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In a Fox News interview with former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday, Republican congressman-elect George Santos claimed he is not a "fraud" when questioned about the recent revelations - and his eventual admission - that his claims about his career and identity are riddled with lies and fabricated records.
The Fox interview came the same day as fresh allegations that he falsely claimed a Jewish identity.
Even though Santos told the New York Post that he never claimed to be Jewish, there is documentation proving otherwise. Santos had been loud about his identity as a "proud American Jew", and enjoyed coverage in Jewish media where he was celebrated as the "only Jewish Republican member of New York's House delegation".
He regularly attended events with rabbis and campaigned in Jewish neighborhoods, according to the New York Times.
When asked about this, Santos told Gabbard that he has Jewish heritage but was raised Catholic. He said he has joked that he is "Jew-ish".
Santos, who has also admitted to lying about graduating from Baruch College and working at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, said he was not "a fake" and that "everybody wants to nitpick" at him now.
But Gabbard put Santos on the spot by asking him how he defines "integrity".
In Tuesday's interview, he claimed he was courageous to be admitting this on national television, but fell short of an apology.
He insisted that somehow this "courage" in his admission would make him fit to serve his district, to which Gabbard asked: "Do you have no shame?"
"Do you have no shame [inaudible] the people who are now you're asking to trust you to go and be their voice for them, their families and their kids in Washington?" she asked, after clarifying that what he keeps referring to as "embellishments" on his resume are much bigger, "blatant lies".
Santos responded, once again deflecting the answer, this time to Democrats and Joe Biden, who he claimed has been "lying to the American people for 40 years".
When Gabbard confronted him further about his lies regarding his work at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, and how he can expect his constituents to trust him, Santos said the lies on his resume are "debatable" and "not false at all".
He added that he could easily explain how things such as private equity work.
"We can have this discussion that can go way above the American people's head", he said, "but that's not what I campaigned on".
"Wow," Gabbard responded. "You just kind of highlighted, I think my concerns and the concerns people at home have - you're saying that this discussion will go way above the heads of the American people, basically insulting their intelligence."
As of Wednesday morning, Santos's website no longer had information about his relations with Baruch College, Goldman Sachs or Citigroup.
