George Santos Audaciously Likens Himself to Black Civil Rights Icon Rosa Parks

U.S. Rep. George Santos, the gay Republican who’s been caught in many lies, has now likened himself — seriously — to civil rights icon Rosa Parks.

Santos, who represents New York’s Third Congressional District, located on Long Island, made the comment during a recent interview on right-wing commentator Mike Crispi’s podcast, Unafraid.

“They think for far too long they’ve gotten away with getting along to get along,” Santos said of his political adversaries. “So no, it’s not going to stay that way anymore. I’m going to call them out. You want to call me a liar, I’ll call you a sellout.”

“I mean, Mitt Romney: The man goes to the State of the Union of the United States wearing the Ukraine lapel pin, tells me, a Latino gay man, that I shouldn’t sit in the front, that I should be in the back,” he continued.

“Well, guess what, Rosa Parks didn’t sit in the back and neither am I gonna sit in the back. That’s just the reality of how it works. Mitt Romney lives in a very different world. And he needs to buckle up because it’s gonna be a bumpy ride for him.”

Romney, the Republican U.S. senator from Utah and former presidential candidate, confronted Santos at President Biden’s State of the Union address in February. Romney later told reporters he objected to Santos “standing right there on the aisle shaking hands with everybody” and said Santos should be sitting in the back of the room and shouldn’t even be in Congress.

Parks, a civil rights activist, became famous when in 1955 she wouldn’t move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Ala., as was required of Black passengers at the time. Her action spurred a boycott of Montgomery buses by civil rights advocates.

Santos is getting roasted for his comments, including by Parks’s niece Rhea McCauley. She said her aunt, who died in 2005, wouldn’t have appreciated the comparison.

“She felt it was totally inappropriate for Santos to compare himself to her aunt, saying it's apples to oranges when it comes to the situation,” TMZ reports. “She also says other family members related to Parks are pretty pissed about his remarks too.”

Anna M. Kaplan, a Democrat who is seeking the Third District seat in 2024, lambasted Santos on Twitter.

Santos, who defeated gay Democrat Robert Zimmerman in the Third District race last year, has lied about his education, work experience, and religious background as well as falsely claiming that some of his employees died in the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016, that his mother died as a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks, and that his grandparents were refugees from the Holocaust.

He is facing federal criminal charges related to campaign finance and the collection of unemployment benefits. In May, a federal grand jury charged Santos with seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, two counts of making materially false statements to the U.S. House, and one count of theft of public funds. He has pleaded not guilty.

There have been calls for him to resign from the House of Representatives, and Democrats in the chamber have tried to expel him, but he remains in office and plans to run for reelection next year.