After weeks of denials and deflections, embattled Rep. George Santos, R-NY, admitted to paying someone to dress him in drag on at least one occasion but emphasized he never performed as a drag queen professionally.
Santos made the admission in an interview on Fox Nation's "Piers Morgan Uncensored," released Monday, where the former "Good Morning Britain" host pressed him on his history of notorious falsehoods before asking him to address a 2009 photo that appears to show Santos in a drag costume.
"I was never a career drag queen. Once, I dressed up in drag. I paid somebody," Santos told Morgan in the interview available on Fox Nation.
Referencing video-fueled rumors that Santos was, in fact, a longtime drag performer, a relentless Morgan replied, "I don't care if you dress up in drag. Here's my question for you. It's unlikely you did that only once, if I may be so bold. It's just that only once, we got photographic evidence."
Santos said he finds the public's fixation with his drag history "amusing," claiming that while falsely labeling himself a drag performer would give him much-needed "redemption points," he will not allow the media to pressure him into admitting to something untrue.
"I simply want you to be honest," Morgan replied. "I don't give a damn…"
"It's almost amusing that people are trying to fight me of being something that I'm not," Santos replied. "Quite frankly if I were to say oh yeah, I'm a drag queen, that would probably give me redemption points which I'm not willing to take because then I'd be admitting to a lie just to cover myself for the media. So I feel like what you guys want me to do is admit to something I haven't done.'
The lawmaker further laid into the media, accusing the press of sensationalizing his story with negative coverage, which he said, has resulted in "credible death threats" against him.
"People think that I'm a criminal, that the DOJ is coming after me and then we start receiving death threats at my office," Santos said. "Two weeks ago, we had a credible death threat from a man with a rap sheet as long as you can think of calling us…the man was so psychotic he left a detailed voicemail saying he was gonna get a baseball bat [and] bash my husband's brain in and I was gonna watch. And then he was going to splatter mine all over the floor, and he wasn't gonna stop until there was nothing left."
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Santos said he forwarded the information to Capitol Police, who were able to track down the caller. When Morgan asked whether he intended to press charges, the lawmaker replied, "I don't know where the point of the investigation is, but I know who he is, I have his rap sheet…this is something that's highly concerning to the safety of me and my family."
Santos has been plagued by a slew of scandals since being elected to Congress in November. He has admitted to lying about his work, ancestry and education history, and numerous people have accused him of going by various aliases.
Most recently, a homeless veteran accused him of stealing $3,000 in fundraiser cash that was meant to pay for his dog's surgery.
When pressed by Morgan on the validity of the accusation, Santos insisted that he never met the veteran, maintaining that he has no knowledge of the purported scheme involving a charity he claimed to have founded.
"I have never met this man. I've been abundantly clear…when I read this it hit me like a bag of bricks because I don't know him and most people who truly know me know that if he had met me his dog would have received the surgery and he wouldn't have been homeless," he said.
The lawmaker did admit to creating "dozens" of GoFundMe pages for animals in need, but told Morgan many of them were "managed by other people, but because I was the main account holder on the Facebook page it would all go through mine."
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"I'm not denying there could be a GoFundMe page [for him]," Santos said." If there's a GoFundMe page and if they're going to present me with one, I'm not going to deny it that but I've never met him. I've never took on this case and give never took the money from his dog," he said.
"Here's the thing," Morgan told Santos at one point during the interview. "You may as well just be completely honest now and throw yourself to the public, to their mercy, to say ‘I’ve made up all this stuff about myself, I'm incredibly sorry, and I fall on the sword of your forgiveness.'"
At another point in the interview, Santos told Morgan that he is "a terrible liar" but assumed he would get away with his fabrications because no one had noticed them during his failed congressional run in 2020.
Fox Nation subscribers can now stream the full episode of ‘Piers Morgan Uncensored’ featuring George Santos on the platform.
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