In today's #vatnik soup I'll be introducing a US representative and a pathological liar, George Santos. It is almost impossible to do a proper profile on this guy, since it's hard to know what aspects of his life are true and what are false.

But let's try!

1/16
Santos is a member of the GOP, & he was elected to the open seat in 2022. He is the first openly gay Republic elected to congress.Interestingly, he was married to a woman during 2012-2019 - they divorced just 12 days before officially filed his first congressional campaign.
2/16
He's said that his maternal grandparents are Jewish and that they fled Soviet Ukraine and Belgium from the Holocaust - they were actually both born in Brazil. He later gave an interview to WABC radio, where he stated that "I never claimed to be Jewish, I am Catholic...

3/16
... Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was ‘Jew-ish.'"

Santos has used a fake Jewish name Anthony Zabrovsky to raise funds for a pet charity. He never gave any of its proceedings to the charity organization.

4/16
He has also claimed that his father is African American with Angolan roots. There is no evidence of this.

George speaks highly of her mother, writing that she was "the first female executive at a major financial institution" and survived 9/11.

5/16
In Jul, 2021, he tweeted that "9/11 claimed my mothers life"; then in Oct, 2021 he said that she was "caught up in the ash cloud" but was never treated for it. Then, in Dec, 2022 he claimed that both of his parents survived 9/11.

6/16
In real life, George's mother was apparently a home care nurse in Brazil and, accordingly to George's friends, she didn't speak much English.
Based on George, his education is top notch: he's claimed to hold a bachelor's degree in finance and economics from Baruch College...7/16
... graduating at top 1% of his class. During his claimed attendance he was actually in Brazil. He has also said that he was a "star player" on the Baruch volleyball team. He also has a fake Master's degree in business from NYU.

8/16
In Dec, 2022, he told The New York Post that "I didn't graduate from any institution of higher learning. I'm embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my résumé".

Besides being a volleyball star, George has also worked as a "seasoned Wall Street financier and investor"...9/16
... at both CitiGroup and Goldman Sachs. Neither company has any record of him working there. His latest real job was in a alternative investment firm accused of being a Ponzi scheme.

10/16
In an 2020 interview, he said that he had a brain tumor and that he received radiation treatment for it. Perhaps he's been cured: as of Dec, 2022, there hasn't been any more mentions of his illness.

11/16
Santos has called the Ukrainian government a "totalitarian regime". Regarding the puppet states of Donetsk and Luhansk, he has said that Ukraine "welcomed the Russians into their provinces" and that Ukrainians in the east "feel more Russian than Ukrainian".

12/16
In Feb, 2022, George tweeted that Joe Biden is "willing to start a war in Eastern Europe". At the time of these statements, he had received a 32 800 USD donation from Columbus Nova, owned by Andrew Intrater, a cousin of Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

13/16
George is a strong supporter of Donald Trump, and he also attended "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan 6, 2021. He was caught on camera stating that he had written a "nice check to a law firm" to bail the US Capitol arrestees out of jail.

14/16
As almost always with vatniks, George has trouble with money - he has unresolved charges for check fraud in Brazil. Somehow he's managed to make some money for his campaigning - in 2020 he listed his net worth at 5000 USD, ...

15/16
... but by 2022 his fortune had increased to somewhere between 2,5 and 11 million USD. He's campaing spendings are just absurd and too long to list here, you can find more info here: politico.com/news/2022/12/3…

16/16
*His campaign spendings

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Jan 15
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce a British freelance journalist, agitator and propagandist, Graham Phillips. In his articles and videos he favors Russia heavily, even though he calls himself an "independent journalist".

1/13 Image
Graham moved to Ukraine in 2010 and started working as an English teacher. He also started writing a blog, Brit in Ukraine, with articles on football, politics, history, and prostitution. The last topic was apparently his favorite, as he wrote a lot about prostitutes, ...

2/13 Image
... students moonlighting as escorts and foreign bride-hunters. He wrote about his first encounter with a prostitute in Amsterdam in a following manner: "A new high had replaced the drugs, and I exhaled 'I love prostitutes' into an appreciative Amsterdam night."

3/13
Read 13 tweets
Jan 14
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce a Chinese ultra-nationalistic tabloid & "China's Fox News", The Global Times (GT). It's a daily newspaper published by CCP's People's Daily. The newspaper has fabricated stories, spread conspiracy theories and published disinformation.

1/12 Image
The Chinese version was established in 1993 and it is one of the most read newspapers in China. Its popularity rose after the paper reported on Western incidents such as the accidental bombing of Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999, 9/11 and the Iraq War.

2/12 ImageImage
After the launch of a propaganda mill Russia Today in 2005, the Chinese government wanted to extend their overseas media reach, too. For this purpose, they launched an English version of the site in 2009, the US edition in 2013 and the South African version in 2014.

3/12 Image
Read 12 tweets
Jan 12
In today's #vatnik soup we'll travel to the land of tulips & get to know a Dutch politician & a conspiracy theorist, Thierry Baudet (@thierrybaudet). He's the founder and leader of Forum for Democracy (FvD) party and also a member of the House of representatives since 2017.

1/12
Thierry belongs to the group of Eurosceptics, and advocates for both the Netherlands' exit from EU and the dissolution of the whole institution. He has strongly opposed the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement that promotes the economic collaboration between the two.

2/12
This agreement was made in 2017 & during the campaign, he spread a ton of fake news, including false reported of crimes by the Ukrainian military: nytimes.com/2017/02/16/wor…

Baudet was strongly against the EU sanctions on Russian individuals after the occupation of Crimea.

3/12
Read 12 tweets
Jan 11
In today's #vatnik soup I'll introduce an Irish politician and a MEP from (South) Ireland: Mick Wallace. He aligns himself strongly with another Irish MEP, Clare Daly, and his love for both Russia and China has been evident in his recent comments and appearances.

1/13
His political career started at the Irish 2011 general election, and he was elected as an MEP in the 2019 European Parliament election. Wallace falls to the general category of "anti-imperialists", basically meaning anti-US and NATO.

2/13
Wallace's views also line up perfectly with folk from the fake news blog The Grayzone: he's supported Venezuela, China, Russia, Belarus and Syria during his period as an MEP.

So if there's an authoritarian regime somewhere, it probably has Mick's support!

3/13
Read 13 tweets
Jan 10
In today's #vatnik soup I'll be introducing a neo-nazi,conspiracy theorist & a troll, Andrew Anglin (@WorldWarWang). He's by no means a prominent figure of influence,but I wanted to introduce him as a cautionary tale of how people with fragile egos become brainwashed online.

1/9 Image
It seems that throughout his life Andrew has been soul searching, but in all the wrong places. As a teenager, he was a declared atheist and a vegan, wearing clothes with "Fuck Racism" written on them. Even as a youngster, his friends described him as erratic and sadistic.

2/9 Image
Ironically, he even flirted with homosexuality during his teenage years, something that he would strongly condemn later on, supporting the ISIS-style of throwing gays off buildings.

At some point he became interested in conspiracy theories, and became a fan of InfoWars ...

3/9 Image
Read 9 tweets
Jan 9
In today's #vatnik soup I'll talk about the "fifth column": a group of people who undermine and sabotage a nation or a group from within, usually in favor of a another nation or a group. Their activities often include sabotage, disinfo & propaganda, espionage, and terrorism.
1/19
Maybe the most famous case of fifth column is Russia's illegals program. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) trained several Russian agents to live indefinitely in the US. Their mission was to get involved in high position in the society, build contacts with ...

2/19
... executives, academics and policymakers, and gather and send intel for the SVR. These "illegals" were often given the identities of dead people and they were supposed to live a normal American life to not raise any suspicion among the common folk.

3/19
Read 19 tweets

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