from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Tuesday,

October 21st. So you may have heard over the weekend that President Trump commuted the

sentence of the conman congressman George George Santos, from Long Island, right?

These things seem to happen so often on Fridays when many people tune out of the news for the weekend.

And sure enough, the reporting is that George Santos walked out of his prison cell a little after 10 p.m. Friday night.

Here's why I want to talk about that case here. You may think

you know the worst things George Santos did because they got a lot of eyebrow-raising press. But what he

actually was convicted criminally of was probably worse than most of you realize. And what he will

now get away with has real victims, mostly

Republican constituents, apparently, not just a shorter prison sentence. Here's the part you

probably know, as the New York Times reminded us in their article about Santos being freed.

It says, Santos claimed that he was descended from Holocaust refugees.

His mother, he said, had been in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He claimed to be a

college volleyball star. None of that was true, says the Times. I will add that there was also

one that he first told on this show. We have to admit,

after his election in 2022, referring to the Post-Nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, that

killed 49 people. My company at the time, we lost four employees that were at Pulse Night Club.

But the Times says a review of news coverage and obituaries found that none of the 49 victims

appear to have worked at the various firms named in his biography.

So those are the things you probably know about the conman congressman, George Santos.

And yes, those were all whoppers and contributed to him getting kicked out of Congress,

but making those things up were not his crimes. His crimes, what he pleaded guilty to in court,

...