George Santos Insists He Used to Say He Was 'Jew-Ish' As a Party Joke

George Santos Insists He Used to Say He Was 'Jew-Ish' As a Party Joke

George Santos — who is Catholic — insists he used to say he was 'Jew-ish' as a party joke. Now he says he's taken 4 DNA tests to prove his maternal grandparents are actually Jewish.

New York Congressman-Elect George Santos speaks during the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) annual leadership meeting. David Becker for the Washington Post/via Getty Images

• George Santos told Piers Morgan he used to say he was "Jew-ish" as a party joke. 
• He also said he has taken four DNA tests to prove that his maternal grandparents are actually Jewish. 
• Santos claimed his grandparents fled Belgium in 1941 before falsifying documents to say they were born in Brazil. 

George Santos on Monday insisted he used to call himself "Jew-ish" as a party joke, even after conceding that he is actually Catholic. 

Speaking with Piers Morgan in an exclusive Talk TV interview on Monday, Morgan addressed that the freshman congressman has "claimed to be Jewish, half-Jewish, a proud American Jew, a Latino Jew, and non-observant Jew" — despite openly admitting that he is Catholic.

"I've always made this as a party-favor joke and I've done it on stages across the country," Santos said. "I would always say I was raised Catholic but I come from a Jewish family, so that makes me 'Jew-ish.'"

He added that it's never been more than a "party-favor joke," and "now that everyone's canceling me, everyone is pounding down for a pound of flesh."

"Because you're not Jewish," Morgan shot back.

He later called out Santos for admitting he lied about being Jewish. Santos then replied that he never said he was Jewish, even after maintaining on the campaign trail that he was of Jewish faith, as Insider previously reported. 

Santos explained: "I would say that my grandparents are Jewish on my mother's side, so I am 'Jew-ish.' It was always a joke; people would laugh it up. I said it to a room with 1,000 people in November. People were hysterically laughing. It was funny to them, they loved it."

"I don't think Jewish people find it funny," Morgan responded.

Santos claimed he was in a room with the Republican Jewish Coalition when he made that joke. In December, Reuters reported that the Republican Jewish Coalition said Santos would not be welcome at the group's events in the future after he "misrepresented his heritage."

Santos has maintained that his maternal grandparents are Jewish but that he was raised Catholic. He also claimed on Monday that he's taken four DNA tests to prove his Jewish ancestry, but that the results haven't come back yet.

Santos explained that he "grew up with the story" that his grandfather was born in Ukraine, which was then a part of the former Soviet Union. He alleges that his grandfather then moved to Belgium, where he met his grandmother in 1941. 

After that, Santos said, they fled to Brazil to escape the Holocaust where they falsified documents to claim they were born there.

Morgan called out the fact that family records show these grandparents having been born in Brazil, and a CNN genealogist report made no connection to Judaism or Ukraine in Santos' family.