Ziwe has found its latest cult guest: George Santos.
After teasing a collaboration with the expelled congressman, comedian and celebrity interviewer Ziwe released her sit-down interview with Santos on YouTube on Monday morning.
Ziwe’s “ZNN” interview, a parody of CNN with her own Ziwe News Network, began with on-screen text saying “No Congressman was paid in the making of this interview even though George asked three times”. She then listed civil rights icons and asked Santos to say what they meant to him. The list included Marsha P. Johnson, James Baldwin, Harvey Milk and Bowen Yang’s “SNL” impression of Santos – who he said deserved an EGOT.
When asked if he would like Yang to play him in the HBO film about him, Santos said, “That film will never happen. That book has no perspective from me or anybody close to me. It’s fucking fiction,” referring to Mark Chiusano’s novel “The Fabulist: The Lying, Hustling, Grifting, Stealing and Very American Legend of George Santos.
Santos, the Republican congressman who was removed from office on December 1 after an ethics report accused him of breaking federal law, joined Ziwe after she wrote to him on X that he would be “an iconic guest”.
The scandal-plagued congressman from New York had 13 criminal charges brought against him by the federal government, including wire fraud, theft of public funds, money laundering and making false statements to Congress. He was caught using campaign funds for personal expenses – including car payments, OnlyFans, make-up and designer clothes – and accused of misleading Congress about his financial circumstances on official disclosure forms.
When asked how he paid for his designer clothes and Botox, Santos said, “I’ve always worked, Ziwe, so yeah, my own money. Like everything else I own.”
Santos, the sixth member of the House of Assembly ever to be expelled, was under intense public scrutiny even before he took office for his penchant for lying about his identity. He lied about where he went to high school and college, and where he worked before he was elected. He even lied about being Jewish, telling the New York Post after he was exposed: “I am Catholic. When I learned that my maternal family had a Jewish background, I said I was ‘Jewish.'”
He took a swipe at other politicians, saying, “They’re all frauds. If you put them all under the same scrutiny that I’ve been under, you’d fucking clear the whole fucking building”. He named Kevin McCarthy, Lindsay Graham, Bob “Gold Bar” Menendez and Dan Goldman as other alleged cheaters.
Santos made several other cringe-inducing claims in Ziwe’s interview, including that he “doesn’t see colour”, that “Gen Z loves Trump; he’s an icon” and that he will “outlive every single member of Congress”. He also weighed in on the likelihood of him appearing on Dancing With the Stars in the future – “I’ll pass”.
And would another political run be in Santos’ future? “I’m not ruling it out,” he said, but he might switch from Republican to Independent because “the country needs more independent thinkers.” He also denied being a “politician” at all, but rather “an elected official for 11 months, proud of it, never giving in to the political establishment”.
Ziwe, who climbed the comedy ladder at The Onion and The Rundown With Robin Thede, created a YouTube interview series called Baited With Ziwe, in which she humorously “baited” her white friends into making racist or otherwise politically incorrect faux pas. The show moved to Instagram Live and then landed on Showtime in the form of her variety series “Ziwe”, which ran for two seasons and featured guests including Phoebe Bridgers, Bowen Yang, Fran Lebowitz, Julian Castro, Stacey Abrams, Chet Hanks, Emily Ratajkowski, Julia Fox, Michael Che and Drew Barrymore.Santos ended his interview by saying he couldn’t define empathy.
“I don’t understand it. People accuse me of not having empathy. Maybe I can’t define empathy. I think I’m empathetic to causes, to people, to situations,” he said, followed by a “below the belt” question from Ziwe about whether he was looking forward to going to prison.
