18 October—Donald Trump is still looking for an ambassador to the United Nations and a deputy treasury secretary. The question is, which position will he name former Long Island Republican congressman George Anthony Devolder Santos to? Remember George? He’s the ballsy young con man who was convicted of mucho fraud and aggravated identity theft in June and sentenced to seven years up the river. Only seven years after the plea bargain. He was bloody good at his cons, too. Until he got caught. And after, it seems. He’s only the sixth congressman to have been expelled from the House.

Trump clearly admires his admirer and doubtless was impressed by the artifice and success of George’s colossal scams. Because—if you haven’t heard—yesterday the grifter-in-chief commuted George’s sentence and the enthusiastic Trump apprentice was released last night from the medium-security federal slammer in Fairton, New Jersey. (He reported on 25 July. That’s less than three months. Steve Bannon served four months in Danbury for contempt of Congress.)

For the record, earlier this week, Santos published a “passionate plea to President Trump” in a Long Island newspaper asking to be pardoned and given “the opportunity to return to my family, my friends, and my community.” He wrote that he had been threatened with death and kept in solitary. And of course he apologized for his actions. Even to Trump.

Here’s how Trump put it on his website: “George has been in solitary confinement for long stretches of time and, by all accounts, has been horribly mistreated. Therefore, I just signed a Commutation, releasing George Santos from prison, IMMEDIATELY. Good luck George, have a great life!”

You wonder why Trump didn’t give Santos a full pardon, the young con artist is so good. But it’s never too late for a pardon. As long as Trump rules over the country, anyway.

Long stretches in solitary indeed. As it happens, George himself had requested only last month to be put in protective custody in a “special housing unit”—what he called solitary confinement —for his own safety due to what he claimed was a death threat. Trump’s nonpoliticized and nonweaponized FBI was reportedly investigating the alleged death threat at the time of George’s release, hoping to find or intending to frame a Democrat to pin it on.

But consider that George Santos is an irredeemable and irrepressible con man. And Donald Trump, besides being an irredeemable and irrepressible con man and ignoramus, hyperbolizes everything. For instance, he said that Democratic lawmakers have done much worse than Santos: “George Santos was somewhat of a ‘rogue,’ but there are many rogues throughout our Country that aren’t forced to serve seven years in prison.”

“Rogue” has positive and negative connotations, mind you. Negatively, then, Trump must have been alluding to himself.

In his commutation post, Trump the celebrated draft dodger specifically cited Senator Richard Blumenthal for lying about his military record: “This is far worse than what George Santos did.” Well, at least Blumenthal has a military record, even if it didn’t take him to Vietnam. And only a rogue (in the scumbag sense) like Trump could equate what’s really an inconsequential political prevarication with the major cons perpetrated by George Santos and Donald Trump.

And former Democrat Trump also credited George Santos for having “the Courage, Conviction, and Intelligence to ALWAYS VOTE REPUBLICAN!”

Everybody knows, incidentally, that Republican lawmakers are incapable of doing much worse than Santos or—God forbid—anything illegal at all.

So even though George Anthony Devolder Santos still has a criminal record (which, however, could be deleted with a little pardon), it shouldn’t keep him from working for Donald Trump. In fact, it’s a definite positive for a Trump appointee. Figure, then, that George will start out as deputy treasury secretary. And then, when the Federal Reserve chair becomes vacant next May, he’s Trump’s obvious boy . . .