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Newly freed ex-congressman George Santos didn’t take kindly Sunday to a CNN question about President Donald Trump’s “favorable” commutation of him, saying there would always be “pearl-clutching” critics and attacking President Joe Biden’s blanket pardon of his family members before leaving office.
In announcing he had commuted Santos’ sentence, Trump pointed to Santos’ willingness to “ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN” while calling him “somewhat of a rogue,” leading critics to say Trump was engaging in blatant partisan favoritism.
“There are a lot of people who are really unhappy about your commutation because they see it as President Trump giving favorable treatment to you because you’re a loyal ally of his,” CNN’s Dana Bash told Santos on “State of the Union.”
“You know what?” Santos replied. “I say this, and I hate that we have to go down this road. And then there’s a lot of people who were upset with President Biden who pardoned his entire family before he left office in an unprecedented move. So pardon me if I’m not paying too much attention to the pearl-clutching of the outrage of my critics and of the people, predominantly on the left, who are going to go out there and try to make a big deal out of something like this.”
Santos noted Biden pardoned his embattled son Hunter Biden after previously promising he wouldn’t.
“I didn’t see outrage,” Santos said, before Bash quickly cut in, noting there was sharp criticism of the former president for breaking his pledge.
“There was some outrage because there was a lot of people literally licking their wounds, because they had said, ‘you see, he’s magnanimous, and he’s not going to do it. He’s all about the right thing.’ So he lied,” Santos said. “So I’m not going to debate this… Look, there’s always going to be critics. People are going to like me. People are going to hate me. It doesn’t matter whoever gets clemency in the future, or whoever that person might be. I’m pretty confident if President Trump had pardoned Jesus Christ off the cross, he would have had critics. So that’s just the reality of our country.”
Bash seemed amused at Santos invoking Jesus in his comparison before moving on. Santos thanked Trump and also mentioned his own Christian faith in a lengthy social media post after his commutation was announced.
The disgraced former New York lawmaker had begun earlier this year to serve a seven-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to aggravated identity theft and wire fraud. He also previously admitted to embellishing or outright fabricating large parts of his resumé and life story.
Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and a representative for Biden for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Jasmine Baehr contributed to this report.
The post George Santos snaps at CNN host over idea Trump gave him ‘favorable treatment’ appeared first on Fox News.
