George Santos Is On TikTok Now. He Has Some Tough Talk For Trump — And Zuck

Worse, it's actually kinda interesting. Then he called me, and it got even more interesting.

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Breaking news… from my contacts.

I was goofing off on my phone Wednesday afternoon, as one does in the American economy, before a fateful scroll on TikTok stopped me in my tracks. This entirely amateur video from a familiar face led to the following sentence, which, somehow, in the year 2025, is entirely factually true:

George Santos — the former (expelled) congressman and serial fabulist — confirmed that he recently re-launched his own TikTok account after a newly sworn-in President Donald Trump tried to ban the app before pretending to save it.

“If it’s good enough for President Trump,” he told me in a phone interview, “then it’s good enough for me.”

At first I thought the account was fake, hence why I hit up the former congressman to check. The account, which goes by the display name “Mr. GADS,” seemed like it could have been clipping Santos from one of his paid Cameo videos.

But underneath the bio, the account bore the three words countless scorned exes have loathed seeing on TikTok: “from your contacts.”

Santos described his account as “not a burner at all,” and that it had been dormant since he first downloaded the app sometime around its ascent between 2019 and 2020.

He said his views on the app and its China-related national security implications have changed since he was a member of Congress.

“Now, if we're going to be completely honest with one another, Jake,” Santos explained, “the information TikTok has, and stores, is no different than what Meta, Microsoft, X — I mean, you name it — store.” He mentioned YouTube as another example, and that while he’s skeptical of the parent company, ByteDance, he is “not adversarial to the app,” but adversarial to the CCP.

“But then I sat back,” Santos said later on, describing his change of opinion on the app, “and I realized the amount of money that Mark Zuckerberg and Meta spent to create this narrative about TikTok, and that took away the organic concerns I had.”

Why, you may ask, should anyone care that Santos is on TikTok?

Is it because he only has some 160 followers despite being a more recognizable name than almost any other current or former member of Congress? Is it because he does not seem to be trying to make money off of his posts, unlike his previous forays into the app via the pay-for-selfie-video service Cameo?

Not quite.

Santos, like scores of his fellow average Americans, is using his new account to fire off hot takes into the void. To send the 2020s version of a message in a bottle. To get just a marginal increase in attention, perhaps.

But unfortunately for you and I, what he has to say might actually be of public interest. I posted the video on my Twitter account, in this case since Bluesky still doesn’t let you upload videos over 60 seconds long. They also don’t have an edit button, but they do have DMs (I’m looking at you, Threads).

And I quote:

So as y’all know, I’m a big supporter of President Trump. Like, very minimal — ever — criticism of him. I agree we need to make the federal government a much smaller place and a much smaller workforce.

I just caution of [sic.] blanket layoffs.

Because, for instance, I received a few phone calls and text messages of [sic.] people who have kids and they voted for President Trump, and they are either contractors or employees of the federal government, and they actually serve a purpose. They actually have a meaningful position with the federal government that yields not just protections for the taxpayer, but also, they deliver something.

They’ve been laid off. And I think it’s a net negative. And I think it’s gonna end up costing more money for the United States federal government are renegotiated.

Say what you will about George Santos, but the man still has some hustle left in him for his constituents.

“Just putting it out there,” Santos says at the end of the video, noting “I just think it’s easier if Congress were to get off of their asses, and stop going on long retreats and actually start putting the 12 individual appropriations bills together.”

Santos emphasized at another point that “children are involved” with some of these federal employees losing their jobs, or potentially losing them in the future.

The one and only fantastic Mr. Santos has discovered, as have those in parties enjoying majority rule during periods of austerity across the globe, that there tend to be children and families involved with the loss of a job — especially in the United States, where employer-based health insurance is a major reason people stay in their jobs.

Trite as it may seem, Santos offers a glimpse into the sub-surface GOP tensions around the March federal budget deadline and the liminal state of DOGE, which is now occupying what used to be the US Digital Service (great story on that by my pal Tori Elliott inWIRED today).

Voters elected Trump to lower prices, not send the economy into an unprovoked inflationary spiral with tariffs and a direct loss of services for millions of Americans. And yes, a not-so-mini spike in unemployment from mass federal layoffs would also be felt by people in the economy who are not government employees themselves.

Strangely, even a world-historic liar like Santos might be enjoying a sense of freedom from having to defend the home team now that his political career has been reduced to, well, this.

When asked if he felt a sense of liberation by no longer being in Congress with the possibility of Republican leadership getting on his case if he shared an opinion like this one, Santos was refreshingly honest. But he also still made sure to signal his unwavering love and support for President Trump.

“I say that without any reservations or any ties to anyone, or any gauntlet of leadership hanging over my head, because I'm a free man,” Santos told me. “I can say these things without the repercussion of leadership. I want President Trump to be absolutely successful. I think he's kicking ass right now. He's rocking this first week and change of him in the office, and I can't wait to see what comes next.

“I mean, I'm sitting here talking to you and watching Sean Duffy get sworn in. I'm beyond the moon. I love Sean Duffy.”