George Santos of All People Is Complaining He Feels ‘Used’ and Misled By DeSantis After Campaign Shared Anti-LGBTQ Ad

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In a rather bonkers example of the pot calling the kettle black, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) is complaining about being misled by another politician presenting himself as something he wasn’t.

Santos, the serial fabulist who has spewed forth so many misrepresentations, exaggerations, and flat-out lies about himself that our attempt to catalog them in January didn’t even last a day before needing to be updated (and was laughably out of date within a week), is facing a 13-count federal indictment for charges that include wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds, and making false statements to the U.S. House of Representatives.

The New York Republican is also openly gay and had previously voiced his support for Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill (dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by its critics), signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). Santos was among several LGBTQ Republicans who defended the bill against accusations that it had homophobic intentions.

But a bizarre video shared by the DeSantis campaign last week has Santos openly rebuking the governor and accusing him of misleading LGBTQ Republicans.

The video, which appears to have originally been created by a DeSantis supporter, was posted by the “DeSantis War Room” Twitter account along with a caption attacking former President Donald Trump for his support for Pride Month. The video was swiftly condemned for its “homophobic” rhetoric from both sides of the political aisle — the Log Cabin Republicans had a particularly cutting response — and many commentators pointed out that the video clip of Trump came from a speech he gave after 49 people were killed during the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida. DeSantis has struggled to close the gap with the frontrunner Trump, with his polls remaining stagnant or even dropping in key early primary states.

The Hill catalogued the negative reactions from multiple LGBTQ Republicans to the DeSantis video, including Santos:

Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), who has endorsed Trump for president but vocally supported Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill on the campaign trail last year, said that in light of Friday’s video, he now feels that he was “used” and misled by DeSantis.

“I used to think he was a great governor,” Santos, the first non-incumbent gay Republican elected to Congress, said of DeSantis. “Now, I’m starting to think differently.”

…[Santos] also suggested his opinion of DeSantis had turned because of the video.

“I still stand by the bill in its nature, but now it seems that it had a more perverse agenda behind it,” he said, later adding that “I’m starting to see [DeSantis] for what he is. His rhetoric is to diminish and remove rights away from people like myself, and I can’t support that.”