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House GOP Erases Santos From Its Campaign Website

House GOP Erases Santos From Its Campaign Website

The National Republican Congressional Committee, a political committee whose purpose is to help elect Republicans to the House of Representatives, has recently erased the embattled, newly seated New York Rep. George Santos from its website.

Reporters have continued to uncover lies Santos told about his background and resume during his 2022 campaign for New York's Third Congressional District.

It's unclear when exactly Santos was erased from the committee's website; however, he had appeared on the site as recently as January 15, according to an archived snapshot from Google. Every other GOP House member from New York remains on the NRCC's site, which directs donors to give to current elected officials to "defend our majority."

Santos has been under fire since December, when the New York Timesreported that a number of key claims in Santos' biography were lies. Since then, reporters have unearthed numerous other lies Santos told, which has led to calls for him to resign his House seat from the Nassau County Republican Party and a handful of his fellow GOP lawmakers, including Reps. Nick LaLotta, Mike Lawler, Max Miller, Marcus Molinaro, and Brandon Williams.

Santos' lies continue to be uncovered and debunked. They include:

  • He has no Jewish heritage, despite having described himself as "half Jewish" and a "proud American Jew." Santos later told the New York Post: "I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background, I said I was 'Jew-ish.'"
  • His grandparents were not Ukrainian Jewish refugees who fled the Nazis during the Holocaust, as he had claimed.
  • Santos said his mother was in the South Tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, and died from cancer she contracted there. However, according to the Washington Post, immigration documents show Santos' mother was not even in the United States on September 11, 2001.
  • Santos listed jobs at the major financial institutions Citigroup and Goldman Sachs on his resume, but neither company has any record that he worked there.
  • He said he started an animal rescue charity called Friends of Pets United, but no charities are registered with that name. On Wednesday, a military veteran came forward with a charge that Santos raised $3,000 to help his dying dog get surgery but took the money for himself.
  • Santos lied about his education, falsely claiming to have attended the New York private school Horace Mann, Baruch College, and New York University. Records show he attended none of those schools. Santos later admitted that he "didn't graduate from any institution of higher learning. I'm embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume."
  • Santos also claimed to have been a volleyball star at Baruch College, even though he never attended the school.
  • Santos said he was a landlord who owned 13 properties. But not only does he not own any properties, but, the New York Post reported, he is actually living with his sister, who herself is facing eviction over $40,000 in unpaid rent.
  • In November, Santos said a company he owned "lost" four employees in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando in 2016. However, the New York Timesreported none of the victims of the shooting worked at any companies tied to Santos.
  • Santos filed a financial disclosure report with the House in which he claimed to have made a $750,000 salary in 2021 from a company he runs. However, he did not list in that disclosure payments he is reported to have received from Harbor City Capital, a company that the Securities and Exchange Commission has accused of running a "classic Ponzi scheme," the Washington Post reported.

Santos' biography on the NRCC site included a number of those lies that have since been debunked, including Santos' work and educational history, as well as the lie that his mother was in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

The NRCC did not return a request for comment about when it removed Santos' profile from its website or why.

Polling shows that, in addition to the calls for his resignation from fellow Republican officials, a majority of his constituents want him to step down.

Santos has said he won't step down.

And House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, whose party holds the slimmest of majorities in the chamber, has said Santos deserves to stay in Congress and will be dealt with by the House Ethics Committee "if there is a concern."

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Republicans Busted Using Trump-Era Images To Depict Biden Administration 'Chaos'

Republicans Busted Using Trump-Era Images To Depict Biden Administration 'Chaos'

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

A new Republican attack ad is being scrutinized for its use of deceptive images to depict President Joe Biden's administration as chaotic. CNN's Daniel Dale has created a detailed assessment that points out the problems with the Republican ad.
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VIDEO: Republicans Drop Dog Whistles For White Nationalist Bullhorn

VIDEO: Republicans Drop Dog Whistles For White Nationalist Bullhorn

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

Just as soon as potential plans for the House GOP's breakaway "America First Caucus" became public last week, House Republicans quickly tried to distance themselves from it.

An early draft of the caucus platform, reportedly the brainchild of extremist Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona, included a call for respecting "Anglo-Saxon political traditions." In part, it read, "History has shown that societal trust and political unity are threatened when foreign citizens are imported en-masse into a country."

The inherently racist notion that immigrants are being "imported en-masse" has roots in white nationalist "replacement theory"—a sick new fascination among Republicans. The idea is that white people are being replaced by non-white people to the point of eventual extinction. But Republicans have added a political twist, framing it as a matter of political power.

"I have less political power because (Democrats) are importing a brand-new electorate," Fox News' Tucker Carlson theorized on Fox News earlier this month. "The power that I have as an American, guaranteed at birth, is one man, one vote, and they are diluting it."

Wherever there are references to "importing" people and "diluting" political power these days, Republicans are surely at hand, appealing to the basest and most abhorrent beliefs of their increasingly racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic base.

But full-on embracing the core principles of neo-Nazis and white nationalists just might have political consequences for Republicans. While the GOP's hard-right lunge clearly sells to an increasing share of the party's faithful, it also stands a chance of alienating some of its most reliable voters in non-presidential elections in the suburbs.

That's likely why House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy quickly sought to distance the party from the nascent plans for the "Anglo Saxon" First caucus.

"America is built on the idea that we are all created equal and success is earned through honest, hard work. It isn't built on identity, race, or religion," McCarthy, a California Republican, tweeted late on April 16. "The Republican Party is the party of Lincoln & the party of more opportunity for all Americans—not nativist dog whistles."

Even Rep. Greene claimed she was the unwitting victim of a "staff level draft proposal from an outside group" that she hadn't even read. "The scum and liars in the media are calling me a racist by taking something out of context," Greene wrote in a tweet last weekend. Nothing but class.

But the fact of the matter is that Trump-era Republicans have entirely embraced nativist dog whistle politics for the last four years, and now they are following that political strain straight to the well of white supremacy.

In fact, the House Republican campaign arm and the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) super PAC—both closely associated with McCarthy—have made the promotion of nativist imagery and stereotypes central to their campaign messaging over the last couple election cycles. In response to McCarthy's "party of Lincoln" tweet, the pro-immigration group America's Voice compiled a montage of ads from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and CLF that expose the GOP's overt effort to employ racist themes as a way of stoking fear in white Americans.

Republican Ads Reveal a Party that Relies on Nativist Dog-Whistleswww.youtube.com

In 2020, ads from the two groups repeatedly employed racist stereotypes, accusing Democratic candidates of wanting to create a "sanctuary jurisdiction, even for criminals," voting to "protect illegal immigrant gang members," and supporting "providing safe havens for illegals."

More recently, Republicans have been capitalizing on the recent increase of migrant crossings at the border, a spike that's actually completely consistent with seasonal changes in undocumented immigration and a pandemic-generated backlog. But Republicans are eager to blame the rise on Democratic policies.

In a Fox News appearance on March 4, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina warned, "They're children today but they could easily be terrorists tomorrow." And on March 9, GOP Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana baselessly hyped the notion that undocumented immigrants are bringing COVID-19 to the U.S. "There are superspreader caravans coming across our southern border," Scalise charged at a press conference where House Republicans sought to portray a crisis at the border. Of course, Republicans are simultaneously opposing the Biden administration's efforts to vaccinate undocumented immigrants.

But the next phase of the GOP's nativist push is a full-blown embrace of white supremacy. After Fox's Carlson devoted his April 8 primetime show to delivering an impassioned defense of the racist "replacement theory," Republicans followed up with a robust fundraising campaign, according to Peter Montgomery at Right Wing Watch.

On April 9, the Republican National Committee sent a fundraising text to its members that opened with, "Are you watching Tucker Carlson right now?" That must have gone well because on April 14, the RNC blasted out a fundraising email with the subject line, "Do you watch Tucker Carlson? He's absolutely right." On April 16, the RNC sent another email warning that Chelsea Clinton was "openly calling on Facebook to SILENCE Tucker Carlson" and asking for support to "help stop the left from censoring conservatives like Tucker Carlson." The Tucker Carlson solicitations are apparently a cash cow because the RNC is continuing to feature him.

What this tells us is that the GOP's most active base of grassroots supporters is eating up Carlson's promotion of neo-Nazi dogma and, not surprisingly, so are the white nationalists. The white nationalist site VDare has been cheering Carlson's recent monologues as among "the best things Fox News has ever aired," and "filled with ideas and talking points VDARE.com pioneered many years ago."

In a way, McCarthy may be right—Republicans have clearly dropped the dog whistle portion of their nativist appeals. Now they're just going for broke with an overt embrace of white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

Sen. Ted Cruz

How The GOP Spent Millions To Make Right-Wing ‘Bestsellers’

Reprinted with permission from DailyKoa

The problem with having a base that isn't particularly interested in reading anything more than a headline is that it is hard to sell books to those folks. You couple that with holding and promoting wildly unpopular positions on health care, foreign policy, economics, race, and justice, and a proclivity to act morally hypocritical and you are creating the kinds of conditions most book publishers would shy away from. Add to that most of the things you say are factually incorrect, a potential lawsuit in the waiting for a publisher, and it is a wonder how any of these conservative jokes get publishing deals in the first place.

However, the conservative oligarchy-bubble has figured a way around promoting an unpopular product—buy the perception that it isn't popular. For some time news outlets have reported on the self-dealing, bulk-book buying tendencies of campaigns and Republican committees, that help propel books by people from people like Sens. Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and Tom Cotton, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, and cosmic embarrassment Donald Trump Jr., access to national best-seller lists. Being on a best-seller list—especially from one of the Republican proclaimed fake news sites like the Washington Post or the New York Times, can boost your sales further being the premiere advertisement for literature and nonfiction in the United States.

The Washington Post did a report on the shady-quality of this practice, pointing out that "Four party-affiliated organizations, including the Republican National Committee, collectively spent more than $1 million during the past election cycle mass-purchasing books written by GOP candidates, elected officials and personalities, according to Federal Election Commission expenditure reports." The practice is not simply deceitful in promoting a false sense of popularity for unpopular ideas, but because authors of books make serious money if they can get on best-seller lists off of royalties from hundreds of thousands of dollars in book sales.

One of the more well-publicized self-dealings in recent months was Texas's answer to intelligence, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, whose book got a $400,000 boost in sales from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). The NRCC defended its purchase of Crenshaw's book, saying that it had fundraised no less than three times the amount off of the book (signed copies, etc.), making it a legitimate purchase. But the Republican former Navy SEAL, who holds an elected office based almost entirely on the truly twisted Republican gerrymandering of a Texas district, was able to point to his best-seller status as proof of the popularity of his opinions.

Trump Jr., his dad the Donald, truly unpopular Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, unpopular China-phobe Sen. Tom Cotton, and Capitol insurgent supporter Sen. Josh Hawley all got lucky with bulk purchases of their books this past election cycle according to the Post. Hawley's big pre-buy got sidetracked when Simon & Schuster canceled the book deal with Hawley for his sweeping endorsements of anti-Democratic, fact-free election fraud charges—though he forgot to mention he likely kept some of the advance while he whined about freedom of speech.

Tom Cotton, best-known for being a slimmer, cleaner-shaven, and more hawkish version of Ted Cruz, seems to have received quite a bit of help from political action committee the Senate Conservatives Fund. According to the Post, they spent close to $90,000 buying Cotton's book—the title of which is something like Soldier Duty, Soldier soldier, duty duty, I hate China and Democracy. Coincidentally, this was the same PAC that threw $65,000 at "Regnery Publishing, [Ted] Cruz's publisher, for advance copies of Hawley's forthcoming book."

Last week, campaign finance watchdog Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint against Sen. Ted Cruz, with the Federal Election Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee. Highlighting Cruz's 15% royalty rate and his campaign's expenditure of around $18,000 on Facebook ads promoting his book, the complaint accuses Cruz of violating "the ban on the personal use of campaign funds at 52 U.S.C. § 30114(b)(1)." The complaint also reminds the two committees that the evidence they are presenting is just the Facebook advertisements and there might very well be Cruz campaign expenditures promoting his garbage tome on other platforms.

In the three months following the publication of Cruz's book, Ted Cruz for Senate paid third-party booksellers Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble over $154,000 for "books." Other Facebook ads offered supporters a signed copy of the book in exchange for a contribution (while also urging viewers to "pre-order a copy today at Amazon or your local book retailer") and linked to a Ted Cruz for Senate fundraising page.

This isn't news for Ted Cruz, who has long bent, if not broke, the laws of campaigning and campaign finance. His interest in honesty has never existed and he has never shown the slightest of moral compunctions. And while Ted Cruz may technically be considered more intelligent than someone like Donald Trump Jr., the two men participate in identical cynical and corrupt behavior. In Junior's case, it's his actual daddy that helps pay for his lack of popularity, while in Ted Cruz's case, it's the Republican Party machine and his own campaign that he treats like a rich daddy.

Technically, the issue here is that Ted Cruz's campaign did not bulk buy directly through the publisher. The reason why this is important is that this issue has long been understood to be a thorny problem, and the FEC has made rulings on it dating back to 2014. Buying directly from the publisher, according to the FEC, allows the publisher to count those sales outside of the sales of books that they owe royalties to authors for. Cruz's campaign spent thousands directly through retailers. This makes it much more like that Cruz's royalty payouts got a direct personal bank account boost from his own campaign's funds. He's not the only one, as everybody's favorite know-nothing-at-all Dan Crenshaw's book got almost a quarter of a million in sales from a retail direct purchase by the NRCC.

Before you let that friend of yours that says chem-trails control the weather chime in, the Post explains that this level of bulk-buying, padding out the book sales, is largely a GOP "phenomenon."