George Santos, we hardly knew ye — because ye was buried under such a gargantuan pile of gaudy fabrications.
But we wrote about ye and how.
In The Washington Post, Dana Milbank wrote that “Santos showed just how far one could go with a lie, right down to the knee injuries he didn’t sustain while not playing volleyball on a scholarship he did not receive for the college he did not attend.” (Thanks to Susan Casey of Palm City, Fla., and Melissa Guensler of Fredericksburg, Texas, among many others, for nominating that.)
In The Times, Michelle Goldberg used her farewell to Santos to catalog the many miens of MAGA. “Different politicians represent different strains: There’s the dour, conspiracy-poisoned suburban grievance of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the gun-loving rural evangelicalism of Lauren Boebert, the overt white nationalism of Paul Gosar and the frat boy sleaze of Matt Gaetz,” she wrote. “But no one embodies Trump’s fame-obsessed sociopathic emptiness like Santos. He’s heir to Trump’s sybaritic nihilism, high-kitsch absurdity and impregnable brazenness.” (Joel Wizansky, New Haven, Conn., and Ian McLauchlan, East Lansing, Mich., among others)
To turn from Santos to Ron DeSantis and his televised skirmish with Gavin Newsom, David Frum in The Atlantic noted one of its many peculiarities: “In the debate’s opening segments, the moderator, Sean Hannity, stressed again and again that his questions would be fact-based — like a proud host informing his guests that tonight he will serve the expensive wine.” (Kathryn Scotten, Portland, Ore., and Richard Salkin, Neptune Beach, Fla.) A side note: I wrote my own appraisal of that debate, published a day after last week’s newsletter, and you can read it here.