When Politicians Don’t Get Narcissists
Blatantly unethical behavior deserves little “due process.”
If you cannot believe the highly admired Representative Jamie Raskin and 30 other Democrats voted along with 182 Republicans against the expulsion of serial liar George Santos from Congress, neither can I.
Frankly, I struggle to see how anyone in any party would not want to remove such a ridiculous clown and con man from any institution they claim to respect, let alone when that con man’s mere presence is itself a constant disrespect and daily degradation of that institution.
In fact, many New York Republicans have been begging the party to remove him since he lied, hooked and crooked his way into winning a normally Democratic leaning district in New York. Recent history says the GOP would not mind him if they could get away with it, but his daily existence in Congress makes the entire New York Republican Party look like a completely incompetent political sh*t show for so obviously failing to vet him in any serious way, and/or proves they never really cared about the truth at all. Either belief is really bad for them so they need the voter’s reminder of Santos to go away ASAP!
Santos is indeed an albatross around every Empire State Republican neck trying to win any election in 2024, and his GOP stain should keep spreading across the country if the Democrats weaponize this truth cleverly, until he is out of sight, out of mind and long forgotten by the voters. Fortunately for Dems, his election story is one of those “truth is stranger than fiction” events that are almost impossible to forget.
Having psychologically profiled George Santos shortly after he got “elected,” I learned that he is a lot like Kevin McCarthy in the sense that there is not a lot of there, there to profile. Neither is the sharpest knife in the drawer and both pretty much are who we think they are. Both are seemingly very bad serial liars, con men, and some form of weak-willed pathological narcissist.
In Santos’ case, what other explanation is there for someone who so comfortably lies about their entire life to trick people into voting for them, admits it all after getting elected and busted, but presents the public with a bottomless pit of epically ridiculous excuses and shows zero sincere guilt, shame or remorse for any of it? If that is not a pathological narcissist, that is someone giving a near perfect impression of one.
If you have any doubt George Santos is yet another obvious sign of the Republicans bottomless moral, ethical and ideological free-fall, here is a small sampling of lies he told to fool New York’s wealthiest district into supporting and electing him. Santos called it “embellishing his resume.”
• Claimed to go to a top New York high school but had to drop out due to Great Recession hard times. They have no record of him.
• Claimed to have a top university and masters degrees, but post-election admitted he, “didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning.”
• Claimed to be a star volleyball player who got an athletic scholarship at a school he never went to.
• Claimed Jewish heritage, and then defended the falsehood as he said he is, “Jew-ish.”
• Claimed his grandparents fled the Nazi holocaust while records show they were born in Brazil.
• Claimed he came from generational wealth and owned 13 properties. Neither are true.
• Claimed his mother died in the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 but immigration records show she wasn’t in the country.
• Claimed he is married to a man, when he had only been married to a woman.
• Claimed he lost four employees at the Pulse LGBTQ nightclub shooting in Florida. None of the victims ever worked with him.
• Claimed he worked at Citibank and Goldman Sachs, but never did. He called these claims a “poor choice of words.”
• Claimed he is a skilled wealth manager but his most legitimate experience was put in mediation by the SEC for being a Ponzi scheme.
To be clear, I am a fan of Jaime Raskin who is a longtime constitutional law professor and attorney who said he voted against the expulsion of Santos from the House of Representatives because it would be “a terrible precedent to set,” which again does not make sense. How is letting such an obvious liar and con man remain in Congress not “a terrible precedent to set” in itself?
Other Raskin comments on why he was against expelling Santos are:
“I’m a Constitution guy.”
“Santos has not been criminally convicted yet of the offenses cited in the resolution, nor has he been found guilty of ethics offenses in the House internal process,”
“I can think of four or five Democratic members the Republicans would like to expel without a conviction or adverse ethics findings.”
“We can’t abandon due process and the rule of law in the House of Representatives.”
From a very technical psychological perspective, that all sounds like a bunch of BS because Santos is one of the most ridiculous and obvious liars in all of world political history based on the fact that he lied about nearly everything that got him elected.
No one can convince me the Founding Fathers wanted the Constitution interpreted to say serial liars should be left in Congress until found guilty in court, or be excused for not being found guilty of ethics offenses in the House because they are blatantly being protected by their own party’s majority who do not want to lose a single vote.
If any politician got their job by lying about everything to get elected, they should be gone from “public service” immediately. This should be a no-brainer for any political party who claims to be part of a democracy, but when nearly the entire Republican Party are delusional and narcissistic greed and power monsters willing to say and do anything for more, letting them know they can lie about anything and everything like Santos did and have nothing to worry about from Congress unless they get convicted is a very dangerous precedent to set itself. It will only encourage much more Santos-type serial liar behavior in the future.
Saying, “We can’t abandon due process and the rule of law in the House of Representatives” also makes zero sense because Santos has admitted most of what he said to get elected was a lie, which should be enough to immediately be a clear violation of House ethics, if it is not already. Due process investigation over, expel the guy, because just like prosecuting trump must be done to preserve any sense of rule of law, House votes must be whipped up to preserve any sense of Congressional ethics, or the Republicans via George Santos will just keep proving to us they have no ethics, morals or ideas beyond the most cynical forms of greed, power and dominance.
Santos expulsion also clearly needs to happen from a Counter-Narcissism perspective because as we often repeat, usually the only thing that will stop narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths from going after what they want, need and/or crave are firm barriers such as, if you lie about most of who you really are to get elected to Congress, you will be quickly expelled and prosecuted for violating the most basic ethics of honesty and humanity, which is being who you say you are to get a job.
Just one of Santos’s lies on a resume would have gotten any one of us fired in the corporate sector. It is also crazy that public servants who have taken an oath to serve the people get so much more “due process” than the rest of us, in cases when their ethical violations are so obvious and even confessed. That is why Raskin’s reasoning seems to be massively naive and/or a failure to recognize and understand what clinical-level narcissists are really about. Icymi, these types of pathological narcissists are all about themselves, 24 / 7 / 365, the end.
Again, this is not complicated psychology or politics so Raskin’s comments on preserving the institution and Constitution infers he and the other Dems really do not understand the dangers to democracy that someone with George Santos’ psychological issues presents in a “public service” job. Like trump, he is psychologically incapable of not trying to monetize anything and everything from the privileged government information he currently has access to as a Representative.
Apparently a House ethics investigation of Santos is supposed to conclude on November 17 which should trigger another removal vote, but it would be completely out of character for the Republicans to do anything about one of their own ethical violators beyond a purely symbolic slap on the wrist that still keeps him voting GOP in the House. Raskin has implied that if found guilty of serious ethics violations, his and other votes would switch to expulsion.
The Sub Rosa Corollary
Certainly as someone who has given every sign they are sharp and honorable, Jaime Raskin has earned the right to be taken at his word while Santos is so obviously the opposite. Ironically, a personal pet peeve is when honorable politicians and the mainstream media too often say things such as, “We need to take them at their word,” when referring to obvious lies and liars.
The best possible explanation in my opinion is a more complicated, stealthy and strategic move being made by Raskin and other Dems, and that is they are really playing smart politics by publicly stating a half-truth, that they believe expelling Santos would set a bad Congressional “precedent.”
I certainly do not think Raskin is dishonest and the probabilities and most evidence backs up his claim that he voted against expelling Santos for the reasons he stated, but he has also shown to be a smart and strategic politician, so I would prefer to believe some kind of Sub Rosa corollary is in effect for the Dems who are finally thinking more strategically against America’s most corrupt, intractable and pathologically psychopathic political clown show formerly known as the Republican Party.
The primary piece of evidence that tips the probabilities towards Raskin and other Dems voting against expelling Santos for precedent as stated is the fact that total vote count fell far short of the two-thirds required for removal, so their vote in favor of protecting him was purely symbolic.
It certainly seems like the vast majority of the House RINO Party led by Kevin McCarthy’s replacement Mike Johnson have continually supported such an obvious con man at every opportunity, because they cannot help themselves from continually proving to the world that the vast majority of them are owned and/or narcissists who compulsively put their own interests and their political party over country and humanity, almost every single time.
What a non-surprise they pursue the same old kleptocratic, authoritarian and fascist cliches of compulsion for power, dominance and complete wealth extraction from the country’s treasury for the whims of the “conservative,” the far right and “deeply religious” politician’s wealthy narcissistic owners whose ideology and political platform is “The Disease of Me.”
Indeed it is hard to preserve any institution or a Constitution when only one of the two political parties in a two party system is interested in participating with honesty, fairness, compromise and is grounded in reality.
It should be clear to any fair-minded observer that none of the above qualities are part of America’s so-called “conservative” Grand Old Party anymore, and they are unlikely to ever come back, because along with the right-wing media industrial complex led by Fox, they have been grooming general viewers, Republican supporters and fair-minded conservatives with narcissism for decades. This is done by grooming, gaslighting and triggering their fears, dislikes and traumas, which in turn causes them more fears, traumas and hate, which primes them to embrace authoritarianism, fascism, and other made up realities.
Sadly, Raskin and the 30 other Dems who voted not to expel Santos are likely showing like far too many, they do not get the psychology, or maybe they do get it on some level and they are wisely and surprisingly playing a deeper game. Unfortunately, most initial evidence points to the former.
The exception could be the four or five Dems Raskin mentioned. It certainly would be no surprise if Republicans would go full-on toxic abuser yet again and try to expel Representatives who are of a shade, gender or religion they do not like, such as the trifectas like Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, so perhaps saving unfairly targeted Dems from an unjust GOP process who will be conflated with the treatment of George Santos by the GOP mudslinging and poop-throwing machines is the real reason why those Dems made such a seemingly illogical and questionable vote in support of a pathological narcissist. Certainly, time will tell.
Here were the early predictions of how the George Santos political shell game would end. Clearly #1 was far too optimistic and it is definitely bizarre to have 31 Dems vote not to expel him for obvious ethical violations.
Santos in Congress likely ends one of three ways:
• Republicans find their last embers of a spine only because the public sees how he decodes their complete lack of moral compass.
• The law does the dirty work for them.
• They do nothing because they do not want to lose an easily purchased vote, and he loses the next election after doing who knows what harm to the nation, for fun and profit, just like his, “Catch Me If You Can” political role-model, trump.
Is there a better public example of someone who has completely no shame or conscience in a way even Republicans can’t deny, and yet most are still in some form of denial about Anthony Devolder, I mean George Santos, or do I? Frankly, I have no idea. Does anyone?
“It should be clear to any fair-minded observer that none of the above qualities are part of America’s so-called “conservative” Grand Old Party anymore, and they are unlikely to ever come back, because along with the right-wing media industrial complex led by Fox, they have been grooming general viewers, Republican supporters and fair-minded conservatives with narcissism for decades. This is done by grooming, gaslighting and triggering their fears, dislikes and traumas, which in turn causes them more fears, traumas and hate, which primes them to embrace authoritarianism, fascism, and other made up realities.”
Showing my age again, but this kind of political behavior always reminds me of this guy's thoughts on the subject:
“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.” - President Dwight D. Eisenhower
✨𝔼𝕩𝕔𝕖𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕣𝕖𝕒𝕕, 𝕞𝕪 𝔽𝕣𝕚𝕖𝕟𝕕 ! 𝕎𝕖 𝕥𝕠𝕥𝕒𝕝𝕝𝕪 𝕒𝕘𝕣𝕖𝕖 ! ✨