Or perhaps more than one lie:
... the 34-year-old Republican made contradictory statements about an early case of COVID-19 — for which he claimed to have been hospitalized in the first weeks of the pandemic.He said that he tested positive on March 14, and that his case was so bad that he was hallucinating -- but four days later he seemed to have made a remarkable recovery:
On March 30, 2020, Santos told the “Empire State Conservative Podcast” that he had been taken to Elmhurst Hospital in an ambulance with COVID-19 symptoms earlier that month after possibly being exposed to the burgeoning virus at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 29.
“Unfortunately, on the 9th of March I became symptomatic with what we all know now very well, COVID-19 aka coronavirus or commonly known as the Chinese flu,” he said, while laughing. “On the 11th I ended up in the hospital. It was really bad, fever, body aches, you know, all the known symptoms there.”
Santos ... said he was isolated in a plastic bubble with an air filter, because the hospital had “run out of isolation rooms.”
On March 18, four days after Santos claimed he tested positive and was extremely ill, the compulsive liar appeared virtually on FOX Business, where the healthy and well-fed-looking candidate said he was “in recovery” from the virus and no longer symptomatic.
Yes, he does look quite healthy. It's a hell of a recovery considering the fact that Santos claimed on the podcast that he was especially vulnerable to COVID complications.
“I have an immunodeficiency and I have acute chronic bronchitis. I also battled a brain tumor a couple of years ago, and I had radiation done, which really lowers your immunity in general,” he said. “Radiation isn’t a game. I’m susceptible to cancer. It’s in my DNA.”He had a brain tumor? This is news. Was that before or after he allegedly graduated from Baruch College with a 3.9 GPA or becoame a star on Wall Street? Brain tumors tend to take a person out of commission for quite a while, creating legitimate résumé gaps. Has Santos ever mentioned this in any other context?
But Santos's time frame for his COVID case kept changing. He went on to say he tested positive on March 5, 2020, then on March 4. As Dan Diamond -- the Washington Post reporter who broke the story -- notes,
Had Santos tested positive on March 4, 2020, that would have made Santos among the first 11 people in all of New York State to test positive.... Had Santos tested positive on March 7, that would have made him among the first 500 Americans to test positive.Then, as the New York Post notes, Santos held a virtual town hall on COVID in April 2020.
Watch the video from about 8:30 to about 12:00. He says he became symptomatic on March 9 and went to Elmhurst Hospital for a test on March 11, after which he was sent home. (Remember, he told the "Empire State Conservative Podcast" he was hospitalized on March 11.) Here he says he got a positive test result on March 14. Was he ever hospitalized? He says, "I quarantined inside the bedroom and did not leave the bedroom for fourteen days." (The fourteen days would seem to include the day he appeared on Fox Business -- an appearance he might have done from his bedroom, but that shows no apparent symptoms. Dan Diamond reports that Santos told Newsmax in October 2020 that COVID resulted in "two weeks of agony.")
In the town hall video, at about 11:10, he says:
And what I want to point out to everybody is, I have (a) a respiratory issue which is, I have chronic acute bronchitis, and I also have an immunodeficiency disorder. So I was in the at-risk group.And? And? He never mentions that other pesky vulnerability. Now, if I were recounting my medical history, particularly issues that would make me especially vulnerable to COVID, I think I'd remember that I had once had a malignant brain tumor.
The only question is whether much of this is a lie or all of it is a lie. Santos is definitely lying. His story changed again.
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