Diva Up: George Santos on Prison, Solitary & Second Chances (Plus NY Politics, Pop, and Sin City!)

Citizen McCain with Meghan McCain

Citizen Cain Productions

News, News Commentary, Society & Culture

3.9 • 692 Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Meghan and Miranda are joined by former Rep. George Santos, fresh out after 84 days served (including 41 days in solitary confinement) with his federal sentence commuted by President Trump. He walks us through the moment-to-moment reality of prison (moldy ceilings, expired food, the “shoe”), how he coped, who helped, and why he wants to channel the experience into prison reform and case review work (a la Alice Marie Johnson). We also hit: Why he says he was moved to solitary & how “protective custody” works. Mental health, re-entry, and the very relatable first shower/La Mer/skincare binge! NY politics: NYC mayoral race, congestion pricing, Kathy Hochul’s vulnerabilities, and whether Elise Stefanik could win statewide Culture break: J.Lo’s historic box-office flop, Katy Perry + Trudeau rumor mill, and the “diva down/diva up” jokes. On Kamala Harris’ book & Pete Buttigieg: do voters care about identity, or competency? P.S. Miranda’s live from Las Vegas (yes, that Flamingo sign), and the Cheryl Hines interview is up now on YouTube — thanks for the love on that one.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Megan McCain has entered the chat.
0:07.0	Megan McCain has entered the chat. Welcome to Citizen McCain.
0:32.6	We are so excited to have you all here today.
0:35.3	Just a reminder to raise your digital hand if you want to ask
0:38.3	me, Miranda, or a very exciting guest. A question if you're listening to the podcast and you want to
0:43.3	join us on Zoom, you can register to do that at 2a.tv slash Megan. And lastly, if you've not
0:48.0	subscribed to our YouTube channel, what are you waiting for? YouTube.com slash at Citizen McCain, YouTube.
0:53.4	Our guest is our guest here? Okay. So just really quickly,
0:56.7	before you let our amazing guest in, Miranda is live from Las Vegas. She's in Las Vegas right now.
1:02.2	See the flamingo sign behind her. Yeah. Yeah, which we had feelings about her being at the
1:07.2	flamingo, but that's another conversation for another time. But we just want to say
1:11.7	that we have our very exciting guest on, as we've announced, will soon be joined by none other
1:17.2	than our friend Congressman George Santos. Miranda and I were so, as was our, I have to say,
1:22.3	our entire team here on the show, our Booker, Ashley, everyone who works with me, when we saw the
1:27.3	announcement that he
1:28.2	was being released from jail and coming back, we were all so happy, so excited, one of our favorite
1:33.1	guests ever.
1:33.8	So without further ado, let's let on our friend, former Congressman George Santos.
1:39.3	Hello.
1:40.8	Hi, hi, Lina.
1:42.0	It's so good to be back with you guys.
1:44.6	First of all, you look stunning.
	...

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