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- A Brazilian drag performer said Thursday that GOP Rep. George Santos “couldn’t cut it” as a drag queen.
- The performer, Eula Rochard, also told Insider on Thursday that Santos “is crazy.”
- Santos has denied having performed as a drag queen.
A Brazilian drag performer who says she was once friends with GOP Rep. George Santos told NBC News that the newly-elected congressman “couldn’t cut it” as a drag queen. The performer, who uses the drag name Eula Rochard, also spoke with Insider via Instagram on Thursday.
Santos had an “outgrown sense of grandeur” and “lied all the time,” Rochard told NBC, adding Santos “never the type of drag queen who could hold down the show.”
The New York congressman has denied that he ever performed in drag.
“The most recent obsession from the media claiming that I am a drag Queen or ‘performed’ as a drag Queen is categorically false,” Santos said in a tweet from his official account. “The media continues to make outrageous claims about my life while I am working to deliver results. I will not be distracted nor fazed by this.”
Insider asked Rochard for a response to Santos’ denial. “He is crazy,” Rochard said in Portuguese.
Santos’ denial came after Rochard and another acquaintance told Reuters that he competed as a drag queen in Brazilian beauty pageants over a decade ago.
Rochard told the outlet that she first became friends with Santos in 2005, when he was cross-dressing at the first gay pride parade in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. She added that Santos competed as a drag queen at a 2008 beauty pageant in Rio.
The other acquaintance asked Reuters not to be named but said they also knew Santos from Brazil and that he participated in drag queen pageants and wanted to be Miss Gay Rio de Janeiro.
Santos was consumed by scandal before even arriving in Washington. He lied on his resume, falsely claimed his mom died on 9/11, and has been cagey about how his sudden unexplained wealth helped finance his congressional run. Multiple Republicans, including top officials in New York, have called on him to resign. Santos has rejected those calls.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy has also been unwilling to push Santos out, meaning the New Yorker is unlikely to be forced to sashay away from Washington anytime soon.
