After a holiday break, Saturday Night Live went with embattled Congressman George Santos’ fabulous earlier claims for its cold opening tonight while falsifying his alleged past as a drag performer.
The sketch aired just hours after the real Santos responded to reports that he was a drag performer while living in Brazil. Reporters met him at La Guardia Airport in New York and he told them, “I wasn’t a drag queen in Brazil. I was young and having fun at a festival.”
That undeniable denial was pretty much the subject of the SNL opening game, which was set up as a segment of Fox NFL Sunday with Santos, played by Bowen Yang, as one of the correspondents.
When Fox NFL’s Sunday anchors switched to Santos, who was reporting from the field, he told them, “I’m kind of a real Bo Jackson, and I’m proud to be the first African-American quarterback to ever dive a football.”
After making many more claims about his footballing greatness, Santos gets asked about it. One of the hosts asked if he played football at all.
“Well, I didn’t do drag in Brazil,” he replied. “I didn’t drag Ravache under the name Kitara in Brazil! Whoever did that was very, very good at it and won many, many competitions.”
Politics on Friday reported that despite initial denials of being a “drag queen”, Santos once appeared to have written on a Wikipedia page that he appeared in drag shows, along with claims that he appeared on the show Hannah Montana.
Then the hosts cut off. But moments later, when Fox NFL Sunday anchor Howie Long (Mikey Day) tried to go to another correspondent in the field, Kitara Ravache interfered.
When the hosts objected, Santos told them, “I’m not George. I’m Kitara Ravache!”
“Now allow me to give you my true stats: fatalities, 26. duck walks, 19. wigs snapped, infinite. … And I also got the award for the tightest bend.”
The real Santos has been in the spotlight since reports surfaced that he lied about important details on his CV. Santos has admitted falsehoods about his background, but has refused to step down despite calls for his resignation from a number of New York Republicans.
Santo’s past, real or imagined, suggests a desire for the limelight, something he undoubtedly got first in today’s SNL.
Look at the sketch above.
Santos’ roast continued in the Weekend Update, where the congressman, played again by Yang, addressed allegations that he lied about important details of his life. Check out the sketch below.