George Santos admits fabricating work experience and calls Mitt Romney ‘racist’ in bizarre interview

Mr Santos said the Utah senator is ‘prejudiced against minorities’ but offered no evidence to support his claim

George Santos and Mitt Romney has a tense exchange ahead of the State of the Union (Screenshot / CSPAN)

Embattled GOP Representative and compulsive fabulist George Santos appeared to admit fabricating business experience on his resume to create a persona that would be more attractive to voters in a bizarre, rambling interview with right-wing Newsmax host Greg Kelly.

During a Thursday appearance on Kelly’s eponymous prime-time show, Mr Santos responded to a prompt about his motivation for claiming to have been employed by Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, though he claimed that he “never lied” because he supposedly worked for contractors engaged by both firms.

“I want to set the record clear on my work experience. I never lied. I never worked for Goldman Sacks or Citigroup directly, but I did work through direct contracts for those firms in the management of limited partners and general partners relationships,” he said.

It’s unclear what “direct contracts” he was referring to in his interview with Kelly, and Mr Santos did not elaborate further.

He did, however, claim to have set the record straight on what he described as his “mistakes,” and suggested voters should let bygones be bygones and allow him to continue serving with a clean slate.

“I’m human. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve made peace with those mistakes, and I’ve come clean on those mistakes,” he said, adding that he “thought we were the country of repent, ask for forgiveness, and move forward”.

Mr Santos also pushed back on descriptions of him as lonely or ignored during his first days in the House based on photographs of him sitting alone in the body’s chamber during the marathon process of electing a Speaker of the House, and at one point described himself as “simple-minded” while attacking Utah Senator Mitt Romney and praising Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema for how they spoke to him when senators attended the State of the Union on Tuesday.

He said his service in the House was about “having somebody like me come and represent other people who are just like me — simple-minded folks who come from absolutely nothing and have a voice in Congress,” and contrasted that with Mr Romney’s statement that the New York Republican “doesn’t belong” there.

Continuing, Mr Santos described his exchanges with both senators and said Ms Sinema told him to “hang in there” when she encountered him in the House earlier this week.

By contrast, he said Mr Romney is someone “who thinks he's above it all and is [on] a whole mighty white horse trying to talk to us down on morality”.

He said the Utah Republican, who was the GOP’s presidential nominee during the 2012 election, is a racist, describing him as “prejudiced against minorities,” while offering no evidence to support his claim.