Opinion: Chuck Edwards voted to expel George Santos for same things Trump, Congress did

This December, 105 Republican congressional reps decided to turn on one of their own and expel the highly embattled (and highly satirized) George Santos from Congress. Our own Chuck Edwards was one of them, offering his explanation in a lengthy tweet from Dec. 1, which I’ll excerpt, but you could read there in its entirety if you’d prefer.

I believe this tweet demonstrates that Chuck Edwards is a hypocrite whose “mountain values” blow whichever way the wind happens to because all the reasons he lays out for expelling Santos are points that, when applied to both his lord and savior Donald Trump and the actions of the Republican Party, don’t seem to bother him all that much.

Let’s start with the tweet’s opening paragraph: “George Santos has markedly betrayed the public’s trust and should not remain in Congress. What makes this matter worse is that he remains defiant and shows no remorse even after he was given his due process through the House Ethics Committee investigation.”

1. The trust in Congress overall is at 13% right now, the lowest since 2017. I’m not going to argue with anyone saying that Santos is a liar, fraud and scam, but Congress is also filled with liars, frauds and scams, and the general public seems to agree.

2. Edwards is still a staunch supporter of Donald Trump — a defiant liar, fraud and scammer, albeit one elected president — even though, according to Pew Research, 66% of Americans have an unfavorable view of him and don’t believe he should be president again (now, a CBS News/YouGov poll finds that Trump voters are more likely to trust him over their friends, families and religious leaders, which is a whole other conversation).

Moving on, Edwards makes what I’m sure he thinks is his main big point about Santos,: “I have long held that we need to ‘follow the money.'” If Edwards has “long held” this belief, then again, how could he explain his Trump discipleship? There are entire articles dedicated to Trump’s shady financial dealings, including his refusal to disclose his taxes (and the fact that in 2016 and 2017, I paid more income taxes than Trump), allegations of money laundering at his Irish and Scottish golf courses, mysterious creditors, etc., etc.

Edwards's hypocrisy is also on full display when he notes, “House Ethics Committee did through an extensive investigation into George Santos’ conduct, finding multiple evidence of using campaign funds for personal use and lying on financial disclosure statements.” One would think maybe he should have a chat with new House speaker Mike Johnson — who he’s been cozying up to — since he’s allegedly violating financial disclosure laws.

By stressing that the people of Santos’s district deserve “honest representation in the people’s house,” he also insinuates that all politicians should be honest to those they serve. The fact that Donald Trump is a pathological liar is highly documented. The man will lie about anything, as evident in a September Meet the Press interview where he lied about everything from the inflated price of bacon to the number of undocumented immigrants coming into the U.S. to the Virginia Governor supporting infanticide.

The fact that Edwards can type “honest representation” with a straight face is laughable — though that’s an assumption on my part: he could easily be laughing at what suckers we all are — both in regards to Trump … and himself.

On Oct. 26, Edwards tweeted a photo from a press conference for the “Combatting Organized Retail Crime Act” with the caption, “Alarming incidents of retail crime continue to hurt businesses and communities and put employees and customers at risk across #NC11 and our country. House and Senate Members joined together on this #FightRetailCrimeDay to urge for the passage of bipartisan legislation, the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, to address retail crime.”

That’s not strictly honest.

“Organized Retail Theft” has been dominating headlines recently, bolstered mainly by an April report by the National Retail Federation, a lobbying group pushing the narrative that it’s a massive problem for our country. The problem is that if you delve into the report, it’s mainly based on flimsy theories and anecdotal evidence, and just last week, the organization had to list a retraction of some of its key claims.

So why was Edwards stumping for an issue not backed by hard data, thus not affecting Western North Carolinians?  The NRF donated $1,000 to his campaign. I guess he had a point about following the money.

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Pat Brothwell is a former high school teacher, and current writer and marketing professional living and working in Asheville.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Chuck Edwards hypocrite voting to expel Santos from Congress