![Jimmy Kimmel on Republican representative George Santos: “He’s literally a Scooby-Doo villain at this point.”](https://media.guim.co.uk/3bd3e7eb43e52e7152fb21c139f22ea2300be40c/31_116_2552_1531/1000.jpg)
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel took aim at George Santos’s unraveling web of lies on Wednesday evening. This week, the new Republican congressman’s former roommate told Anderson Cooper on CNN that Santos (who went by the name Anthony Devolder at the time) stole his Burberry scarf to wear at the Stop the Steal rally on January 6. “What’s the problem? Stealing was the theme of the rally!” Kimmel joked. “The Burberry bandit is on the loose.”
Santos’s former roommate and a disabled veteran named Richard Osthoff also revealed that the New York representative tricked Osthoff into setting up a GoFundMe for his ailing service dog, then took the money when the fundraiser reached its goal.
“Well, that there is a ticket straight to hell,” Kimmel said. “He’s literally a Scooby-Doo villain at this point.”
Kimmel also mocked Donald Trump’s numerous attempts to justify keeping over 300 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Earlier this week, the former president claimed on Truth Social that he kept “empty folders” at his Florida resort as a “cool keepsake” from his time in office.
“Oh, well why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Kimmel deadpanned. “If we knew they were a cool keepsake, I’m sure hiding them in the bucket of chicken you put them in would’ve been fine.
“Your honor, it’s not a felony! It’s scrapbooking,” he joked.
Stephen Colbert
When it comes to George Santos, “the news just keeps chewing its own cud,” said Stephen Colbert on the Late Show, with “the same stories over and over again”.
Numerous reports have revealed Santos’s résumé to be almost entirely fictional, yet “all of this info was online,” Colbert noted. “Did the DCC just lose wifi for an entire year and have to go analog?”
Colbert also touched on Santos’s conning of a disabled veteran and his dying service dog. According to Osthoff, when he finally got in touch with Santos to book his dog’s surgery, Santos said he would keep the money and use it for other dogs. “Yes other dogs like Max and Skipper and Rover Devolder,” Colbert mocked, referencing one of Santos’s former identities.
“When he heard this, even Kevin McCarthy said that’s it, George Santos has got to go … sit on two House committees,” Colbert added. The House committees for small business and science “make sense”, he joked. “I mean, Santos said he has a degree from the Bill Nye School of the Sharktank Academy of Business Science.”
The Daily Show
How much do you have to lie to be known as "the lying congressman"? Leslie Jones (@Lesdoggg) takes on George Santos pic.twitter.com/ckyDaWbdR3
— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) January 19, 2023
On the Daily Show, guest host Leslie Jones summed up Santos’s lies as: “Ew.”
“Do you know how much you have to lie to be known as the ‘lying congressman?’” she exclaimed. “I mean, all these motherfuckers do is lie all day. But when you ask them who is the liar, they’re like, ‘this guy’.”
Jones also reacted to the report of Santos’s service dog con. “So you’re telling me this man didn’t just steal $3,000 from a dog? He didn’t just steal from a service dog. He didn’t just steal from a dying service dog. He stole from a disabled homeless veteran’s dying service dog? Oh my God! You evil and stupid.
“You’re going to mess with somebody’s dog – have you not heard of John Wick?” she continued. “Your ass is in trouble.
“This guy is so evil, I wonder if they put him in there on purpose so I can’t pay attention to the other evil people,” she added. “Anybody got any eyes on Marjorie Taylor Greene? What’s up with that bitch? She’s probably got Garfield tied up in her office.”
Seth Meyers
And on Late Night, Seth Meyers again outlined the differences between Biden and Trump’s handling of classified documents. “Republicans still cannot seem to grasp the differences between the small number of classified documents that were discovered at President Biden’s home and office, and the much larger pile of documents Trump stashed at Mar-a-Lago and refused to give back,” he explained. “In fact, they keep asking the same dumb question: why won’t the FBI search Biden’s home just like they searched Trump’s beach resort?
“I cannot underscore enough how different these cases are,” he added. “Biden has discovered and turned over about 20 documents so far – and let’s be clear, documents he should not have – while Trump had over 300. Trump refused for more than a year to turn them all over, lied about turning them all over, instructed staffers to lie, moved them around and claimed they were his, and claimed he could declassify them with his mind.
“He did the classic Trump thing of trying every defense instead of just one,” such as posting on Truth Social that “Marxist thugs” planted the documents. In another post, Trump claimed that he kept classification folders from meetings as a “cool keepsake”.
“Wait, I’m sorry, your story is that you kept an empty folder? As a cool keepsake?” Meyers said. “Were they Lisa Frank folders? Who keeps an empty folder as a keepsake?”
But “the differences don’t matter to Republicans,” he concluded. “They’ve made it clear they want to weaponize congressional committees to go after Biden.”