Bill Maher had former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) on his podcast, Club Random, this week and it was lively to say the least. Santos, who was serving a 7-year prison sentence for wire fraud, had President Trump commute his sentence. Santos said things that shouldn’t shock us about Congress, notably that they do nothing, leadership rams its backroom deals down the throats of the rank-and-file, and every day ends in pizza, literally. They don’t care. 

SANTOS: “I witnessed it vote after vote…you got a pick side on an issue. Yes, no…so you pick a side, the less of the two evils.”

“If I tell you the amount of of times that the votes were just bullsh*t. Messaging bills.”

MAHER: “That’s what John Fetterman says.”

SANTOS: “It’s all F*CKING Kabuki theater!”

“At the end of the day it ends in pizza. You know what that means?”

MAHER: “You order pizza?”

SANTOS: “Pretty much. And NOBODY cares! Because they will end whatever their mishegas is on the floor, go and do their backroom deals and Jeffries and Johnson, or Jeffries and McCarthy…Pelosi and whoever…they get together, they smoke cigars, drink scotch or whatever the f*ck it is that they enjoy…”

“And then they RAM it down the conference and the caucus’s throats as ‘this is what we’re doing!’”

“And like, we’re SHEEP!”

He also laid out his political philosophy again, notably how, being a gay New Yorker, he’s socially liberal but there are limits, like not being insane on the transgender stuff:

I am conservative. I am very fiscally conservative, but I'm socially liberal. I'm a g*y man from New York City, Bill. My conservative values stem from common sense, in a sense where we can't spend ourselves out of debt, we need to save to get out of debt, and we can't promote, you know, trans surgery for children... And a lot of people like to say that I voted against g*y rights. No, I voted against gender transitioning of children, and I stand by that vote.”

Santos spoke about having children via surrogacy, which led to Maher making a quip about men getting pregnant, an acceptable position on the Democratic side:

Bill Maher: “You have kids?”

George Santos: “We're in the process of…” 

Bill Maher: “Process? You know you can't get pregnant.”

George Santos: “Surrogacy. We're doing surrogacy.”

Bill Maher: “No, I knew that... Well, nowadays they talk about pregnant men.”

George Santos: “Oh, stop. That's mental illness.”

Bill Maher: “Right, that is. See, this is, I mean, and look, it's good that the Republican Party would have somebody who is g*y and that can make this case the way Andrew Sullivan does, who is center-right slightly…” 

“We don't agree on Israel, but everything else, I think he's just so brilliant.”

Bill will and does talk to anyone within reason, whether they be liberal or conservative. And that, somehow, makes him a right-winger in the eyes of the Left.