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How DKos can help prevent the next George Santos - call to action [1]

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Date: 2023-02-23  

Since the discovery of George Santos’ many, many lies I have seen several comments asking why the Democratic campaign running against him apparently didn’t research his background. That’s an important question, but as far was we’re concerned there’s not much most of us can do about that.

But instead of getting upset, what if we were to do something ourselves?

With the power of the internet, and the collective brain power of Daily Kos, there’s a lot of things we can research. For instance, Santos claimed he was a volleyball star at Baruch College.

“But it’s funny that we went to play against Harvard, Yale, and we slayed them. We were champions across the entire Northeast Corridor. Every school that came up against us, they were shaking at the time. And it’s funny. I was the smallest guy and I’m 6 [feet] 2,” Santos said.

So, let’s see. He’s currently 34 (well, so we think), so realistically he is claiming to play in the last sixteen years. It turns out the Baruch College were champions in a few years that he might have played- it’s on the Baruch College website. and you know what else is on the website? Individual statistics for players in most of those years. I do a lot of research at work, and there is a TON of stuff like this in public record that we can find if we’re searching.

Here’s another thing to look for in the same interview:

“It was a great time. I sacrificed both my knees and got very nice knee replacements, knee replacements from playing volleyball. That’s how serious I took the game,” he claimed.

Those of us who do sports probably know this is a weird claim- people generally don’t get knee replacements in their twenties. This sort of thing is a obvious tip off that something isn’t right if we’re looking for it.

My Proposal

Before the next election we gather a list of new candidates and we start looking at their claims and vetting them ourselves. If we find anything weird, or anything we think is weird but don’t have the tools to research, we share those with the campaigns or with local news. And most importantly, we dump this information right after the primary election, when a candidate is chosen, it might just make a difference in a few races.

We’ll need some volunteers for coordinating, and we’ll need people to research. I suggested this in a comment section here last week and several people expressed interest so I think finding volunteers should be easy. We could also use people with experience doing research to offer some tips. I can volunteer to put up a post once a week to keep track of progress.

This is just the first diary on this, so any ideas people have please share. And anyone who wants to spearhead this please add that in the comments.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/23/2153609/-How-DKos-can-help-prevent-the-next-George-Santos-call-to-action

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