Hours after Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was indicted on charges of money laundering, misleading donors and falsely claiming unemployment benefits, MSNBC’s Ari Melber aired an audio clip of the congressman telling an apparent joke about a “room full of Jews.” Santos notoriously fabricated his own Jewish heritage while on the campaign trail then walked back his comments, saying instead that he only meant that he was “Jew-ish.” In the audio, Santos can be heard: “If you sit in a room with a lot of Jews, you’re fucked. It’s funny when the -isms start coming out, right? ‘Oh, he’s such a mensch, he’s such a mensch.’ Then they go onto the next thing,” Santos can be heard saying in the clip, first obtained by the journalist Blake Zeff. In January, an ex-roommate of Santos told CNN that the current congressman used a Jewish-sounding name for online fundraisers because he believed that “the Jews will give more if you’re a Jew.” After Santos’ fabrications of his background were first reported, he responded by insisting to the New York Post that he meant he was “Jew-ish.”
