George Santos has spent the last month and change being buried under an avalanche of wacky, alarming, and sometimes wacky/alarming allegations. So far he’s known how to handle them: He denies them (or he admits them later), he refuses to step down, or he simply does nothing. But apparently getting lampooned across late night TV across numerous nights broke him.
I have now been enshrined in late night TV history with all these impersonations, but they are all TERRIBLE so far. Jon Lovitz is supposed to be one of the greatest comedians of all time and that was embarrassing— for him not me! These comedians need to step their game up.
— George Santos (@Santos4Congress) January 23, 2023
“I have now been enshrined in late night TV history with all these impersonations, but they are all TERRIBLE so far,” complained Santos two days after Bowen Yang sent him up, in drag, on SNL.
Santos singled out one impersonator in particular for attempted ridicule: “Jon Lovitz is supposed to be one of the greatest comedians of all time and that was embarrassing— for him not me! These comedians need to step their game up.”
It appeared that Santos was once again taking a page from the Donald Trump playbook. Just as Santos, too, simply denies the many, many creatively out-there allegations made against him, he also did what Trump did when Alec Baldwin kept impersonating him on SNL: He called him bad. (Although Baldwin’s successor was the one who got it right.) Surely one good way to show you’re unfazed by mockery is to complain about it in a public space.
Last week, multiple late night chat shows did the same thing, enlisting a guest to do their best Santos impersonation. For instance, The Tonight Show tapped Lovitz, which Santos especially disliked. Yang followed that up with his take on the Aubrey Plaza-hosted SNL. The lesson: If you want to actually get Santos’ attention, which is hard to obtain, simply go on late night TV and make fun of him.