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It began when the federally-indicted former lawmaker took to Cameo, a website and mobile app that lets you request personalized video shoutouts from celebrities for any occasion.
Discovering that Santos was creating the quickie videos for any buyer, Kimmel ginned up inane requests just to see how far the 35-year-old Long Island Republican would go.
It's been far.
In one, Kimmel anonymously asked Santos to both congratulate his legally blind niece for passing her driver’s test and wish her well as she recuperates in a body cast from a crash she got into right after getting her license.
Santos fell for it.
In the response that aired on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” he tells the young woman that a body cast “ain’t much.”
Kimmel, 56, also got Santos to offer encouragement to a purported friend who just came out as a “beav-a-pus.” His buddy got the green light from his bosses at Arby’s to wear his half-beaver, half-platypus costume to work and could use a little pep talk, the anonymous requester says.
“I’m so proud of you for coming out as a furry, and I just wanted to tell you that your friends and family all accept you,” Santos says.
“They all love you, beaver-puss,” he continues through what appear to be replumped lips. “Don’t ever get your head down, and don’t you ever, ever let anybody tell you what you can and can’t be.”
Then he delivers the kicker: “Take it from me!”
Then there’s the congratulations to a made-up woman who’d successfully cloned her dog “Adolf.”
“Give him a belly rub for me,” Santos says. “Mwah!”
And props to a man who allegedly ate nearly six pounds of “loose” ground beef in under a half hour to win a contest in Florida.
“I know you’re feeling a little under the weather," Santos tells the imaginary winner, "but I hear from a great source that the doctor said that you’ll be released from the hospital soon and recover well."
Needless to say, Santos wasn’t happy with the prank. He demanded Kimmel pay him $20,000 – plus the business rush rate -- for commercially repurposing his content for the show-opening “Will Santos Say It?” segments.
Kimmel shot back by basically begging Santos to sue him.
“It would be like a dream come true," he told viewers.
Kimmel said Santos has already made a killing after boosting his fee from $75 to $500 for each of what the host claims has become “a big stockpile” of embarrassing greetings that he says he intends to parcel out over several nights.
Kimmel did confess to being a bit conflicted.
“On one hand, you hate to give money to a guy like George Santos,” he said, “but on the other, eh, pretty good chance he has your credit card information already.”
Santos first made headlines when it was discovered that he’d lied about his mother dying in the 9/11 attacks, employing victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting and founding a pet rescue charity, among other tall tales.
Things got serious when a federal grand jury subsequently indicted him for stealing people’s identities and making changes on political donors’ credit cards without authorization, among other allegations.
To hear Cameo founder and CEO Steven Galanis tell it, the notorious fabulist is fabulous. Santos in just 48 hours exceeded what was an annual $174,000 salary on Capitol Hill, he told Semafor.
“Sarah Jessica Parker, Bon Jovi — he’s putting numbers up like that,” Galanis said. “The platform was built for him, and he was built for it.”
Santos admitted that he did, indeed, bump his rate from $75 to $500 amid growing success.
He also predicted that "these a**holes who think they’re holier-than-thou that they will be forgotten in history" while he will live forever.
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