Watch George Santos's Cringy Interview With Piers Morgan

Embattled gay New York Republican Rep. George Santos sat with Piers Morgan for an hour-long interview on Monday to discuss his lies, but the show resulted in more questions than answers.

During Piers Morgan Uncensored, the host, who is not a stranger to controversy, attempted to get the fabulist congressman to admit to his lies, but Santos seemingly had other plans. Instead of coming clean about many unanswered questions about his biography, Santos admitted to making up some of the things to which he had copped previously.

"I've been a terrible liar on those subjects," Santos said during the interview. He explained that his name is George Anthony Devolder Santos — a name resulting from, according to him, the inability of his parents to choose, so he received several.

He began by insisting he was not thrilled to be a prominent new lawmaker on Capitol Hill.

"I ran for office to be a legislator, not to be a quasi-celebrity," he explained to Morgan. "As we jokingly say all the time, Washington, D.C. is Hollywood for ugly people... It's just been an adjustment...."

In 2014, before the annual White House Correspondent's Dinner, affectionately called the Nerd Prom, Politicoreported that Democratic political consultant Paul Begala coined the phrase in the 1980s.

"I can't stand it, and a lot of people think I love it," Santos said regarding the attention he's been receiving.

Then he said several questionable things.

For example, Santos said, "I've accomplished something that not many people are able to accomplish, which is to come from abject poverty and be able to make something and work something out for themselves," before pivoting to an attack on the media for being interested in his goings on.

Since entering Congress in January, Santos has avoided answering questions from swarms of media members, including from The Advocate, who have consistently asked him to comment on developments around claims he's made about his life.

"I've tried to sit with many members of the media like I'm doing with you now and have a thorough conversation, but they're just not interested," he said to Morgan. "They're not interested in covering de facto what actually occurred...."

Then Morgan challenged Santos on some of the discrepancies in his biography.

"There's a claim that you said you attended the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, New York, during your first years of high school but had to leave in your senior year because your parents fell on hard times in 2008. Is that true? Did you attend that school?" the host asked.

Santos, who lied about attending college, which he admitted he did not, stuttered through several attempts at a clear answer.

"I attended it for a brief period of time and then went back to the public school system and then dropped out of the public school system and attained a GED. I was always very truthful of not completing high school due to financial difficulties," Santos replied.

Morgan pointed out that CNN inquired with Horace Mann School, and the school had no record of Santos ever attending the prestigious school.

"I challenged to see what name they're looking under," Santos started. "If you look at my entire history of education, it was not under the name George Santos."

Morgan, unconvinced, said that he was sure CNN had asked for all combinations of Santos's (or Devolder's) name and moved on to Santos's lies about college. Santos admitted to having lied about his higher education but blamed the New York political class for essentially forcing him to go to extreme measures to be taken seriously.

"Expectation on society; the pressure; couldn't afford it," Santos explained. "Decided I wanted to run for office, although I had built a very credible business career, and I just didn't have that part of my biography that I could not give anything."

He continued, "I can prove the chops and the backing without the education, but this stems more deeper into the political apparatus and the political culture of New York State, and that would take a lot more time than this program to go over to explain this."

Morgan, at one point, rechallenged Santos, driving home the point that many find hard to believe that he believed he could get away with lying at this level. "I'm bemused that you would be naive enough to think that you could run as a politician in New York in particular and not expect to get what happened to you, which is a massive comeuppance when they discover this stuff isn't true," Morgan said.

"Stupid," Santos interjected. "It was stupid."

Yet, Santos insisted that some of his most outlandish claims were true and denials were accurate. Regarding his previous employment at CitiGroup and Goldman Sachs, he admitted not working directly for any of the Wall Street giants but claimed he did tangentially perform duties on their behalf.

"Not at them as a direct employee, but I did work for them on the LPGP side through conference organizing, fundraising attempts, and marketing of those fundraisers," Santos claimed. "I've never worked directly for them. I was never on their books. But I've done work for them through other companies that I work for."

Regarding the claim that he ran an animal rescue nonprofit organization, Friends of Pets United, Santos insisted that he and six others comprised the organization's leadership but that he was unaware of where any of the group's official documents, social media presence, or information supporting the existence of the organization could be found. He called himself just the "operator." In that role, he cast himself as the person in the field who'd go collect the cat or dog in need to take them for medical care.

Morgan moved on, but later in the interview, Morgan returned to the animal rescue organization and challenged Santos on the claims that he absconded with GoFundMe funds meant for a homeless veteran whose dog needed surgery but ultimately died.

Santos says the vet is lying. "I've never met this man," Santos claimed. "I've been abundantly clear. I feel for him. I feel for his story. I am as compassionate and as passionate about helping veterans and animals as the next guy."

He continued, "When I read this, it hit me like a bag of bricks because I don't know him. And most people who know me, who truly know me, Pierce, knows that if he had met me, his dog would've received the surgery. He wouldn't be homeless. The fact that he was homeless and anybody trying to help him addressed wouldn't address the homeless issue was a bigger problem for me. And I mean that wholeheartedly."

Morgan also wanted to know why Santos angrily denied being a drag queen.

"You said the most recent obsession from the media claiming I'm a drag queen or performed as a drag queen is categorically false," Morgan said.

Santos, trying to cast himself as a defender of the LGBTQ+ community, said, "they're portraying to the American people that I'm a drag performer, career drag queen, which is offensive to drag queens, by the way. And I'm pretty sure most of the drag queens in New York City...would agree."

Regarding why there's no record of his November 2021 marriage to the man he claims to be his husband exists in New York state records, Santos deflected.

"I'll actually show you the wedding certificate once we're done rolling," Santos quipped.

But when Morgan asked about his previous marriage to a woman, Santos got defensive.

"It was a personal, private, messy part of my life," he said. "And something that I refuse and I will not, and respectfully, and I hope you don't take this personally, but I will not indulge anybody to get into my personal life."

Asked whether he's always known he was gay, Santos claimed he didn't.

"No. My life was, it wasn't straightforward," he said. "I was very much in love with someone, and we got married, and it just didn't work out."

Santos said that he never campaigned on being gay and that it was a matter of media obsession.

As the first out gay Republican person elected to Congress, Morgan said, media interest was warranted but did he face discrimination in the GOP?

"Republicans have never discriminated against me," Santos claimed. "Matter of fact, it's the Democrats who often come after me for being a gay Republican, and they use that to criticize me."

Toward the interview's conclusion, Santos set the bar for what he wanted to accomplish in Congress very low.

"I wanted to see if I could accomplish the bare minimum for the American people, which was my thought," Santos said. "You come into this job very naive, thinking that you're going to conquer the world and you're going to do everything good for the American people. And when you hit Washington, D.C., you learn that it's just not so straightforward. And that's what I want."

He emphasized, "I want to be able to overcome the political red tape of Washington, D.C."

Watch the wild interview Rep. George Santos did with TalkTV's Piers Morgan below.

LIVE: Piers Takes On George Santos | Piers Morgan Uncensored | 20-Feb-23www.youtube.com