Is Mohsen Mahdawi the new George Santos?

A person rises to a position of power by making claims about his background and saying things people want to hear. As he begins to face serious trouble, he gains huge media attention and the press hangs on his every word. Along the way, he exploits Jewish trauma. And it turns out that the backstory he has been peddling is packed with falsehoods.

Yes, this describes former U.S. Rep. George Santos, who has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison.

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But it also applies to Mohsen Mahdawi, the media darling and leader of Columbia University’s vicious antisemitic mobs that have broken numerous laws. Mainstream news agencies consistently portray him as peace-loving and totally, totally not antisemitic. And of course, the media has some Jewish people who are happy to say that for them.

I saw this during my 20 years inside big mainstream media, including 10 at CNN, where I became lead on-air fact checker: When facts don’t suit a narrative, the media is happy to ignore them. A legitimate news industry would make clear that Mahdawi, like everyone, should get due process — in his case, due process for people with green cards. And he has led a group that downplays and works to justify Hamas terrorism. And the law says that to be here on a green card, a person may not be a representative of “a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity.” All these things are true.

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Have you seen mainstream media acknowledge any of this? As a guest recently explained on my podcast They Stand Corrected, the media is even ignoring its own previous reporting about the group at Columbia.

As a fact checker, I’m so grateful when I discover anyone else doing this kind of work. So kudos to independent journalist David Collier in the UK, who did what none of the big news agencies did: looked into Mahdawi’s claims. David found those claims to be not only inconsistent, but “impossible.” Mahdawi could just as easily be talking “about Narnia,” David told me in an interview for my latest episode. “It’s crazy that any journalist has looked at this person and taken him seriously.” Pathetically, David added that I am the only U.S.-based journalist — the only American at all — who has contacted him. The news agencies know about his work, because it went viral. They just don’t want to hear it.

Meanwhile, Mohsen has changed his alleged backstory repeatedly in significant ways. And now, he has done so yet again in a New York Times op-ed — and, again, the media was silent about it. His newest claim makes tales he has told physically impossible, David explains. (The Times claims to fact check op-eds, but publishes lies and nonsensical claims in them all the time.)

Will any mainstream media care? Sadly, probably not. Victim narratives have overtaken society and the media. A person or group cast as a victim is not held to any kind of standard. And because Mahdawi may indeed be a victim of the Trump administration in terms of not receiving due process, mainstream news organizations will likely keep giving him cover. But all things Trump aside, much of the country and the world infantilize everyone who identifies as Palestinian, which is a form of dehumanization. Infantilized people are free to lie with impunity and be unjudged.

If only Santos knew that all it takes to get away with lies is to focus them on the Big Lie of the Left: big bad Israel. He’d probably still be in Congress, like the remaining members of The Squad.