Diva down, diva up: Disgraced Congressman George Santos enlists in jungle survival show

When Congress expelled former Rep. George Santos (N.Y.), whose fabricated life story once dominated headlines, the internet performed its little eulogy — diva down, rest in power.

Two years later, the resurrection arrives precisely on schedule, because Santos is back. And this time, it’s as a reality TV contestant on the fifth season of Fox’s “Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test,” a military-themed endurance contest filming in the Malaysian jungle, Fox announced Wednesday.

‘I took my fat behind off the coach and tried something new!’

The show subjects contestants to chemical gassing and other military-themed challenges, including a claustrophobic, high-pressure search of an underground bunker to find crucial military weapons and a supply load retrieval while suspended 300 feet above the jungle floor.

Santos announced the news on social media.

“I took my fat behind off the coach and tried something new!” he wrote in a post on X along with a promotional image of himself kneeling in the wild. “And it changed EVERYTHING! I can’t wait to share this experience with y’all!”

He won’t be doing it alone. Santos will compete against 14 other celebrities, including former NBA player Matt Barnes and actress Ruby Rose, on a season Fox is promoting as the “ultimate test of physical, mental, and emotional resilience.” The season premieres September 24 at 9 p.m. ET on Fox, with episodes streaming the next day on Hulu.

RELATED: George Santos bids a ‘fabulous’ farewell, surrenders for prison sentence

Bing Guan/Bloomberg/Getty Images

The casting caps a wild few years for Santos. Elected to the House from New York in 2022 as a Republican, he ran on a résumé that was almost entirely fiction: a Baruch College degree he never earned, a Wall Street pedigree at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup neither bank had any record of, a stint as a star volleyball player during that same nonexistent college career, and a grandmother who fled the Holocaust.

Genealogists found his grandparents were born in Brazil, and Santos, who is Catholic, later clarified he had meant “Jew-ish.”

A House Ethics Committee report later found “substantial evidence” he’d funneled donor money into personal spending — Hermès, Ferragamo, OnlyFans, Botox. He served less than a year before Congress expelled him — only the sixth member in history — while he faced charges for stealing from donors, drawing unemployment while employed, and lying about his wealth.

He pleaded guilty, had his sentence commuted by President Trump after 84 days in prison, and briefly floated another House run before abandoning it for lack of funds.

His post-political life has stayed just as eventful. Last month, prediction market Kalshi reportedly reported him to federal authorities after he claimed he would attend Trump’s State of the Union, then allegedly bet against his own attendance — a claim Santos called “preposterous.”

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