George Santos claims he hates being famous — but can’t seem to stay away from the limelight.
So when his former colleagues in the US House of Representatives kicked him out of the chamber last December amid revelations that he’s a serial liar and charges that he defrauded his own campaign donors, Santos turned to the platforms on which he knew he’d be safe.
He took up a seemingly permanent residency on X, formerly known as Twitter, and launched an account on Cameo — the site where the famous and infamous can get paid for making videos for fans.
Of course, for a guy who claims he doesn’t like being in the public eye, he’s made a pile of cash doing just that. The disgraced New York Republican said he’s booked more than $600,000 in Cameo requests since joining the site Dec. 6.
But he doesn’t like it.
Seriously.
“I don’t enjoy it, believe it or not,” the self-proclaimed “fallen congressional diva” told The Post.
“Here’s something about me that most people have wrong: If I had to either stay being an anonymous person, [or have] all this attention, I would have loved to stay anonymous.”
“You know why? Now I know what I lost. You don’t know until you lose it,” Santos, 35, continued.
“And I love the fact that I could wear baggy, f—ked-up sweatpants, like an old t-shirt and go to the supermarket and nobody knew who the f—k I was.”
“Now it would be on Page Six, it’d be in all the tabloids… I don’t need that,” Santos said.
“But right now I have no other option. The option that was left for me was to nosedive into it and kind of face the media.”
The former congressman spoke about that and more in The Post’s wide-ranging, wild Tuesday interview. He detailed what he won’t do for money, who Trump should pick for vice president and which Golden Girl he’d kiss, marry and kill.
Despite the tsunami of cash Santos said he’s making on Cameo, there is a line — even for him.
The former politico claimed he’s refused about $100,000 worth of video requests because they were just too vile.
“I’ve declined people saying sexual things [like], ‘X has the biggest, best wiener in town, find him on Hinge,’” Santos said. “Or very antisemitic stuff.”
“I’m never gonna’ read that,” said Santos, who once described himself as “Jew-ish.”
“There’s no amount of money that’s going to [get] me to say something like that.”
Still, he’s leaned into his new online persona harder than most — especially considering he faces more than two decades in prison after being accused of a multitude of crimes, including embezzlement, identity fraud and other charges laid out in the 23-count federal indictment against him.
He has pleaded not guilty and denies wrongdoing.
Santos said Tuesday that he’s not thinking about the case — or his looming federal trial.
Instead, he’s trying to live in the moment.
“I’m not there, my head’s not there,” Santos said. “I’m focusing on the ‘right now.’ And the ‘right now’ is putting up my defense and going through the process in the most respectful manner possible.”
He demurred when asked if there was any update on his plea negotiations, or if he’d take a plea if it was lenient enough.
“Every single indictment has a follow-up of plea negotiation,” Santos said. “I’m not going to discuss any of the legalities or the inner workings … I’ve got to give you the non-answer.”
So what’s the endgame of his endless Cameo videos, stream-of-consciousness posts on X and his failed comeback bid for Congress?
(His short-lived second election bid ended last month when he couldn’t raise enough money to campaign.)
“The endgame is, I’m not going to have my voice taken away from me,” Santos said.
“I have a voice. I have people who support me. I have people who like my record in Congress. And quite frankly, I’ve definitely pivoted from being a public servant to a notable public figure.”
“That’s how I’m earning a living today, because I can’t go back to finance, I can’t go back to private equity,” he continued. “I have a dark cloud over my head that I need to clear off.”
“Is it a crime to earn a living?”
The Long Islander also chose to revive his long-dead, drag queen alter-ego, Kitara Ravache, for a Cameo appearance — in which Santos wore a brown wig, red lipstick, fake lashes and a feather boa.
Santos had previously denied Kitara’s existence — but seems much more comfortable with it now that he has no voters to appease.
He also said he thinks Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, should also be chucked out of the House after being indicted on federal bribery charges.
“Henry Cueller should be expelled — the precedent was set,” Santos said, referencing his own case.
“Did you see the excuse they gave?” he asked, incredulously. “
‘George Santos was a con man who was here for under a year, Henry Cueller is an established, well-respected member who has been here for over a decade.’ His crimes span over a decade! What are we talking about?”
“I should have taken gold bars!” he continued, referencing the corruption case against New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez.
“I’m telling you! Seriously, should have gone to Egypt and taken gold bars and come back and Googled, ‘How much is a pound of gold?’ It’s stupidity.”
“The reality is — it doesn’t matter,” Santos said. “Pence didn’t matter. Gore didn’t matter. Biden didn’t matter.”
But a bad vice presidential nominee — such as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who repeatedly torched John McCain’s 2008 campaign after he made her his running mate — can certainly hurt.
Can’t it?
Not to Santos.
“I don’t think Sarah Palin hurt McCain,” Santos said. “I don’t think Sarah Palin was used properly to benefit McCain, because she’s a great public servant, she’s a great politician.”
But he thinks Trump could benefit from someone like Ben Carson — or Nikki Haley.
“Nikki Haley would help him,” Santos said. “But I know Nikki Haley burned a lot of bridges. She said a lot of stupid stuff, trying to distance herself from him and appealing, I guess, to the [Chris] Christie branch, trying to bring those voters in.”
“I still think she’s a great public servant,” he added.
Santos also offered his opinion on the Trump indictments — one of which the ex-president is on trial for in Manhattan right now.
Santos thinks the New York indictment — a 34-count behemoth that accuses the ex-president of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payment Cohen made to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election — will end in a hung jury.
“I don’t think they were prepared,” he said about the Manhattan prosecutors taking Trump to task.
“The fact that they made their star witness a known perjurer? I mean, all it takes is one right? One juror … because you can’t convince the most liberal of hateful people that hate Trump, that Michael Cohen is your star witness on something.”
And finally — the most important question — if Santos had to choose, which Golden Girl would he kiss, marry and kill?
“Oh my god,” Santos said, before taking a second to think.
“Blanche, kiss. Kill Dorothy. And I guess … marry Betty White. Yea.”