George Santos, the Republican congressman whose résumé has been shown to be largely fabricated and who has pleaded not guilty to 13 counts of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds, stoked outrage by comparing himself to the great civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks.
“Rosa Parks didn’t sit in the back, and neither am I gonna sit in the back,” Santos told Mike Crispi Unafraid, a rightwing podcast.
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Santos also said he will run for re-election in his New York seat, which covers parts of Long Island and Queens.
A prospective opponent, the Democratic former state senator Anna M Kaplan, said: “George Santos is an absolute disgrace who continues to embarrass New Yorkers.”
Now honoured by a statue in the US Capitol, Parks was a seamstress and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People secretary who carved her place in history when on a bus in Alabama in 1955 she refused to move to make way for a white passenger and was arrested and jailed.
Republican fabulist George Santos compares himself to Rosa Parks (msn.com)