George Santos: Being Tortured, Finding God, and Hearing of Charlie Kirk’s Murder From Behind Bars

25:34I think there was like a group of like five or six that I could talk to, but these are well-educated individuals, very savvy, but at the same time, very liberal. So - Very liberal? There are lots of liberals in prison. What? Oh, my God. Lots of liberals in prison. You'd be shocked. You'd be shocked at the amount of people who hate the president in prison. But then the moment, which is funny, the moment I got commuted, everybody was like, oh, Trump's the man. Yo, buddy, take care of me. Here's my call my wife. I'm like, I left with a stack of phone numbers of wives that I've never called. I know a lot of people in prison.

26:07They all get more right wing in prison. Well, maybe these were still not getting red-filled yet. I didn't do my part either. So what do you do for recreation? While I was in the camp for the 43 days that I was in the camp, the first 30 and then a break and then 13 days because I had that big 41 block of isolation. You know, I was in the kitchen from 7.30 in the morning to 4.30 in the afternoon and it was a great refuge for me psychologically. because I didn't have to deal with whatever was outside of the kitchen. What is everyone else doing? I don't know, honestly. Not making license plates. I mean, no, we don't make license plates.

26:49It's a work camp. So there's the maintenance crew. So some guys do facility maintenance. Which is, you know, whatever they call maintenance there is not maintenance in the real world. And then you have the warehouse guys who are in charge of like picking up the heavy boxes of, you know, the goods that come in to operate the prison. And then you have, oh, you have the cleaning crew. So they're the ones in charge of cleaning the entire compound from the buildings, the bathrooms, and all the other facilities for the staff. And lastly, you have the landscapers, because this is on a big old bird reserve that was converted into a prison in 1990.

27:25So it's massive amounts of acreage and lots of green and lots of grass. And so you have a landscaping crew. So I don't know what these people do. All I know is that I was in the kitchen from 7.30 to 4.30. Does anyone plot escape? No. If they wanted to, you can walk off. The campers are literally free to roam right off, but nobody's stupid enough to do it. Why? Your custody points go higher, and then you lose that privilege, and you end up in a low or a medium facility security. So, but can't you just wander off and go to Philadelphia? I mean, you technically could. When you get caught, you're going to be charged with escape.

28:04and your custody points go higher. So from my understanding, nobody has attempted to escape the camp in years because once you go to the camp, it's the easiest form of prison. It's imagine an abandoned country club from the 1960s that nobody's ever gone to anymore. And one day you just decide to turn on the key and say, we're open for business. No maintenance, no nothing. You just want to operate it as is. That's what they're operating there. But in prison standards, that is at Club Fed. Wow. No fences, no gates, no locked doors. You can roam and there's an outdoor track and there's recreation outside.

28:45There's a weight pile, really rundown weight pile, but a weight pile for you to work out. They have an annex trailer with a laundry room for you to do your laundry. You have a little library with an actually decent selection of books, which I was very impressed. Some of my favorite authors were in there. And then you have a chapel where you can do multi-denominational prayer services. So it's a very nice environment as far as prison goes. So when you get there, you usually either are somebody like me who is going to hate it, but not understand how good you have it and be a big baby about it like I was.

29:24Well, it is prison. Or you're going to be somebody who came from the system, working yourself down throughout your very long sentence. And now you've reached the tail end of it and you've been good behavior. You've, in the eyes of the BOP, rehabilitated yourself. Now you're in minimum security custody, which you're now not even considered in custody. You're out custody because there's no gates, handcuffs, none of that. So that's, nobody wants to run away from that. What are the showers like? Oh, let's, I described it this way. So I want to stay consistent. Imagine a rundown gym with no maintenance, same structure, two sides of showers and an aisle in the middle like a locker with showers on both sides with curtains that are just falling apart, lime and every bacterial growth you can imagine growing on the walls and in the corners, peeling paint inside of each stall.

30:25Same thing goes for the toilets. And then there was something lovely that I discovered. This is what made the bathroom really unbearable for me to a point that I started having to brush my teeth with bottled water. You're not going to believe this, but in prison, there's this Muslim culture that has become very prolific in a sense. And I'm not trying to be Islamophobic here. I'm just being really agnostic. I have no horse in the fight of Israelis and Jews and Islam. Right. Non-political observation. They have a predominant presence in the prison system. The wild thing is, is that before they go to pray, they have to, I guess, wash certain parts of their body.

31:14Yes. There were inmates hanging their ass on the sink and just washing it right there where I was supposed to - Ass washing on the sink? Yeah. Well, that's a bridge too far. I mean, for anybody. And when confronted, it's like a big argument on religious freedom. Seriously? Oh, yeah. It's an attack. It's Islamophobia. Are these Middle Eastern Muslims or African-American Muslims? They're African-American Muslims. So you didn't see a lot of Egyptians? Full pause, no. I don't think there was a single Arab in this Muslim crew that I was with. Not a single one. They were all African-Americans. These are gang members from Philly.

31:54Pretty much. Yeah. Right? These were the Muslims that I was dealing with. Now, don't get me wrong. Some of them, nicest guys I've ever met. Yeah, yeah. With these very uncanny habits that were just not for me. So once I walked into a situation like that, and it was literally ass washing on the sink, I said, I can't do this. So I bought the 24 pack of water. Yours truly from your state here, not too far from here, same brand. They sell Poland Spring in prison? They do, yeah, totally. So you can buy the 24 pack at I think 70 cents a bottle, which is not a bad deal. No, no. For prison, it's not a bad deal.

32:28We know it's a ripoff, but it's compared to their 150 for a ramen noodle, it's not a ripoff. That's what they were charging? It's insane. They take a - Can you buy cigarettes? You cannot. It's a federal buildings are all smoke-free areas. What about vapor? No, actually - No nicotine. No nicotine products. I saw a man go to the shoe for 45 days because he was caught with a contrabanded vape in there. No way. That's how severe they consider it of a violation. Really? Yeah. Why do they care? I don't know. Well, Grand Canyon University is not like most American colleges. It focuses on the things that actually matter.

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34:25G-C-U dot E-D-U. What about drugs? Were there drugs in the prison? The prison, not the camp, the prison across the street in the shoe of all places is littered in drugs. Suboxone, K, ecstasy, molly, cocaine. Are you serious? I am dead serious. How do you get drugs into a prison? That is the question I would always pose when there was some court sort of issue where the COs couldn't walk the range of the shoe because the smoke of Suboxone and K2 were so thick. They're smoking it. They're smoking it. And then you ask, why are they being provided lighters? They're not. They're not. But some inmates have medical prescriptions that are pumps and require a battery.

35:17They take a little piece of whatever foil they can find and they put it on each end of negative and the positive and create a little brazier and they smoke from that. No way. Yeah, I learned a lot. That's clever. I watched, oh, they're MacGyver. Did you get any tattoos or join a gang or anything? No, I should have joined the gang, but I mean, it was Camp Cupcake. What was I going to do? A cupcake on my shoulder? Get the cupcake tattoo. They call it Camp Cupcake. I called it Camp Cupcake. I baked cupcakes there. So yes, it's Camp Cupcake. But people are getting high in solitary confinement. Which is insane because these are, I mean, they strip us naked, make us spread our cheeks and cough to go into solitary, to make sure we're bringing nothing we're not allowed to into solitary.

36:02So I went through that humiliating display. You're always handcuffed to your back. You have no access to outside. So when all that is happening, unfortunately, there's only one way that drugs make it in there. Yes. Guards. Guards. And why? They're undercompensated. They're undercompensated, overworked. Now they're working without compensation for God knows how long because Democrats can't even get that together and Republicans can't seem to work with them to do something. Although I agree with the principle of standing up to Chuck Schumer, but the problem is you're just going to create a far worse, this is a pressure cooker situation, but ferritin is littered in drugs in the medium.

36:43Really? The camp, I never saw drugs. I was there. I was pretty all over the place as far as like integration goes. I've never seen drugs. The worst that I saw there was one guy got caught with a vape. And that was like, oh my God. You know, oh, sorry. That wasn't the worst. That wasn't the worst. The phone. One inmate got caught with a phone while I was in solitary. Another inmate who actually, funny enough, the first day I walk in there, he looks at me and says, you were my congressman. I voted for you. I'm like, crap. Did you find a lot of constituents into the lockup? Two. There were two people from New York's third district serving there, which was, I didn't like that similarity.

37:23Well, it's a big district. It is a big district. It's a very densely populated area, but yeah, there were two. What were they in for? Both of them for PPP fraud. You can't make this up. Actually? Millions of dollars of PPP fraud. Yes. So one of them got caught with a cell phone. That was a big transgression and it hadn't happened in so long. I was still like, oh, we haven't had a phone incursion in this part of the prison for years. I was like, oh, okay. Either they're really good at hiding them or they just don't even bother doing it because they have so much freedom. It's not worth a risk. But that was the worst I saw.

38:03Booze, drugs. These guys, you know what's the number one topic in the camp? Food. That's all they talk about. Really? The fantasies of like, oh, I'd kill for a Big Mac. Now I'm like, oh, metaphorically, be careful. Like, yeah, that's all that. Because food is such a big part of the day there. You have these two sacred times of day. 10 a.m. is lunch. 4 p.m. is dinner. Yes, we run on a geriatric schedule. But that is literally the... So two meals a day. Well, they call breakfast what they give us in a bag. an apple, a honey bun, some sort of processed cake, and a little box of cornflakes. That's breakfast.

38:52It's all sugar. So lots of us don't even touch that. I didn't touch that stuff or else I was going to die of diabetes and sodium issues. Just no thank you. So really, it's two meals and whatever you buy on your commissary. But I did something I'm so proud of. I was able to survive 84 days in prison. I've never eaten a honey bun or a ramen noodle soup. So I'm very proud of myself. They're so good. They're not good for you. No, they're not. No, I've heard that. They have 1 ,000 milligrams. I've been reliably informed, yes. 1 ,000 milligrams of sodium. Are you trying to kill someone by eating that?

39:28The ramen's tough. You know what? I have a trade for you. One honey bun, four soups for me to guest host your show next week. So what would that be worth? I know. Oh, no. I'd eat it too. Of course you would. Of course I would. I'll eat anything. Wow. So what were you buying at the commissary? I stuck to like, they have these really, they have some healthy alternatives, healthy-ish, right? So lots of tuna, ate lots of tuna. I felt like a cat. Like I could do, I think I could do a full-blown Friskies commercial right now. Like I know how to, I have my meowing down to the T. So much tuna, but lots of like cashews and almonds and trail mix.

40:08Like I lived off of that stuff. And you have to ration because the premium stuff like that, they give you a limit of how much you can buy of it. Oh, you can't go in and buy a case. No, like two bags a week of each. So I'd get two of each, almonds, cashews, trail mix, and the peanuts. So I just, you know, ration it through the week. Sometimes dinner for me was like half a bag of trail mix and I'd go to sleep because the food was inedible from the kitchen. Was it hard to sleep? I cried every night. it was not easy. So much so that the prison there, even though other prisons do allow people to stay on their actual medications that they have been treated on for years.

40:47I was on Vyvanse for, I have been on Vyvanse, which is an Adderall because I'm ADD for 22 years, since I'm 15, 37. These guys took me off Vyvanse, cold turkey, and literally stuffed me up with an antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications. So needless to say, I was kind of zombified. What was that like? No medical care, no health, no mental health care. It's like a complete decay and abandonment. But they will hand you pills. Oh, no, no, no, no. They give you the pill. You can't self-medicate. Well, of course, but I mean, they will give you pills. Oh, yeah, but those pills, they won't give you what you need.

41:29They won't treat you with what you need at that prison for some reason. Although, if you look historically, even Sam Bankman-Fried, when he's in prison, he's receiving his Adderall because he's ADHD, right? Yeah. He still receives his medication. It's not helping him. I talked to him. It's not. No. He's still jumping around like a meth head. Well, I mean, obviously, because you take a diagnosis like that and it just exacerbates. I mean, me, confinement, the solitary confinement, what it did to me, I wrote three suicide notes. So can you back up and tell us how you're working in the prison kitchen?

42:06I don't think you're starting fistfights in the showers. How do you wind up in solitary confinement for 41 days? So Joe Murray, my attorney, who I adore. Good man. Great champion for me. I mean, shout out to Joe because him, Matt, my partner, and my sister Tiffany went to hell and back for me. But Joe really was a driving force. I mean, this man. He texted me. I mean, he did not rest a single day. It was remarkable. And I have two other attorneys, Andrew and Bobby, who did fantastic work. But really, I'd be remiss if I didn't highlight Joe's efforts. Receives this text message from a journalist, an investigative journalist from Project Veritas, which is an organization I've donated to.

42:56Their former outfit, I was very close to O 'Keefe and all of those guys. I don't know. I didn't even know Project Veritas was still around. To me, eventually, after Matt Tierman left, I think, after the whole breakup with O 'Keefe, it was gone. But apparently, it's still active. So they get this person, this woman named Patricia. She's Brazilian. She's had an obsession with me to a degree that I can't explain. It's inexplicable, almost, to a degree. She has, in the past, made threats that were deemed uncredible. So she was a non-credible source with these elaborate threats of high power players in D.C.

43:38want to kill you because you're outing about orgies and talking about the D.C. swamp orgies with, you know, the SEC and Congress. And I said, like, OK, whatever. Capitol Police looked into it in 2023 when I was a city member of Congress. Not credible. she comes back out of the woodworks and i guess convinces project veritas on those old texas to be real and adds a new one dated august 18th saying that we need to take care of santos in prison and i'm paraphrasing um you know essentially somebody needs to break into prison and kill george santos which is on its face valley ridiculous i've heard of jailbreaks i have not heard of inbrake.

44:23So I'm sitting there like, wait, what? So Joe sees this. I've been the subject of threats, credible threats to the point we do have people in prison for trying to kill me today. Reaches out to the facility, thinks, hey, I need you to protect George. I just received this threat. It seems concerning. The warden's definition of protected custody because she's lazy and she's completely irresponsible with her budget and doesn't have adequate protective custody protocols does what's easy. And the shortcut, which is toss George Santos in the shoe. Now, I am not there for disciplinary action, but I am subject to only three showers a week.

45:05I'm subject to using recycled clothes, meaning I'm using whatever underwear Joe Schmo was using yesterday got into the washing machine and was propped up and given to me. It even comes with complimentary skid marks on them. It's like lovely. So other people's pubic hair are included. And their trail of uncleaned asses too. Like, I'm not kidding. This is real. The environment... It takes a lot to make me feel nauseous, but that's repulsive. It's repulsive. That's the word. It's repulsive what they do to you. They give you soap that doesn't lather, courtesy of Bob Barker's company called Maximum Security.

45:43They give you toothpaste that doesn't foam when you brush your teeth, courtesy of maximum security, great government contract. I mean, it's remarkable. It's just remarkable. You lose your privileges to email. You use your privileges to phone calls. I am subject now to one call every 30 days for 15 minutes, and I have to pick who I'm calling in my family. I don't get to call five minutes here. No, It's one call, period. So this is what she did and then named it in the name of protection. How does it protect you to limit you to three showers a week and make you wear someone else's dirty boxer shorts?

46:23Oh, tidy whities, not boxer shorts. Actually? Yeah, actually. Orange, but tidy whities. Like, you know, fruit of the loom, old school. Someone else's orange grape smugglers with someone else's skid marks in them. Yep. That is cruel and unusual. Protection. No, no, no. I'd be freestyle. I couldn't handle it. No, no, no. That is protection under Kelly Warden Lynn Kelly at FCI Fairton. How dare you say that's cruel and unusual? I'm a crybaby. Or as the deputy warden said, I was a princess. Stop being a princess, he said to me. Right? So this is real. This is actually real behavior. And they put you there, give you no information.

47:06They peep you. So they put you in a cell that's six by nine. I couldn't do this without touching the walls. You know, the six feet apart? If I was really measuring my spread arms distance, I was definitely further than six feet apart from you because I couldn't do that to the wall. So again, you drink water out of a toilet, the top of a toilet, which has a metallic taste. And when you put water in it and you let the cup sit, sediments fall, like these black sediments fall to the bottom of the cup. This is what they're putting you through. Now, my neighbor in the cell next to me, a murderer who had just killed another inmate months earlier with a pencil.

47:47Granted, disciplinary custody waiting - With a pencil? With a pencil, stabbing another inmate through the eye with a pencil. This is on the news, by the way. Now, the lovely part about it is this inmate is a trans inmate who killed another trans inmate who the news reported on as a leader activist, native trans leader in their community, God knows where, but failed to disclose that he was a vicious child molester. Okay. The one that got killed. Anyway, perhaps - Did you talk to the pencil killer? I didn't talk to anybody. There's no way to talk other than to scream through your doors. And I'm sorry.

48:22No, I'm totally fine with screaming in the hall of Congress like I've done before at people who try to accost me, but not in prison. I kept to myself. They would scream at me. They'd curse. They'd say, yeah, it's Santos, you S.O.B. I know you can hear me. Answer me. And I'm just like sitting there minding my business, reading my historical fiction book because I didn't want to. So what do you do all day in solitary? You go crazy. They give you three books a week, an arbitrary number for, I mean, I understand that the reading level of most prisoners aren't going to be quite high and they'll probably take a while to read a 300, 400 page book.

49:00I was crushing books, you know, 400 page books a day sometimes, you know. Nothing to do. I mean, I read a book by Sarah J. Moss, the final installment of her fantasy series called Kingdom of Ash. It's I think a thousand pages. I read that in two days. It has nothing to do. Was it good? It was great. The sad part is there's like eight books that preceded it. I never read them. But the final book was pretty cool. So I was like, okay, I can kind of imagine what happened before because the final book was pretty decent. Lots of mysterious illusions though. You have no idea what they're talking about.

49:36Oh, no. I mean, you just totally have to like pretend you know what you're reading. Certain things are just like kind of, but the gist of the book, really good book. I thought it was a really well-written book. I got into Khan Iguodin. I don't know if you know who he is. very, very good historical fiction writer. So I am a pro. You can quiz me on Genghis Khan, the Mongol Khan. Everything, all five books in the series. It was amazing. I mean, I almost want to go to Mongolia now to see some of these things because it's so fascinating and it's so immersive. I read - Go to Russia and you can see the illegitimate children, the Mongol horde.

50:12Amazing. Oh, sure. I mean, that's why that Asia, you're in Asia mix. You can see it in their faces. It's amazing. It's like the Uzbekistanis are kind of like right there. That's the halfway point where they're all there, right? But it's crazy because I even got into War of the Roses, but from the pretext of Margaret Janjou, the French queen who was married to King Henry, which was depicted in history as a great manipulator. but these are the books I was reading. I was so damn bored. That sounds fun. It was fun. I will say this, 26 books in 41 days. Amazing. Decent amount. The thing is, I only read that many books because remember that CO I told you about?

50:54Yeah. He'd hook me up. I'd get the three books I was entitled to, but then he'd swap me out, you know, within three days for another three. That's so nice. It's like, but other COs wouldn't do it. Why would they want to limit the number of books you can read? this is going to be so funny. I don't know to the extent of the F-bombs I can drop here. Go crazy. Oh, so funny. So my very first book on Genghis Khan, Lords of the Bow, the first chapter was cut out of the book and somebody wrote in the beginning of the second chapter, fuck you, figure out what happened in the beginning. So you're just like, these people really need help.

51:33And then on the very last book of the series, which is Kingdom of Silver. They ripped out the last chapter. No way. Fuck you, figure out what happened in the end. So I was just like, who the fuck is in this place? It's like, it's madness. It's like - Well, criminals are there. Well, but I get it, but they're literature criminals too. It was a mad day. Literature criminals. The books had no cover. I mean, it's like, they're ripped off. It's very eccentric. I did do a lot of reading, but it was eccentric reading at best. But that's what I did with my days. And when I wasn't doing that, I was trying to pray because I had a really big awakening, a religious awakening.

52:16I've strayed so, so far from the principles and the teachings of my family and literally Jesus Christ and growing up in the Catholic church and baptism, communion, confirmation. I mean, all of those things. I've strayed so far away from it. And I saw where it landed me because now I can easily tell you this. It is so much easier to walk in your life with a God in it than to ignore it. I mean, it is phenomenal. I have my peace with God. And I'll tell you the remarkable - How did that happen? I think it was like day 10 and I had already written my first suicide note. And that's when it - What did you say in your suicide note?

53:00You know, I never read it back. tucker it's sitting in a manila envelope in my house i sealed it uh all three of them um and i wrote shoe records as something for me to remember how dark it got for me there i i don't think i'm ready today to read it yeah i will one day because i want to i think i want the world to know what i wrote funny enough the very first one i write it i'm so angry my whole preface and if i could recall, you know, without, it's a blur, right? But the preface was, I'm going to kill myself just to fuck with this warden and put a mess in her hand. Look at how desperate I was.

53:42I was willing to end my life in my own thoughts to get back at someone who was hurting me. Right. That's the level of insanity that you - Well, I do think most suicide is an act of aggression against others. I mean, that's pretty common. You know, you're, I'll show them is a common motive. That's pretty much where I was at. And it gets to a point where after the first one, I said, what am I doing? I need help. And I requested, they make you fill out cop-outs, which is a former request to staff. So I wrote to the chaplain requesting a Roman Catholic Bible and a rosary so I can pray. The warden didn't approve it, declined both requests.

54:23Till this day, I didn't get an answer. I could get all the fucked up books in the world, but I couldn't get a Catholic Bible or a rosary. I requested for the visiting priest that comes to do mass at the prison to visit me in the shoe. She didn't allow it. She denied me the rules. How, on what grounds? I don't know. You weren't there because you broke the rules. You were there because you'd been threatened. Well, you should explain that to her as I tried to. I said, this is cruel and unusual punishment. Are you gonna make sure she loses her job? I told her, I had an outburst by about day, I wanna say 35.

54:57or 30, somewhere along that range where, you know, after all the meandering bullshit of, you know, it's still under the investigative authorities, blah, blah, blah. And it was like, I go into the shoe August 28th, September 23rd, just five day shorts of a month in, I meet with the FBI. They come to tell me this is not credible. I think it takes five days later, around the 28th. That email is sent to the facility. Look, we're referring us to the AUSA. We don't find us to be credible, but the AUSA has to decline to prosecute, right? At that point, the warden had the discretion, total discretion to say, okay, I'm sending you back to the camp.

55:40But she chose to let the AUSA do their process, which is fine. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt here, but she chose. Knowing there was no threat, she chose to wait for the official process, even though I had screamed till I was blue in my face that it was not credible. There was a former investigation to the same person with similar allegations, and these were just new trumped up ones. That took a process, and so I want to say, well, that was, let's say, the 28th, I believe, is the day that that email went in, and then by the 17th of, I'm sorry, by the 7th of October, I was released a couple of a week later or so.

56:22I was released back to the camp. And then 10 days later, I was sent home. But she chose to keep me there, in my opinion. Now, one can argue she was following protocol. I think if two federal officers are telling you that it's not credible and they've done all the due diligence on this, I think it's pretty remarkable that you're going to wait and extend suffering for somebody for another nine days just because, you know. What do you think that was about? Well, I was very critical of her. From day one, my very first article, I mean, by the second or third article, I literally, after being there and experiencing the decay in the kitchen, the food issues, the issues with hygiene, the issues with mental health, the issues with medical, the issues with the dorm and sleeping and health and in the environment.

57:08Drugs. And not drugs, because I only experienced the drug issues across the street. So the issue with the lack of humanity and dehumanizing nature of her facility, I wrote that all down on several different penned articles on the South Shore Press. And it got millions of views. She was mad. Now, I get it. I mean, hell have no, you know, what is it? Fury like a warden scorn. I guess, or I was going to say something a lot. You're nice. Let's just say that. I was going to be as nice as you. But she was mad. And she made these choices. And she mocked me in the process to a point where I was losing my mind.

57:52So they do executive rounds once a week. I won't say the day. So I don't compromise a facility again in lieu of not compromising officers. and the facility routine, they do rounds once a week in every segment of the facility. So there was the day of the week that they did rounds in the shoe. Now in the shoe, we're sitting in our cells and there's this metal door, which is blast proof, heavy as hell with a little drawer so you can get your trays. And when you got to get out, put your hands backwards through that and get cuffed. And the skinny window about, I want to say four inches wide, about 20, 25 inches tall, give or take, that they come in and they peep their eye to see if you're alive, right?

58:39And they're doing their rounds. And I would always ask, it was around day 30 to 35 or somewhere in between there. I lost my shit. I said, why am I still here? Because now I had already spoken to the FBI. I knew what they were doing. They said that following Monday, they would send a letter in which in fact they did. So I was furious and I said, and I quote, bitch, you are going to regret fucking with me. And I meant that. And I don't mean it as threatening her, but I'm going to take her to task. Kelly, Warden Kelly, Lynn Kelly will be the face of evil, of rot and corrupt of the BOP if I have it my way.

59:23We need to make an example of somebody because if we're going to rehabilitate people in this country, it cannot be at the hands of that woman or people like her. So let that serve as a warning. If you operate like Warden Kelly does at FCI Ferritin, I strongly suggest you fuck off because I'm going to come for you. I'm going to find you your prison. I'm going to investigate it. And I'm going to work tooth and nail to make these changes because we're creating more criminals. and recidivism is at an all-time high because of how we treat people. We're not giving people a second chance at life. We're making them better criminals at that or angrier criminals.

1:00:00Well, exactly. And also, you should take care of the people in your care, period. That's your job. That's your obligation. You should at least give them medical care. Treat people with dignity. That's awful. I totally agree. So that was a burst, which is totally out of character for me too because I'm a very non-confrontational individual. So for me to get to that - You're like finding yourself in lockup. Are you kidding? I mean, I found the courage to literally tell somebody who had all the power in the world to crush me further to fuck off. So, I mean, honestly, it's very liberating because I'm a very yes, sir, yes, ma 'am type of guy.

1:00:33That's kind of like my nature. I'm not violent. I'm not overtly aggressive. I'm kind of, you know, mellow. I'm, you know, fun, fat guy. You know, it's like that's really my nature. So she pushed all my buttons in general. How did you get out of solitary? I don't know. I just know that it's a great story. That day that I got out, October 7th, was the day they were doing executive rounds. So they came. I spoke to three different individuals, the captain, the camp administrator, and the SIS, which is the internal investigations guy. All three of them gave me different answers. I'm not kidding. They all gave me three different answers.

1:01:17and essentially I sat there thinking, I'm so fucked. I got so angry. This was at nine o 'clock in the morning. Come later that day at around one, another assistant warden comes by. Actually, very straightforward guy. I'm not going to say he's my favorite, but do you know that guy you don't like, but you appreciate him because he's straightforward, he's honest and he tells you exactly how it is? Very much. We need people like that. He's not kind, but he's direct, doesn't mince around, doesn't beat around the bush. He comes and says, hey, so here's the deal. Got an update for you. I'm like, what's up?

1:01:54He's like, did you hear the news? I'm like, no, I heard doom today and three different kinds of doom. So I don't even know which one is true. He's like, ignore all of that. We got the declinations to investigate. I believe we're going to run an internal administrative process. You're going to go back to the camp. I said, when? He's like, look, it's Tuesday today. So if they're really fast, probably by the end of the week, but worst case scenario, beginning of next week. I had a grin from year to year like, oh my God, I got to do at least maybe at worst. I was like, in my head, at worst, I'll do another 10 days in here.

1:02:26I can pull this off. I looked at the books I had selected. I'm like, I'll make that work. I'll journal some more. I had a plan, like a goal, an end in sight. And then that same day at 2 p.m., when shift changed, the guard comes, bangs on my door and says, pack up, you're getting kicked out. I'm like, to where? And then she's like, to the camp, where else? I'm like, oh, lovely. I mean, don't say that twice. 30 minutes later, she was handcuffing me, putting me out of the door so I can go take off the lovely borrowed clothes and put on my actual clothes. You gave back the tighty-weights. Oh, totally, they can keep it.

1:03:03So what was the worst part of solitary, would you say? What made you so desperate to leave? Well, desperate to kill myself. Yeah. The loneliness and the way I was being treated. I'll give you this, something so bizarre. On September 10th, I was sitting in my cell, minding my business, thinking, wow, tomorrow's 9-11, what a rough day. And I'm sitting here and like, you know, I'm from New York. It's still very much a somber day for New Yorkers. And... And a CEO knocks on my door, says, hey, did you know Charlie Kirk? I'm like, yeah, I know Charlie. Charlie's a fun guy. I've met Charlie throughout the years.

1:03:45I like him. I call him a friend. No, no, no. You knew him. He was just murdered and just walked away. Now, you're talking to somebody who's all fucked up, 50 shades from Tuesday, mentally, in a shoe, by myself, no one to talk, can't pick up the phone and make a call to understand what's going on. and they took a glee in my, I was wailing like, what do you mean? Come back here. How do you tell me this and walk away? I was like losing it, like losing it. This is a guy that I've always found so inspirational. And I think I said this to you in private once when I was last year, I think he's going to be a president of the United States.

1:04:25I really thought that. I did say that. I really thought he'd be one of a future president of this country. I mean, he had a message, he had a purpose and he was good. And quite frankly, you can call him a little antagonistic, but who isn't these days? Oh, of course. And I love the guy. I think he got a great message of God, freedom. I mean, what else can you expect from somebody? Right. And the way it was delivered, it was so rough and that didn't help. How did you get more information about it? I didn't. So the nice CEO I'm telling about, the two of them, I asked them to look into it. They're not really tuned into politics, but they did some research and they would, on a day-to-day, they'd give me like play-by-play of what they had read.

1:05:06When I say these guys were top-notch, phenomenal human beings, I mean, top-notch, phenomenal human beings. They gave me play-by-play. They told me about the memorial. They told me about the attendance that President Trump spoke, that he was getting awarded the Medal of Freedom. I knew all of that through the accounts of these two COs that I really hope that in my life, I cross paths with them one day because I'd love to thank them appropriately, like a proper thank you for not treating me like a subhuman piece of trash. Because they were the only two. Everyone else, I was nothing but another number.

1:05:39And being treated in certain instances quite bad. Bad. I struggle to find the words because this facility declined a visit from my family. My partner and my aunt drove three and a half hours each way to go see me, got there and said, no, no, you can't see him today, even though it was visitation day. But they created - From what grounds? They created an arbitrary rule they had not registered. Although they were approved and cleared and had visited me in the camp, now across the street, it's a whole new protocol. I mean, it's not. They just kill you with bureaucracy. They just make shit up as they go.

1:06:20It's infuriating, like literally. There's no oversight, it sounds like. There's no oversight. The wardens create their own little kingdoms and they rule as little monarchs with no real oversight. Because here's the oversight process. Whenever they're going to be inspected or receive a visit, they clean everything up. They put makeup on everything. So when you come down doing that visit, you got to do surprise visits on these people. You really want to see how the house is being run. You can't say that the cat's coming to town. The mices are going to run away. You got to let the cat show up and be like, surprise!

1:06:57Because the way they do it is just, it's... So how did you get out exactly? Can I say one thing before you explain? There was a vibe shift, which you weren't here to see, but you went from being, you know, widely reviled, all these members of Congress denouncing you, everyone making fun of you, to once you went to prison, there was a sense that like, wait, what's George Santos doing in prison? And it was wild to see it. Tim Burchett, your friend, a congressman, good man from Tennessee, kind of led the charge on your behalf. But there were a lot of sympathetic ears. Oh, look. It was wild. You became more popular, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn, you became more popular in prison.

1:07:36Oh, look, hey. Never let a good crisis go to waste. Isn't that the same thing? But I'll say this. From Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's a dear friend, to Tim Burchett, who's another dear friend, Lauren Boebert, Anna Paulina, yeah matt gates yeah these guys really came like they they bad it named all the outlaws by the way that's fine i'm i'm in the book i mean that as a compliment no it's like we're all in the outlaws book with Steve Madden it's true um they all all those people have a shot of joining you someday in in the camp i hope not no i hope oh gosh i shouldn't even say that i hope not too but um So how did you get out?

1:08:18I don't know till this day what was the determination. I do know this. I know that that same day I had a legal call with the Joe, my attorney, after I got the three different like nonsensical BS. And Joe literally said, I'm working. I'm fixing this. I don't know what Joe did, but I will say this. he called everyone and their mother. And he made sure that they knew that the letter is out and the warden is still not being straightforward and forthcoming. And all I know is that within a matter of hours, it went from 1 p.m. saying I'd get out at some point at the end of the week or next week at best, at worst case, to an hour later saying goodbye, go back to the camp.

1:09:06Wow. And it was quite an adjustment. You know, there's this, it's perverse, the lack of mental health care they give you. They have three psychologists in which they should have six. They have no psychiatrist. So they have no prescribing mental health provider. So psychologists give referrals to a physician, which is wild in the standards of mental health, especially when you're dealing with people who are incarcerated, which guess what? A lot of them are there because of mental health issues. I believe it. You know, like the poor judgment and mental health issues are really what leads to people being incarcerated.

1:09:47But there's really no treatment for that. And I get put back in the camp. I couldn't sleep the first three nights. It's like totally messed up, but that's fine. At least I'm in the camp. I get to go outside. I get to call my family. I mean, in the first day, we get allotted 510 minutes a month to make phone calls. in my very first day when I had access my phone, I called 120 minutes to my family. I couldn't stop calling. I would call, wait 30 minutes, make another call to someone else. I couldn't stop calling. I needed to talk to people. I needed to know they were okay. It's like the anguish of not knowing.

1:10:30I'm a family guy through and through. And the anguish of not knowing what was going on was killing me, like pulling limb from limb inside of me. And I got out and I'm sitting in the camp. Now, here's a wild story for you. Thursday, October 16, we had the visiting priest. I got ready. We went to mass. I got there. He looked at me and says, you're back. Would you like to do confession? Because he knew I was in solitary. So I said, you do confession? He's like, of course. I'm like, I'd love to. Do you have the time? And he's like, I'm sure it can't be that bad. So very friendly priest. And I took a liking to him.

1:11:13He's a Jersey guy through and through. No nonsense kind of guy. Like he does not accept nonsense, right? Really rough, old school Catholic priest. And I said, oh, I like this guy. So we sit down. It's still a lengthy confession. Took almost an hour. So you got pretty detailed. Well, I mean, mortal sins, immortal sins. You got to go one by one. You can't just be, you know. I'm with you. You can't just do an overcap or a review. I've been naughty doesn't suffice. Oh, priest, I've been so naughty. He's like, you know how mortal sins work, right? You need to tell me in great detail. I'm like, okay.

1:11:49It's almost like gossip at that point. But I sat there. I go through this process that I had not done in at least two years or if not more. It felt great. I go to mass. I take communion. And then we do a rosary at the end. And it was just so nice. I left that feeling like I had squared away a large part of my life. And it just felt good. So good. I woke up the next day. I had this immense resolve on October 17th that everything would be okay. That even if I had to sit there for seven years, I would be okay. I would not be in pain. I would not be in anguish. I was ready for whatever the road ahead was.

1:12:33so much so that we had something called Coffee Club that Sam Mealy started, my former employee. And we would just wake up at seven. A lot of us woke up early, but at seven o 'clock, we would all meet in the library with coffee or tea. I'm a tea guy. And coffee cake or whatever it is, the cakes that Sam was hoarding for Coffee Club from everybody's breakfast bags that didn't want them. And we'd sit there every morning, a group of like five of us. Everybody was welcome to come, but only five people or so would show up. You can't even get prisoners to coalesce, trust me. They have no options to do anything else, but they still don't show up to stuff when it's available.

1:13:11So we sat there and I said to him, like, dude, I feel so good. He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, I don't know. I woke up feeling this resolve, like it's all gonna be okay. And he's like, well, that's good. But, you know, that's strange at the same time, which it is, you're in prison. You're not supposed to feel that way. We had this conversation. What sounds supernatural. Very like, I felt comfortable saying it. Yes. And it felt good to say it. And I did my prayer. And then I get called in the PA. And then everybody like kind of stiffens like, oh my God, I'm like, oh, please don't let it mean me going back to the shoe.

1:13:43Because that's how initially it was. I was called in the PA and they're like, oh, you got to be seen at the J building, which is a facility building. And I never came back, right? 41 days later. So I stiffened and I said, well, God's on my side. I don't care. I know they confidently like marched to go see what it was. Turns out it was a subpoena from Congress that Tim Burchard and Lauren Boebert had sent to the facility for me and the warden to go testify to the oversight committee under the conditions of my imprisonment. And I had to sign and agree for acceptance. She must hate you. I got to tell you.

1:14:22I know that's still happening too. And it's funny because as I'm reading this, the camp case manager goes to me, you sure you want to do this? I think it's a good idea. I'm like, oh, it's a great idea. He's like, you might want to fly under the radar. I'm like, no, I don't. How's that working for you? I mean, no, I don't. And I signed it. I consent. I did all the paperwork. and I left with a grin from his office from ear to ear, went to my friends, the coffee, I was like, what happened? I'm like, I just got subpoena to go to Congress. They're like, what? I'm like, I'm freaking making changes from in here.

1:15:04Like, I was just like, I have a date with this bitch in Congress. That's my ground. That's my turf. And I'm in my head. I'm like, oh, Kelly, you have no idea what you just got yourself into. And I was so happy about it because it's about fairness for me. And I just proceeded my day, right? So walking the track, played a little ping pong on this like really at best makeshift ping pong table. Like I had a normal day, read a little bit of my book, called home. So it's around six o 'clock. We got our commissary sheet. So I was, you know, budgeting, figuring out what I need to do. And I'm filling it out in this computer room where we have our computers to do our core links communications with our family.

1:15:45The light there is a lot brighter. I'm getting old. My glasses suck. and I needed bright lights. So I'm filling this commissary sheet out and an inmate comes in like, oh, you were just on TV. I'm like, I don't care. I don't really pay attention to me on TV. They're always shitting on me or whatever. So uninterested. And about 30 minutes later, the entire cafeteria erupted in. That son of a bitch. Where the fuck is Santos? Santos, come over. You motherfucker. You were holding out on us. You going home. N-word. I'm like, what? I'm like, what's going on? So I go out. I'm like, stop. You guys are misunderstanding this.

1:16:25And the chyron on MSNBC says, disgraced former rep George Santos commuted, soon to be released, according to Trump. And that was the first you heard? That was the first I heard. Nobody told you this was coming? No, nobody knew that day. Nobody knew. You heard the news in the commissary from MSNBC. From MSNBC. Why were they playing MSNBC? Well, there's, like I said, there's the black TV and they particularly like watching. Do they really? Yeah. If it's either not on BET or on like a movie channel with like awful B-rated movies, it's on MSNBC, that TV. That's where the audience is. Because I wondered that.

1:17:04Who watches? So it's prison in the movie. But only on the black TV. I guess so. Wow. The white TV remarkably stays a lot on Fox, by the way. I'm not surprised. I was not shocked either. There was like a debate about where I should watch TV. And where'd the Spanish TV go? Spanish TV usually stayed either on Telemundo or Univision. Like very, very Hispanic. Wow. Rarely did it go anywhere else other than those two channels. So I'm sitting there looking at this Chiron for a split second. I'm like, apoplectic. Like, what? But nobody told me anything. Somebody should have called me. And then I think, I'm like, wait, nobody can make an inbound call.

1:17:44So I run to the emails. There's nothing there because emails take about an hour and a half to get to you of a delay because it needs to be vetted through security. So if you sent me something an hour and a half before I get it, and then if I send you a response another hour and a half before you get it, because everything is monitored. And I can understand that because of criminal conduct and activity. After all, you're monitoring criminals. Right, it's a prison. So it's a prison. So I just like, I was, I didn't know what to do. So I called home. I called my partner. I called Matt. I'm like, Matt, what's going on?

1:18:14He's like hysterical. Like, I just spoke to President Trump. It's over. I'm coming to pick you up. I'm like, what do you mean you spoke to President Trump? I didn't even think about going. I'm like, he called you? I was like, absolutely nuts about it. Like, wait, President Trump called Matt before he called me. Well, you were in prison. Kind of hard to get in touch with you. Well, I'm still mad that he got the full call first. So I hang up the phone and Tucker, I break down. I bet. I mean, I couldn't stop. It was like probably an hour. I was ugly, snotty, crying in that phone stall, head down, like my head and all these thoughts inundated my body, my soul.

1:18:56I'm going home. And it was just, I didn't know this was going to happen. I had really made peace with the fact that this was my predicament. just that morning. Yeah. And to tell me that there's no divine intervention in this, I will never accept that because there was no palpable appetite to give me clemency according to every single person I had spoken to. Yeah. And the day after I go to confession and I square away my quarrels and my pendencies with Jesus Christ, I get commuted by President Trump. I mean, I am forever humbled to the president. It's incredible. It's a remarkable story. And I don't believe, I don't do coincidences anymore.

1:19:44No, of course not. This was proof. If I ever needed proof, God's in your life. If you really make your pledge to him, this was it. I needed this probably. And I'm not saying because it's so self-serving. No, he purposely said, you do right by me. I'm giving you a second chance. So the second you just surrendered to it, it was resolved. I just could not. There was nothing else to do. I mean, I said, I think I cried all the tears that I had for the rest of the year that hour. It was... So how long was it till you got out? So that was around 6, 6.30-ish, right? When I called home. It was 11.30. I was walking out.

1:20:23That night you were out? That night, 11.30. I was walking out and my phone came in the car and I was already dialing. The first call I made was Marjorie Taylor Greene at the assistance of Matt, who was prolific on Call Marjorie. I want people to know this because it's important to me. I used to say that if you want a friend in D.C., get a dog. Not realizing I actually had real friends. Because you measure a friendship, not on how much you see one another, because we all have busy lives. Of course. You measure a friend on when you're in your worst and how they come through for you. It's loyalty, exactly.

1:21:01She was on the phone with Matt every single day, checking in to see how he was doing, giving him updates, talking to my sister. Literally, she didn't have to do that. She yielded nothing from it. This is a woman who will go out of her way for her friends and for what she believes in. And it pains me to see that so many people want to attack her. Now, I can understand politics. Why are they attacking Marjorie? I don't understand that. It's been 11 days and I still haven't wrapped my head around it, but I'll say this. There's no bigger supporter of President Trump that I served with. And I'm saying this to the detriment of getting other colleagues and friends of mine mad at me, but there was no bigger loyalist to President Trump than Marjorie Taylor Greene in my time in Congress.

1:21:49I've known her since 2020, and I can tell you with good faith, she is a loyal soldier. She means well, and she wants the best for our country, no matter what. And I think that to conflate that with any other issues that you might want to find a singularity with her, it is your problem, not her problem. So I say - Not in it for herself. It's a you problem, not a her problem. And I just want the record to reflect. Thank you for saying that. No, it's important to me just because I know so many members of Congress and she's in the tiny, tiny, tiny handful I respect. and love as people. And she's just a really great person.

1:22:25Like I really think a lot of her. I say it. She played therapist, best friend, mother, all of those roles to my family. And for that, I'm forever indebted because you can only dream of having that level of friendship with someone in your darkest moments when you're absent from your family and someone steps in and takes a position of counseling and consoling your family, that's a true friend. I totally agree. Everything else is garbage and that's wealth. That's amazing. Material wealth isn't wealth. I learned this in prison. Watches, jewelry, all of that stuff. Nice cars, flashy homes. It's not wealth, Tucker.

1:23:10Doesn't mean shit. Doesn't mean crap. Yep, I agree. Well, your family, your friends, your health, that's real wealth. and I want to measure my wealth that way moving forward because there's no point in measuring it the way I used to measure it. And prison was amazing for you. As much suffering as you went through, it sounds like it was transformative. It was absolutely a wake-up call. It gave me everything I needed to look into the mirror and look at the man staring back to realize, you're in trouble. You've done A, B, C, D, E, F, G wrong. And - Wow. Wow. That's the beginning of wisdom and freedom.

1:23:50That's the point. I feel for the first time in my life, free. Free of, I have no reservations to what I'll say. I have no reservations of what I care of what society thinks of me. And I don't want to fit your social normative, whatever bullshit. I want to embrace the better parts of life. And those to me are my family, my friends, my health, my pets. That's what I don't care. I don't need to live in the most beautiful house with the most beautiful curb appeal. I don't have to drive the nicest cars. I don't have to have the fanciest shoes. None of that matters. I lost complete and total interest after being encapsulated and captured by the consumer mind virus of I must buy the whatever couture and I have to have the two,$3 ,000 suits and the$800.

1:24:45The fuck are we doing? I agree. It's like so sobering. It's almost like as if I've lived drunk my entire life and I became sober for the first time. Are you sure you weren't in a monastery? Are you sure it was prison? I'm telling you. It sounds so cleansing. I'm telling you, it was cleansing. It was, I feel, I wake up every day. I've now reassumed my position of going to mass every Sunday. It's been two Sundays I'm out. I'm at mass. The priest is apoplectic that he sees me there. I'm singing. I'm praying as loud as the 80-year-old Bible thumper next to me. I am proud to be there. I am proud to literally partake in what I believe saved my life.

1:25:32and I will forever do it. I will forever - You're making me emotional. No, it's beautiful. It's just absolutely bizarre. Like all it took was you falling that, you had to hit rock bottom sometimes in order to realize what you have. Yes. And I thank God and I thank God profoundly for letting me hit rock bottom because if not, I would still be spiraling out of absolute control in a ball of chaos like I was prior to going to prison. I've been there. That is what an amazing story. So where did you go your first night? Home. I went home. I slept in my bed. I took a shower, an hour-long shower with no flip-flops, no concerns of the soap falling on the dirty floor, actual shampoo and all.

1:26:25I put on every cosmetic product I had in the bathroom. Oh, what's this? A face scrub. Oh, a body scrub. I had the loofah going on. I was like, I need to do everything in here. It just felt so liberating. And I cried in the shower. And it wasn't tears of pain. It was tears of joy. The simplest thing, a shower. A shower. And then what do I want to eat? Sushi. The next day I woke up, I said, I need to have sushi. I need guarantees that I'm eating something that was barely dead before I consumed it because I was so tired. Not expired sushi. Frozen, expired. I couldn't do it anymore. So I said, I need sushi.

1:27:05So we got really good sushi, had a great time. And I've been nonstop, believe it or not. It's been as if I've never left almost because you go right into the media cycle and you're traveling and you're talking and you're doing these interviews. But this is the first long format interview I do. And I reserved it for you because I thought it was appropriate. When I spoke to your booker and your staff, I said yes right away because they said, I finished all of it at Tucker. I gave you the last word. And I only thought it'd be great to give you the first word long format. Because you can do five, six, seven minute hits.

1:27:46You know what they're like. You don't get anything out of them. So you can't tell the story. And I just, I know I just, I said this at the beginning, but I just didn't think we were going to see you for years. the fact that it's not seven years later. So I guess there's something to be said from 87 months to 84 days. But I can tell you, the 84 days made such a difference. Mainly the torturous nature of isolation and the dehumanizing nature of which I was treated really put my entire life back into perspective for me. It's almost as if it was the worst thing that's ever happened to me. But at the same time, worked almost as a blessing.

1:28:33Oh, I believe that. And I live in the in-between gray trying to figure out if I hate it or I love it. And I don't know yet. Maybe throughout the years, I'll figure that out. But I still resent it very much. And it brings me great pause when I think of the following. if they can do this to me. Well, exactly. That's exactly right. If they can do this to me, imagine what other people are going to do. I've been thinking that through your entire narrative. You know, you're a very famous person, member of Congress, know everybody, obviously highly motivated, very resistant to being bossed around. So you're like their nightmare and they still treated you this way.

1:29:19Imagine if you were just some guy. I mean, imagine the horror stories. Now, it puts into perspective that I've always listened to two, I'm very guilty of this. Every time I've ever worded the words, oh, we need prison reform. Like, who cares? It's a bunch of prisoners. It's a bunch of criminals. Who cares? They should be thankful they're not dead. We should give them the chair. Like, I would say outrageous things like that. Yep. And now I sit here and I think, wow, now I understand what they were talking about. And we can't discount people's pain and suffering. Totally agree. And I - It's not a liberal position.

1:29:52It's a Christian position. And you have to treat people with dignity, even wrongdoers. And by the way, we're all wrongdoers, if we're going to be honest about it. You know what my stance is? I'm pro-life. Yeah, me too. Not just for the unborn. I totally agree. I disagree with death sentences. I disagree with you. And a lot of people get on me for that. If I disagree with ending the life of an unborn child, what makes you think I'm going to agree with taking the life of a fully developed human? I believe in punishment. I believe in incarceration. I believe if you kill, you are a danger to society.

1:30:25You should be put away, but I don't think you should be. But that's the point. We're not allowed to kill. We're not supposed to kill. We are not. No. And we need to end the practices of death penalty, in my opinion. And the culture of death. It needs to be revisited. It really does. It treats people like objects. No, I completely vehemently agree with you. So you're out of circulation for a while. You're obviously very connected and on everything in normal life. then you're just like off grid, literally in the shoe. What did you notice about the changes that took place in the months that you were gone?

1:30:57Did you notice a different country when you get back? Totally. I'm still trying to struggle with two things. Really? Two very big things. I left and we were celebrating President Trump. And now I come back, there's this weird segment of social media who are all these conservative influencers taking dunks on the president, which I'm like super like lost at. And it all spans from Israel and Palestine. Yes, it does. And I look at that. I'm pretty Zion. I'm pretty prolific Zionist, okay? But I've also learned throughout the last few months that I don't want my president to be at the mercy of a prime minister who is toxic and causing great pain to our country now because President Trump goes out there, puts his neck on the line, does an amazing, formidable peace deal.

1:31:49Amazing. Like something extraordinary. I mean, the man deserves a Nobel Prize. I don't care what anybody says. I don't care what the liberal bench of the Nobel Prize Association or whatever you call them think. The reality is Donald Trump is a peace president. He wants to broker deals of peace and end war. He does this extraordinary measure, is now working towards putting the conflict of Ukraine-Russia to an end. Hopefully we can achieve that. Only to see that people like Bibi Netanyahu are sabotaging that. I'm concerned. It's shocking. It's shocking because he should be grateful because President Trump is going out of his way doing a formidable job.

1:32:35Yeah. And this is how you repay him? Spending all this time, all this money trying to fix other people's problems. Time is a commodity that not a lot of us can afford. So I have to come to realization, despite being a staunch defender of Israel and the Jewish people and their right to exist and their right to be in Israel, I, at the same time now, live in a place where I think it's time we move on. He has become toxic. He has become pretty much the merchant of death almost, the face of it. Yes. On both sides. Every Israeli soldier and family and every Palestinian soldier and Hamas terrorist and family, although I'm not too sympathetic for the terrorists.

1:33:18Quite frankly, the only good terrorists alive, the only good terrorists in my world are the ones that are not alive, even though I have this profound opinion of death and life and that we should not kill. But there's a special place in hell for terrorists. Let's just put it that way, especially after what I saw when I was in Congress after the initial October 7th attack, the video, I'm sure you saw the video, the baby and that stayed in my nightmares for quite some time. So every single death at this point, I think is easily being attributed to Bibi because he is overstepped. And in two months and a half that I've been gone, it gave me so much clarity because I was out of the rhetoric machine.

1:34:06I was out of the spin room. And I'm just like, my president is going to bat for a man that is not being forthcoming with him. At all. At all. It's humiliating. And, you know, I don't like it. I don't like it. I'm very protective of my country. I'm very protective of President Trump because President Trump is somebody and everybody is saying, oh, you're going to now go simp for him. I'm sorry. I've been simping, whatever that means, for Trump since 2015, since he came down the golden escalators. Like there's just, stop. You're barking up the wrong tree. I am a big fan. There's very little he can do at this point.

1:34:45And I mean, very little he can do that would make me not like him. I mean, I don't think there's a lot. He can't, if he kills somebody, depending on who it is, I might be like, well, that person had it coming. I'm kidding. I'm not there yet. But watching someone you love and admire to whom you're grateful, Trump, mistreated by an ungrateful foreigner whose salary we pay is like, is beyond. It's just, it's gotten to a point where I, and then there's also this other aspect of this, which is anybody who says what I'm saying now gets accused of being on the Qatari payroll. Yeah. So I'm sure, by the way.

1:35:19I've been there, Mr. Santos. By the way, the check has not hit my mailbox. It's like at this point, I, yeah, well, tell me about it. And then the second thing to really bring it to perspective is, what are we doing in this country to really fix anything? The government shut down. Schumer wants to make this the Republican shutdown so bad. It's almost like Gretchen Wiener in Mean Girls trying to make Fetch happen. It ain't going to happen. It's not going to happen. So I don't know how so much has changed in two and a half months, but I'm here. I mean, I'm literally living an existential crisis in my life right now in New York City.

1:36:07I'm at the precipice of having an actual dangerous man become the mayor of the largest city in the country that is responsible for 10 % of the American GDP become mayor of a$118 billion annual budget. We're leaving by all barometers. I mean, do you know how I check out my barometers now or not polls anymore? I just go to Polymarket. Yeah. When you look at Polymarket and it's a 93 % chance that this Mandami guy is going to win. Let me tell you something. Mandami is the next mayor of New York City. There's no wishful thinking. There's no sensational ads or sensational headlines on the New York Post that are going to say, Cuomo eats 10 % of Mondami's lead, narrowing the gap.

1:36:55Hello, wake up. It's over. I've learned this throughout the last year. I have yet to see Polymarket get something wrong. And when I see something like that, it's over. So I'm, and I don't get paid by them to say that, by the way. I'm just making this very clear. It is over. It's cooked. So I look at this. And you're leaving New York. Oh, it's over. I had 37 years, New York City resident, born and raised in Queens, New York City. I have lived in various parts of Queens throughout my life, but I'm originally from Jackson Heights, Queens. Proud of it. My aunt still lives there. She's lived there for 40 years.

1:37:33My dad still lives there. He's lived there for 40 years. I have no desire whatsoever to stay in New York City or New York State at that because it doesn't matter if you're fleeing the insanity of a madman in the city when you have, I lose the words to describe our governor. So I'll just leave it at, you have literally two Looney Tunes running the state and the city. Where do you go? I'm not staying there. So I'm so happy we're leaving. I mean, I'm literally actively packing. We're packing. We already know where we're going. You're leaving the state. We're totally leaving the state. We're going down south.

1:38:12We're leaving the state. There's nothing left for me there at all. It's shocking. And I love New York. New York's, my image is largely tied to being a New Yorker. You know, tell it how it is. You're offended to go to prison in New Jersey. I am. That's what a New Yorker you are. You're like a bridge and tunnel prisoner. You hate it. I'm like, I still am offended that he sent me to Jersey. I should have gone to Otisville. But my point is, this is how serious it is. me. So this is another big change. It's an existential one for me. I'm uprooting my life. I'm moving far away from my family because there's, I mean, my poor aunt, she just retired.

1:38:50She set up, she's well retired. So there's no point in her moving. My dad's about to retire in two years. There's no point in him getting up to move. They're rooted there. I'm not. I'm 37. I'll put my roots elsewhere. I'll uproot it. I don't care. And it's not a place to raise family. We're looking to adopt kids next year because we think it's time to help kids who are abandoned in foster care. Let's adopt two kids, give them a life, put them through school, give them whatever they want, education, give them a fair shake instead of letting them become a statistic. But I don't want them to grow up in a place like New York City.

1:39:24What do you think is going to happen to New York? At first, there's going to be the sticker shock of taxes being raised on the wealthy, but he's categorizing the wealthy people who make over 400 ,000 a year, which in New York net, you're making about 270. And then about 40 % of that goes to housing, lodging costs, whether rent or mortgage, whatever that makeup is. You're not really wealthy. Now you're gonna pay an additional 1 % so that we can have inefficient free buses because you're not gonna get better because they're free. They're just gonna get worse in my opinion. And that's going to be the start.

1:40:02then you have John Katsimatidis, who's a prolific businessman in New York City, who's made it abundantly clear. He's going to take his Red Apple Group and dip New York. And along with it, he's going to close his historic grocery chain because he can't compete. Gristidis can't compete with a city-owned supermarket. There's just no way. So what's the point? So there goes countless jobs. You're going to see every single major corporation start uprooting out of New York. Pretty soon, you're going to leave the stock exchange to the dust mites and whoever dares venture into the city. Just remember, Ken Griffin picked up and left Chicago and took Citadel with him to Florida.

1:40:43And they yelled at him, but he went anyway. You know, guess what? J.B. Prickster can be fat and loud and a billionaire, but he doesn't tell what other people do with their businesses. So when you see an example of that happening in Chicago with Ken Griffin, it should raise flags. Goldman Sachs moved GSAM, their asset management division, all but their retail facing people out of New York to Brickell, Florida. Like that division, the only people who stayed in New York of their main, the heart of Goldman Sachs, which is GSAM, their asset management division, it's mainly the frontline people who stay.

1:41:20Like the people who have the day-to-day because the wealth is still in New York today. It's still there. But the operations end of it is in Brickell largely. Like when you see these moves being made and you still want to talk about raising the corporate tax by 2%, you're either dumb, death, blind, or all of the above. Because there's just no way you think people are going to stay and corporations are going to be beholden to stay in the state of New York if you make it even less business friendly. We have had a net loss of over 600 ,000 people in the course of the last five years in New York State.

1:41:54were a large exporter of out-migration from the state. Lee Zeldin could have been governor if it wasn't for the 400 ,000 people who at that point in 2022 had fled to Florida due to the pandemic. He almost did it. He got that close. We have Elise Stefanik, who's a phenomenal congresswoman who has a shot. But I fear that with this out-migration that's going to occur after Mondami, it might hurt our electability unless Democrats finally see they messed up and they actually give it. Why would they? I mean, they never do. No one ever apologizes for anything. It just keeps moving in that direction. It's remarkable.

1:42:32New York City is going to become Gotham and I'm not willing to be the penguin. You can go be Batman. George Santos, this story ended in a way I could never have predicted, but so much better than I ever would have hoped. And I just, what a blessing. And you seem like a man transformed through suffering. Well, it's not the easiest way to transform. No, it's the only way. It's the only way, yeah. And it's, you know what? It paid off in a weird way at the end. And I'm grateful. Thanks to God and thanks to President Trump and to everybody who helped and walked that long path with me. And it's great to be here with you.

1:43:08Amen. Thank you. Great to see you. Good to see you. Thank you.

1:43:19We've got a new website we hope you will visit. It's called newcommissionnow.com, and it refers to a new 9-11 commission. So we spent months putting together our 9-11 documentary series. And if there's one thing we learned, it's that, in fact, there was foreknowledge of the attacks. People knew. The American public deserves to know. We're shocked, actually, to learn that, to have that confirmed, but it's true. The evidence is overwhelming. The CIA, for example, knew the hijackers were here in the United States. They knew they were planning an act of terror. In his passport is a visa to go to the United States of America.

1:43:56A foreign national was caught celebrating as the World Trade Center fell and later said he was in New York, quote, to document the event. I didn't know there would be an event to document in the first place because he had foreknowledge. And maybe most amazingly, somebody, an unknown investor, shorted American Airlines and United Airlines, the companies whose planes the attackers used on 9-11, as well as the banks that were inside the Twin Towers just before the attacks. They made money on the 9-11 attacks because they knew they were coming. Who did that? You have to look at the evidence. The U.S.

1:44:31government learned the name of that investor, but never released it. Maybe there's an instant explanation for all this, but there isn't actually. And by the way, it doesn't matter whether there is or not. The public deserves to know what the hell that was. How did people know ahead of time why was no one ever punished for it? The 9-11 Commission, the original one, was a fraud. It was fake. Its conclusions were written before the investigation. That's true, and it's outrageous. This country needs a new 9-11 Commission, one that actually tells the truth and tries to get to the bottom of the story.

1:45:07We can't just move on like nothing happened. 9-11 Commission is a cover. Something did happen. We need to force a new investigation into 9-11 almost 25 years later. Sorry, justice demands it. And if you want that, go to newcommissionnow.com to add your name to our petition. We're not getting paid for this. We're doing this because we really mean it. Newcommissionnow.com.