On Friday, former Republican Rep. George Santos was expelled from Congress, half a year after being indicted for embezzling money from his campaign, one month after being indicted again for identity theft and credit card fraud, and one congressional break after a scathing House ethics report that portrayed him as an unrepentant con man with a penchant for stealing from everyone around him.
You don’t need to worry about ol’ George, though. He’s doing just fine for himself—you might even say he’s found his calling. In the half-week since his expulsion, Santos has launched a new career on Cameo, the site that invites users to pay celebrities to tape short videos saying whatever they want them to say, and he’s already raking in a small fortune.
In fact, Santos said — and screenshots and the CEO of Cameo confirmed — that he has lined up more than [his previous congressional salary of $174,000] in his first 48 hours on the platform. People pay between $200 and $300 to Santos for various flavors of communication. The videos can take less than a minute to film, and the platform has brought millions of dollars to the occasional campy, game, minor celebrity like the late comedian Gilbert Gottfried.
Santos “is going to be an absolute whale,” Cameo’s founder and CEO, Steven Galanis, told Semafor. His launch, Galanis said, is among the platform’s best ever: “Sarah Jessica Parker, Bon Jovi — he’s putting numbers up like that,” he said.
Oh dear lord, don’t tell him that. He’s going to go around telling people he’s the next Bon Jovi.
So Santos will be fine, at least until his next court date, and he will likely be able to pay his lawyers with his own money instead of by pretending to be another House Republican’s mom. And all it takes is a willingness to become a living joke for a while, one video at a time. If there is anything we know House Republicans have stripped from them on taking the oath of office, it’s their dignity.
No, he’ll be more than fine.
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