George Santos should still be in prison. For a long time. The man didn’t just bend the truth; he mugged it and sold it on eBay. His political career was a carnival of deceit—fake résumés, phantom degrees, imaginary jobs, and a personal biography stitched together like a bad rug. He was chosen to represent voters; instead, he chose to rob them. And after all that, Donald Trump set him free.
Santos wasn’t some poor soul who lost his way. He was a professional liar who made fraud an art form. He charged donors’ credit cards like a bored teenager with Dad’s Visa. He stole identities, and lied his way into Congress with the confidence of a man who’d already started picking out office furniture. When caught, he didn’t repent—he rehearsed. The audacity was astonishing, even by Washington standards. Eighty-seven months behind bars was mercy, not cruelty. But Trump wiped it away with the flick of a pen.
And this is where things turn from corrupt to comical. Trump, who built his political brand on law and order, has now linked himself with the same grift he once pretended to fight. Pardoning Santos is bad enough, but reports suggest he’s considering doing the same for Sean “Diddy” Combs, the rap mogul facing serious federal charges.
Trump is telling America that loyalty—not law—is what matters. You can lie, steal, defraud, even humiliate your country, so long as you flatter the man holding the Sharpie. Santos was no patriot, but he was a performer. And Trump loves performers, especially the ones who remind him of himself. Both men are salesmen who never deliver the product. They’re allergic to truth, addicted to power, and willing to say anything to stay in the dirty game of politics.
But the most galling part isn’t Santos’ freedom or Trump’s hypocrisy. It’s the silence from those who should be howling—the MAGA faithful who once prided themselves on being the moral counterweight to Washington’s corruption. They rallied behind Trump because they believed he was the wrecking ball for the political elite. Now, he’s rebuilding the same tainted temple, this time with grifters instead of bureaucrats. If you claim to love America’s working class, you don’t pardon the people who pick their pockets.
George Soros is often cast as the puppet master of the left, a billionaire funding causes that most hardworking Americans wouldn’t recognize as their own. George Santos is the mirror opposite: a petty scammer who sold himself as a man of the people while treating ordinary folks like open wallets. Trump, by rescuing him, has become the bridge between the two, the billionaire populist now protecting the parasite.
Conservatives used to be the party of consequences, the side that believed choices had costs. When Democrats let criminals walk, the right called it chaos. When prosecutors went soft, conservatives demanded justice. Now, faced with a serial fraudster set free, we’re told to cheer because the benefactor wears a red hat. Some call it patriotism. I call it cult behavior.
Santos’ release spits in the face of every small-town mayor, every police officer, every voter who still believes the rule of law means something. The man defrauded donors, faked his life story, and stole money from people who trusted him—all while laughing about it on social media. He doesn’t deserve freedom; he deserves a padded cell and a long look in the mirror.
The truth is that Trump’s commutation tells us what he’s become. Not the fighter for forgotten Americans, but the patron saint of con men. He’s turned “draining the swamp” into refilling it, one corrupt ally at a time. By aligning himself with Santos, he’s declared that crime, when convenient, is forgivable.
And so, Santos walks free—smirking, unrepentant, still tweeting. Trump grins, his base shrugs, and the rest of us are left watching the justice system sink another inch into absurdity. If there were any principle left in this movement, this should be the breaking point. But it won’t. It’s the new worst of times—Dickens for the digital age. The mobs don’t storm the Bastille anymore; they storm the comments section. The guillotine’s been replaced by the ratio. Everyone’s a revolutionary until the Wi-Fi cuts out. Both parties are led by their fringes, their followers by their feeds. Outrage is the new oxygen, and truth is whatever trend lasts till Tuesday. We’ve turned politics into performance art—half circus, half sermon, all insane. If Dickens were alive today, he wouldn’t write A Tale of Two Cities; he’d write A Thread of Two Sides—and it would still be too optimistic. The lunatics aren’t just running the asylum; they’re live-streaming it for donations.