag queens dance and wait tables to five-star reviews.
But, then again, Santos has been trying hard to hide his Brazilian drag queen side under all his preppy New England-style armor.
And hey, we can’t talk because Rubio’s sloppy spending history can top Santos’ with his use of the GOP’s credit card when he held state office.
He charged to the card more than $22,000 in personal expenses, partying it up in Las Vegas and paving his driveway in West Miami. He also charged six airline tickets to Tallahassee that he then filed expense reports for to get reimbursed.
Way to make extra cash.
It hasn’t cost Rubio any Florida election, but the alleged fraud was used against him when he ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
“Corrupt Marco Rubio has spent years defrauding the people of Florida,” claimed the most effective ad against him.
The best part comes at the end, courtesy of his now best bud, the ex-president.
”I’m Donald Trump and I approved this message,” he says.
I tell ya, we’re a magnet for liars and cheats — and voters develop a glassy-eyed devotion, letting politicians get away with white lies and whoppers alike unscathed.
In fact, the biggest lies — that the Democratic Party is made up of socialists and communists with a Marxist agenda — have risen to national prominence on no evidence whatsoever, only the strength of repeating the talking point.
Still, George is only a babe in the woods in the Gunshine State.
Soon, he’ll graduate to millionaire and buy a second home.
———
———
