It wasn’t long after his election to Congress last fall that people began to realize that George Santos was not what he’d seemed. But how did he get elected to begin with? Why did it take so long for the national media to pick up on Santos’s many, many embellishments? Where was the opposition research on this guy? On episode 61 of The Politics of Everything, hosts Laura Marsh and Alex Pareene chat with TNR staff writer Daniel Strauss about the first two months of Santos in Washington; with political consultant and campaign veteran Tyson Brody about the rules of the oppo-research game; and with TNR deputy editor Jason Linkins about Santos’s durability and what that says about the health of our political culture.

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