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Let me start by saying that I suspect (I think?) this is just a matter of having a sloppy attorney or poor communication within the Santos “camp,” if we can dignify it with that term. But it still jumped out at me after a reader sent in a copy of Santos’s attorney’s defiant statement attacking The New York Times. It’s a very Trumpian statement from lawyer Joseph Murray. You’ve probably read it. “George Santos represents the kind of progress that the Left is so threatened by — a gay, Latino, first generation American and Republican,” it says, among a list of other claims and attacks.
Pretty par for the course. The full statement is on Santos’s Twitter page. Murray or Santos sent it to basically every publication and it’s been reprinted in numerous articles. But if you look closely there are actually two versions of the statement. The one that showed up in most press reports is slightly different (emphasis added): “George Santos represents the kind of progress that the Left is so threatened by — a gay, Latino, immigrant and Republican …”
So one version calls Santos a “first generation American,” i.e., born here in the United States; the other calls him an “immigrant,” someone not born in the United States.
It appears that the “immigrant” version went out first and then was replaced by the “first generation American version.” How do we know that? The first reason is simply that “immigrant” shows up in many more press accounts when you Google that version. The first version sent out is going to get the most use, not the fix-up you send out later. The “immigrant” version also seems to appear in the more prominent publications — CNN and ABC vs BBC and Yahoo News. The bigs are going to get to the story faster and whoever was sending out the statement was probably going to get it to them first. (For an American politics story you’re going to send it to CNN before the BBC.) The other argument for this order is that the current tweet version says “first generation American.” So that’s the “right” version as far as Santos’s campaign is concerned. It hardly seems like they’re going to start with a version that matches Santos’s campaign story of being born in Queens, replace it with one that says he’s an “immigrant” but forget to replace the tweet. The “first generation American” version is almost certainly the fix-up version that comes second.
So what does this mean? One strong possibility is that Santos hired his attorney in a panic and the attorney put together a statement without getting a full debrief about the situation. Once George sees the first press reports he freaks and says, “Hey, I was born here. I’m not an immigrant! WTF?” Of course, maybe George is an immigrant and he lied about being born in the U.S. and this bobble is an artifact of internal campaign confusion about what the official story is.
Who knows?
Finally, let’s remember that it would be completely fine if Santos was an immigrant. The only issue would be if he lied about it, for whatever reason, and if he’s not actually a U.S. citizen. With George Santos, anything is possible.
