George Santos Says He Only Pretended to Be Jewish as “a Joke”

Of all the lies George Santos has told—that have come to light thus far—two of the biggest are the dual claims that his maternal Jewish grandparents fled the Holocaust and that he himself is Jewish. On Monday, in an interview with Piers Morgan, he attempted to defend himself over the latter—rather unsuccessfully!

Insisting, once again, to have never said he was Jewish but “Jew-ish,” Santos told Morgan: “I would always say I was raised Catholic but I come from a Jewish family, so that makes me Jew-ish. It’s always been a party-favor joke, everybody’s always laughed, and now that everybody’s canceling me, everyone’s pounding down for a pound of flesh.” Morgan, who is mostly terrible but in this instance came off as relatively less terrible, responded: “Because you’re not Jewish!”

Setting aside the fact that Santos is lying when he says he never tried to pass himself off as Jewish—having previously described himself as a “proud American Jew,” and saying in a postelection speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference that he was one of just three Jewish lawmakers in the Republican caucus—it’s telling that the congressman does not understand that people might be offended by him claiming to be Jewish as “a joke.”

As for the grandparents of it all, Santos again doubled down on his mother’s parents being forced to flee Hitler, despite evidence to the contrary, claiming that they fled Belgium for “Brazil where they falsified a lot of their documents to claim they were born there.” He added, incredibly: “This is the one that I will battle to my grave to the point that I’ve already ordered those DNA test kits. I have done four of them so far, and I’m just waiting for their returns. And I’m very curious to share those with everybody.”

He’s ordered the DNA kits, folks!