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Almost the minute George Santos was ousted from Congress, speculation about his inevitable comeback attempt kicked off in earnest. Would it be another run for office, a reality television show appearance, a memoir? About a year after the Republican who represented a Long Island district of New York was officially expelled from the House of Representatives amid charges of embezzling and fraud, we’ve got our answer: It’s a podcast. (What else, in 2024?) Cheekily named Pants on Fire—get it? Because he’s famous for lying?—the show premiered this past weekend.
According to Santos, he had no shortage of opportunities postexpulsion. It was just a matter of finding the right one. “A lot was thrown at me,” he said Monday night at a launch party for the new show at a bar in midtown Manhattan. “Leeches approached me really quick. And when I say leeches, I mean leeches that really wanted to suck me dry.”
Santos was seated at a corner table as appetizers were passed through the room and guests circulated around a grand piano, from which a pianist belted out a mix of pop classics and Christmas music. The crowd was a mix of members of the media, friends, influencers, and Santos fans.
Santos said he nixed “some reality TV things that I wasn’t interested in, some things that would have been too invasive,” mentioning Big Brother specifically. “I would lose a lot of my privacy, and it would encapsulate my husband, which I didn’t want to do. So there was a lot that I said no to because of one reason or another.” Santos kept his options open—and pitched himself widely, including to Trump as a future director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement—making a killing on the app Cameo in the meantime. In the spring, the production company York & Wilder came calling with the idea of a podcast.
“Everybody expected my next step to be political, and I couldn’t tell you how much I want to put politics behind me,” Santos said. “I was involved as much as I could this cycle. I mean, I’m a staunch President Trump supporter, but that was the last bit I had in me to give. I’m so tired.”
He added: “You know, like, I want to have fun. I want to talk about cool stuff.”
Santos described his new show as a cultural podcast. The plan is to interview a broad range of guests, many of them from the field of entertainment.
In a short speech to guests at the party, Santos suggested that the show’s light tone makes it perfect for listening to while in the, ahem, bathroom. “I hope you guys tune in to [it] every Sunday,” he said. “Yes, yes, you can do it while you’re pooping too.”
At the party, Santos wore his signature look, a sweater over a collared shirt, with one festive flourish: sparkly Ferragamo shoes. He wasn’t wearing glasses but was sporting a beard. “This is new,” he said of the facial hair. “Let’s see what happens. It’s kind of patchy.” He gestured toward his husband, sitting across from him. “He likes it. You like the beard, right?” He joked that because the podcast is available in video as well as audio formats, he’ll be able to exhibit his fashion sense. “I try to showcase sporty George, casual George, formal George, fashion George, fun George, so you’ll see a lot of that. I never wear the same outfit twice or shoes, I hope.”
Before he was outed as a serial fraudster with a compulsive penchant for outrageous and highly specific fabulism, Santos was elected to Congress in 2022 as a right-wing gay Republican who campaigned on MAGA politics and discriminating against the rights of LGBTQ+ people. His lies about his résumé and identity began to unravel before he was even sworn in to office, turning him into an instant pariah in Washington—a state of being that was all the more heightened by the waterfall of investigations that continued to expose even deeper fictions and hypocrisies. (Perhaps most bafflingly, it came out that even though Santos had targeted drag shows as a political candidate, he was a former drag queen himself.) He was booted from his post by the end of his first year, having accomplished little in office besides becoming a major embarrassment for the Republican Party, though arguably a grifter icon.
On his podcast, Santos will be joined by a more liberal co-host, media personality Naja Hall. “I don’t want to sound like I’m screaming in an echo chamber,” Santos said of the choice to bring her on. The first episode features an interview with Steven Galanis, the CEO of Cameo, and it conveniently serves as a commentary on the postmodern fame economy Santos is now participating in, as well as a victory lap. Santos apparently had a very lucrative experience on the app, which allows ordinary people to order personalized videos from celebrities, with his videos racking up a “bigger record than Sarah Jessica Parker, bigger record than a bunch of other heavy hitters,” he boasted. This isn’t hard to believe: Cameos are the most fun to buy when the celebrity in question is niche or enjoys a certain cultural notoriety. But with Galanis on the podcast, “we got to settle a lot of the people saying that ‘he’s lying’ ” in regard to his Cameo success, Santos said.
Future episodes will include interviews with the controversial Grey’s Anatomy actor Isaiah Washington and Ola and Bola Osundairo, the brothers Jussie Smollett allegedly hired to stage an attack on him in 2019. Santos credited his production team for these juicy bookings.
“This is his rebranding, his redemption, his rehumanizing himself,” said Santos’ co-host, Hall. “This is his opportunity to kind of show Hey, I’m human. I want to go in a different direction.”
She was initially skeptical of getting involved with Santos. “I was like, That might be the no-fly zone,” she said. In August, Santos pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft and a bunch of criminal schemes. He faces a minimum sentence of two years in prison.
Hall tried to come in with an open mind about the conviction and other allegations regarding her new co-host, and she said she feels that Santos has addressed them honestly. “He’s in a position now where he understands that The jig is up. I gotta come clean.”
Hall was further sold on the job after she discovered that she and Santos share a birthday, July 22. After they figured that out, other similarities soon emerged. “George and I are literally the same person, except for I’m way prettier and way smarter,” Hall said.
Still, taping the show has “challenged me and my sanity,” she said. Describing a recent interview with a guest who identified as anti-trans and spoke about doing blackface, she said, “I had to sit in the room with this guy and interview him, and I think I did a damn good job because I didn’t whip his ass.”
As much as Hall has enjoyed getting to know her co-host and discussing lifestyle topics with him, even she’s not sure she believes he’s done seeking office. “I think we haven’t heard the last from George Santos in the political world. I would not mind seeing him in that arena again. But he says no. He says he’s done.”
At least one supporter of his is of the same mind. Jennifer, a 39-year-old New Yorker, told me she was invited to the party by Santos himself over Twitter DM. While she’s excited for the podcast, “I’m honestly hopeful that he’ll find his way back in” to government, she said. “Look at what he did—and he didn’t even have a full term.”
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