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Appearing on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” on the United Kingdom's TalkTV, Monday night, Feb. 20, Santos said he had to lie about his background in order to get his party’s backing.
“I’ve been a terrible liar on those subjects,” Santos told Morgan. “What I tried to convey to the American people is I made mistakes of allowing the pressures of what I thought and needed to be done in order to … this wasn’t about tricking anybody.”
“Yes it was,” Morgan replied. “The whole thing was about tricking people.”
Santos, whose 3rd District represents parts of Nassau County and Queens, then claimed “it wasn’t about tricking the people; this was about getting accepted by the party here locally.”
Morgan later asked Santos why he thought he would get away with such blatant lies, which included false claims that he graduated from Baruch College and worked as a “seasoned Wall Street financier and investor.”
"To run for Congress of the United States and to just tell blatant lies about even your academic record – I’m just struck, not necessarily that a politician would lie, but that you would think no one would find out," Morgan said.
"Well, I’ll humor you this. I ran in 2020 for the same exact seat for Congress and I got away with it then," Santos said.
"So you thought, actually, that they’re not going to find out?" Morgan asked.
"No, I didn’t think so," Santos replied. "But to that effect, it’s embarrassing, it’s humbling to have to admit your faults as a human being."
Santos went on to defend other claims that have since come under fire from fact-checkers, including that his mother was inside the South Town of the World Trade Center during the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, despite the New York Times reporting that she wasn’t even in the country.
He maintained that he “lost four employees” in the Pulse nightclub mass shooting in June 2016 even though none of the 49 victims ever worked at the companies named in Santos’ biography.
Santos also claimed that he had helped save 2,500 cats and dogs through his animal rescue charity, Friends of Pets United, even though there's no record of the organization or existing social media accounts, according to Morgan.
“You admit to certain big lies and then you deny other big lies, and the problem people have is they don’t know when you’re lying and when you’re telling the truth,” Morgan said in the interview. “I’m not even sure, because how can I be?”
“I understand. Look, that’s a position I put myself in," Santos said. "My credibility is what I’m going to have a hard time and a long road to recover and I stand clear and I stand certain that I’ll be able to do that."
Santos is facing numerous investigations into his personal and campaign finances, including from the House Ethics Committee, the Nassau County District Attorney's Office, and the US Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.
Click here to watch the full interview on “Piers Morgan Uncensored.”
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