- Embattled Rep. George Santos campaigned as an extremely conservative.
- A drag artist who realized him in the mid-2000s advised Insider Santos supported Brazil’s left-wing president then.
- Santos now faces scrutiny over multiple fabrications about his past.
A Brazilian drag artist who says she realized George Santos when he dressed in drag in Brazil remembers the congressman during his youthful years as a supporter of the country’s progressive president, not as the extremely-conservative politician he says he is now.
The artist Eula Rochard designed headlines for circulating a image she says is of Santos dressed in a red costume.
But in an interview with Insider, she stated what is puzzling to her is how Santos went from backing remaining-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, recognised as “Lula,” to his present political incarnation.
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Rochard stated Santos supported Lula and then “goes to the US and turns into this outrageous matter there. What craziness is this?”
Santos, who represents components of Queens and Very long Island, now embraces former President Donald Trump and procedures thought of anti-LGBTQ. He has accused the still left of trying to “groom” youngsters, a conservative conversing position equating gender and sexuality dialogue with priming for sexual abuse.Â
But in the mid-2000s, Rochard supported a Brazilian president who one particular professional claimed had extra in popular, at least on economic coverage, with the progressive politics of Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Rochard said numerous homosexual men and women living in the city of Niterói at the time supported Lula, a remaining-wing reformer who served as president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010 and who was just reelected for a third term, starting this thirty day period.
“Lula promised to make legal guidelines to aid us gays. They ended up all Lulistas and Anthony was as well since he hung out with us,” Rochard explained to Insider, making use of the title Rochard says Santos employed in Brazil, “Anthony.”
Insider display screen shot.
It can be not shocking that Santos, as a gay particular person, would have supported Lula in the 2000s, reported Rafael Ioris, a professor of Latin American record at the College of Denver. Lula represented the opportunity for the growth of civil legal rights for minority teams in Brazil, and most users of the LGBTQ neighborhood were being aligned with that viewpoint, he mentioned.
It is really hard to picture a member of today’s Republican Occasion in the US aligning with Lula, even as he became far more reasonable whilst governing. Lula is a previous trade unionist who built his political career on policies related to the progressive wing of the Democratic Social gathering: a larger least wage and shelling out additional on wellbeing care and schooling.Â
Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted his congratulations to Lula in Oct when he defeated much-appropriate incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, whose supporters this month stormed governing administration structures, refusing to settle for the success.
“It really is a very remarkable shift,” Ioris mentioned of Santos. Persons transform, he mentioned, but “how did that take place?”
It is really one particular of the many thoughts swirling all around Santos, who is at the heart of a scandal about lies on his resume, falsely saying his mom died on 9/11, and unexplained prosperity that served finance his congressional bid.
Freelance journalist Marisa Kabas broke the tale in a Substack post about Santos dressing in drag under the identify Kitara in the mid-2000s. Rochard also instructed Kabas that Santos’ good friends in Brazil were left-leaning.
Santos, whose employees did not respond to a ask for for remark, at 1st denied that he done as a drag queen but later on advised reporters, “I was youthful and I experienced fun at a pageant. Sue me for obtaining a lifetime.” More video clips have because emerged, suggesting it was additional than a one particular-off.
Rochard achieved Santos when he was about 17 many years previous and reported she made use of to catch Santos in “small white lies.” She said he desired to be famous “no issue what.”
“He wasn’t a bad man or woman,” Rochard stated. “He was a regular homosexual teen in a nation where by there were being no legal guidelines shielding gay folks.”
