When the House voted to expel New York congressman George Santos on Friday, there’s no doubt that some Saturday Night Live fans were saddened by the news—though not necessarily because they were supporters of the fabulist extraordinaire. Since way back in January, SNL’s Bowen Yang has been brilliantly skewering Santos’ many public scandals, bald-faced lies, and random babies.
But for this week’s cold open, Yang pulled out all the stops to give Santos the truly bizarre sendoff he deserves. The bit played out as a CNN broadcast of a press conference given by the disgraced politician—a press conference he planned and invited journalists to himself.
“Stop assaulting me! I’m being assaulted,” Santos complained to the group of somewhat disinterested journalists who had gathered. “This entire country has been bullying me just because I am a proud gay thief. But what else is new? America hates to see a Latina queen winning!”
“Since the day I was elected, it’s been a witch hunt,” Santos continued. “But if I’m guilty of anything, it’s for loving too much—slash fraud.”
While Santos was sure that the crowd of journalists—who he deemed “bloodthirsty jackals”—had many questions they wanted to ask him, they again reminded him that he had called this press conference.
Santos went on to lament the tragedy of being forced out of D.C. in the prime of his life—a mere 17 years old, according to Yang’s version of the former congressman. “And for what,” he demanded to know. “So that the government can go back to ‘business as usual’? Well I don’t do ‘usual,’ and I do ‘business’ as ‘Dr. Tony Goldman.’”
When anyone did dare to ask a question, Santos cleverly attempted to mine them for such personal information as routing numbers and their mother’s maiden names.
According to Santos, he doesn’t care about his expulsion because he’s got bigger things in the pipeline, including a new movie that’s opening this weekend: “It’s called Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé.”
Ultimately, Santos proved that he had the pipes to back up that claim by delivering a heartfelt musical tribute to, well, himself. With a slightly tweaked rendition of Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” titled “Scandal in the Wind,” which kicked off with “Goodbye Congress Queen” and included such lyrics as “Congress stuff is tough, it’s the toughest job I ever had—and I was a neurosurgeon at NYU. Plus I have the job of dad.” Which is the moment he pulled a fake baby out of his piano and lovingly cradled it. Which, given the antics we’ve witnessed over the past near-year, doesn’t seem all that far-fetched.
Will we see Yang as Santos again? It’s not looking good. On Thursday night, just ahead of the House vote, Yang admitted that he “won’t miss playing [Santos] because I think him being in the news is always not a great thing. It’s so dark and so devastating that someone can slip through the crack like that. I think at least there’s some layer of levity there but if you think about it too hard, it does become a little upsetting.”
