Disgraced former House representative George Santos recently sat down for his first official interview since being expelled from Congress earlier this month.
The person who landed the interview, Ziwerekoru “Ziwe” Fumudoh, is a writer and comedian known for her satirical political commentary and interviews. Ziwe had her own self-titled show on Showtime for two seasons.
Santos accepted Ziwe’s invitation for an interview over social media after he was booted from Washington D.C.
During the interview, Ziwe asked Santos about the reasons he initially wanted to work in Congress and whether he might run for office again. Most of the questions she posed, of course, led back to biting clap backs. Others were fact-checked in post-production and shared with viewers via on-screen graphics. And then at other times she was pushing him to give examples to statements he made, with him backtracking multiple times and not being able to really name any iconic activists when asked about him comparing himself to Rosa Parks.
Ziwe also asked Santos if he would consider being a contestant on Dancing with the Stars (“I’ll pass”) and what he thought about comedian Bowen Yang’s impression of him on Saturday Night Live (“I think he deserves an EGOT”). Other questions Ziwe asked Santos included who in Congress he could beat in a lip-sync battle and if he’d ever consider making an appearance on RuPaul’s Drag Race.
She also asked Santos to close his eyes and picture what a criminal looked like. He described someone with a blue jacket and white shirt. The show them proceeded to put a bunch of photos of Santos in said outfit on screen.
Before the interview was posted, Santos described his experience being interviewed by the satirist.
“Obviously, she’s a comedian, right? She came for me,” he said. “She had funny puns, and you know she was witty with it. But I want to think that I held my own. And I had fun with it, too. And, you know, I clapped back a little bit. It was an interesting, different type of environment that I’ve grown accustomed to with the political teams, The Washington Post and CNN and all of them.”
Watch Ziwe’s entire interview with George Santos below.