Wednesday in the Point with George

Daily Point

Drifting far right

During his first week in Washington, George Santos raised eyebrows for palling around with far-right, insurgent House Republicans like Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert. He appeared on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. He assembled a team of aides with right-wing links. He was even photographed making what appeared to be a white supremacist hand sign on the House floor, and hasn’t made his intentions about that symbol particularly clear.

This is not likely to be an aberration. Expect the trolling and rightward drift to continue as establishment Republicans — belatedly — distance themselves from him. With no home within the Long Island and state GOP and Conservative Party hierarchy, it becomes more and more likely that Santos embraces the far right in search of a support base.

In one sense, it’s a strange journey for a candidate who argued to The Point back in 2019 that he was not your “typical Republican” and supported immigration reform. But the far-right impulses were always there: In 2020, he retweeted an Indiana candidate’s complaint about Democrats that included a QAnon slogan. (He told us then he didn’t know what QAnon was.) Santos was at a controversial New York Young Republican Club event last month in Manhattan whose guest list also included Marjorie Taylor Greene and members of far-right groups such as the Austrian Freedom Party founded by a former SS officer.

And he has had multiple associations with the Long Island Loud Majority group that has been a new and often disruptive force in conservative politics on Long Island since Donald Trump’s presidency. Santos has appeared on the group’s podcast, and one of his political committees sent thousands of dollars to a Patriot Consultant group that shares a P.O. box with LILM.

If Santos ends up feeling that the establishment GOP is working against him, it could push him to an even more combative role. He has already shown himself to be happy to associate with insurgents regionally — Jamie Silvestri, who used to help handle press for Loud Majority, remembers Santos introducing CD1 GOP primary candidate Michelle Bond to Loud Majority members at a summer event. Bond and her FTX-affiliated partner Ryan Salame put hundreds of thousands of dollars behind her bid against the party pick, Nick LaLota. Salame also contributed to Santos.

Loud Majority co-founder Shawn Farash told The Point it was “patently false” that Santos made such introductions. Silvestri has not been with the group since the end of the summer.

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Talking Point

More Santos bio questions

Way back in 2019, the biography that George Santos was circulating as part of his congressional campaign included all the now-discredited details about his education, business career, and pet charity interests. But it also highlighted what he said was his involvement with a long-standing homeless aid initiative launched by his mother, Fatima Devolder.

“In the mid 1990’s his mother and friends instituted a grassroots daily operation to distribute sandwiches around the Northeast Queens area to homeless individuals,” the biography said, describing an aspect of Santos’ background that has gotten little attention. “George Anthony was a part of this effort from a young age,” the biography added.

Versions of this homeless help effort continued to be listed on Santos’ campaign website during his runs for office, with the addition of details about how the food went to homeless people his mother and her friends “would spot on the street.” The campaign website said Santos helped distribute meals from age 8 “until the effort ended with the passing of his mother and one other key member of the group in 2016,” according to a version preserved by the Internet Archive.

The current version of Santos’ campaign website does not list any of the fake resume points about schools, businesses, or pets — and it also no longer describes the homeless help group. Instead, it says broadly that the freshman congressman’s “drive, commitment and determination were inspired by the legacy set and left by his mother.”

Santos and his office did not return requests for more details about the charity initiative. Many New Yorkers participate in small or impromptu efforts to help people living on the streets, and those efforts often leave little trace in searchable records.

But the breadth of Santos’ other resume lies and embellishments — and the length of time he says he was involved with this effort — raise at least a question about this detail’s accuracy. A search of media outlet clips did not turn up a mention of a homeless initiative connected with Fatima Devolder.

It’s unlikely that the group was part of major city efforts on this issue. A former official who worked in city homeless services in the ’90s told The Point that the city’s approach then was that “streets and subways shouldn’t be people’s homes,” and “generally outreach did not involve giving out food.”

A current homeless service provider in the five boroughs said that most service providers haven’t fed people on the street in “decades,” as it’s seen as “not best practice.” Efforts are instead focused on urging people toward shelter.

The well-established group Coalition for the Homeless does do food distribution work, but “many other groups do as well or have in the past,” said Dan Levitan of BerlinRosen, speaking for the Coalition. “We don't really have the ability to verify this claim, unfortunately.”

A city Department of Social Services spokesman similarly said the agency would not know whether an individual was involved in a community-based, grassroots effort like this.

Other aspects of Santos’ story about his mother were the subject of multiple news stories Wednesday, with immigration records placing her in a Rio de Janeiro suburb on 9/11/2001, not in the South Tower as Santos had claimed.

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

A crash course in economics

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Final Point

The money game

The antics of George Santos are inducing some early election action on the other side of the aisle: 2022 Democratic primary contender Josh Lafazan has been poking around for donations. The Point obtained an email in which an outside political professional this month asked a potential contributor for $1,000 for “Lafazan for Congress.”

And Democratic primary runner-up Jon Kaiman posted on Facebook on Tuesday about a fundraiser in Garden City.

Kaiman described that event as being held “for the purposes of retiring campaign debt,” and his Facebook post noted, “While my name is in the mix if there is a special election in the near future … the reality is that the party leaders pick the candidate as there is no primary in a special election.”

But the former North Hempstead Town supervisor texted The Point that “I am still in Congress mode as I raise money to retire my debt from my congressional campaign. That said, there are many ways to serve my community other than Congress.”

Last week, Lafazan told The Point that he intends to run for reelection to his current Nassau County Legislature post, a race that would take place later this year. But the promise of federal office apparently still holds some charm for him.

Other potential Democratic hopefuls could include Robert Zimmerman, who lost the general election to Santos last year, or former Rep. Tom Suozzi, who did not seek reelection in the district but no longer has a gubernatorial race to run, at least for a few years.

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano