Politicians Who Were Really Weird People

Power corrupts, as the old cliche goes. Or is it the corrupt who seek power? In the cases of the world's weirdest politicians, it definitely seems to be the latter.

Almost anywhere in the world, observers will notice that politicians are often weird people. But being weird does not mean being stupid. Many of them managed to avoid justice for crimes they committed while amassing near-absolute power, sometimes at the cost of millions of lives. Despite their privileged positions (or maybe because of them?), the politicians on this list have done some truly bizarro things in the pursuit of sex, money, and power. And that does not just include taking run-of-the-mill antics like lying or sexting too far. Dictators in particular have gone off the deep end, collecting the feces of fellow world leaders, inventing the most ridiculous stories, and much, much more. Here are some of the worst offenders. 

Saparmurat Niyazov, the late president of the post-USSR country Turkmenistan, went further than most in turning his personal whims into law. He banned anything that annoyed him, including beards, gold teeth, ballet, circuses, makeup on TV, and lip syncing. And no grandfathering either — those who already had gold teeth had to get them removed. In addition, he decided that everyone had to share in his personal problems, banning public smoking not due to health risks, but because heart problems forced him to kick the habit.

Niyazov also enjoyed mandating and renaming things. Government officials had to take a yearly "Walk of Health," a 23-miles desert trek with no breaks or shade. He, on the other hand, would fly in his helicopter to greet (or lambast) the walkers at the end. Not content with the calendar, he renamed the months of January and April to Turkmenbashi after his own nickname and Gurbansoltan after his mother respectively, also fiddling around with the days of the week.

Niyazov was not shy about his eccentric philosophy — he wrote a whole book about it called the "Ruhnama," after which he rechristened the month of September. This mix of Niyazov's moral philosophy, Turkmen history, and poetry was required reading in Turkmen schools and for adults who wanted to find a job, particularly in the government — or for Turkmen Muslims wishing to get to heaven. Niyazov and God reportedly struck a deal to allow anyone who read it thrice a free pass to paradise.

Gouverneur Morris stands as the forgotten giant of the Founding Fathers, chiefly for his authorship of the Constitution's Preamble. He was also considered a bit odd due to the type of women with whom he chose to involve himself. If one is going to take a lover, make it someone not involved with multiple other men — especially a Catholic bishop. Morris, however, disregarded that wisdom during his 1788-98 European sojourn, entering  a love rectangle involving himself, French Lady Adélaïde de Flahaut, her 63-year-old husband, and her other lover, Bishop Charles Talleyrand of Autun, who would later be a key figure in the Louisiana Purchase. 

After leaving that behind, he married his housekeeper Anne Cary Randolph in 1809, when he was 57 years old. Anne had been accused of adultery (and incest, by 18th-century standards) with her brother-in-law on the Bizarre Plantation back in 1792 and of killing their child, presumably to cover up the affair. Despite the problems, it seems their marriage was a happy one, producing a son named Gouverneur Morris Jr. in 1813. While Morris seems to have dodged consequences of his womanizing, he could not escape his own eccentricities. After coming down with a painful urethral blockage, he decided to clear it using a piece of whale bone or baleen as a catheter. Instead, he got an infection and died.

Haitian doctor-turned-dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier was a strong believer in the power of Haitian Vodou, which he claimed gave him powers of life and death over other world leaders. Using Vodou, Duvalier took credit for President John F. Kennedy's assassination by curse — revenge for Kennedy's attempted overthrow of Duvalier in concert with the Dominican Republic, despite Duvalier's anti-communist credentials. Duvalier himself survived a handful of assassination attempts, but he believed that, at least on the 22nd of every month, Vodou spirits protected him from death.

On the other hand, Duvalier was paranoid that his enemies would use Vodou on him, something that emerged in his struggle against Clement Barbot, head of Duvalier's feared secret police, les Tontons Macoutes. But those who serve dictators too well often are sidelined as threats. Barbot was no exception and got 18 months in prison for his ambition. Upon release, he began fighting Duvalier's regime in the streets with a campaign of bombings and shootings against government targets.

The standard response would have been a manhunt followed by the trial, imprisonment, and execution of Barbot and his supporters. Duvalier, however, believed that Barbot was evading the authorities by transforming into a black dog. Thus, Duvalier had his men hunt down and kill all black dogs in Port-au-Prince, hoping that one of them would be Barbot. Duvalier's men eventually killed Barbot in a separate raid — in human form, of course.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and in more ways than one. Not only did Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin use his power to murder millions — in his quest for global superpower status, he secretly collected foreign leaders' feces for clues on how to manipulate them.

According to a BBC interview with former KGB operative Igor Atamanenko, Stalin had the toilets of visiting world leaders diverted away from the sewage system into collection boxes. Soviet agents then sent stool samples to a secret lab run by notorious NKVD (the KGB's predecessor) head and mass murderer Lavrentiy Beria for chemical analyses. The content of the samples would reportedly reveal the personality of the foreign dignitary. "[I]f they detected high levels of amino acid Tryptophan," Atamanenko said, "they concluded that person was calm and approachable... a lack of potassium in poo was seen as a sign of a nervous disposition and someone with insomnia."

The main target of this "study," according to Atamanenko, was Chinese dictator Mao Zedong, who complained during his visit to Moscow that Stalin had only brought him over to have him eat and go to the bathroom. Stalin was reportedly unimpressed with Mao's stool. Too weird to be true? When the BBC reached out to the Russian FSB (the KGB's successor), the agency said, "We cannot comment on this story." If it's false, why not just deny it?

Thirty-five criminal cases for fraud, sexual misconduct, and corruption, an eccentric personality, and the inability to stay quiet — that was the political career of late Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. His "greatest hits," to quote the headline of a CNBC article, are too many to list. But to get an idea, he bizarrely referenced American President Barack Obama's skin color, saying, "I bring you greetings from a person ... who is sun-tanned ... Barack Obama ... You wouldn't believe it, but they go sunbathing at the beach together — his wife is also sun-tanned." That wasn't the first one, either. During a visit to the ruined city of L'Aquila in 2009, he encountered an African Catholic priest helping earthquake victims, per the Daily Mail. After complimenting the priest on his tan, he told another aid worker, "You've got a tan as well — I wish I could stay here and get some sun ... Hold me tight and call me Papa!"

Then there were the women. Berlusconi once told his younger female supporters at a public rally to marry older men for their money, adding that he had a line of young women waiting to marry him because he was good in bed. When called out for such remarks, he said, "I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone." One Italian clearly disagreed, hitting him in the face with a model of Milan's cathedral.

George Santos was considered a rising GOP star after winning New York's Democratic-leaning 3rd congressional district, composed of parts of Queen and Nassau County on Long Island. He seemed like a good deal, except for the strange habit of lying about virtually every single detail of his life.

The first set of Santos' lies were likely meant to further his campaign among New York GOP voters. He claimed his mother survived 9/11 and died from cancer caused by inhaling debris, even though she had not been in the United States since 1999. He bizarrely accused the Chinese government of trying to kidnap his niece in 2023, and claimed to have attended the prestigious Horace Mann School, despite never graduating high school. He also lied about attending college and working for Goldman Sachs.

While Santos could be forgiven for one or two lies, given politicians lie about or embellish personal stuff all the time, some of Santos' other fabrications were patently absurd. He reportedly claimed to have starred on Disney's "Hannah Montana" and helped produce a Spider-Man musical, something anyone with two minutes, a smartphone, and an internet connection could disprove. When CNN host Piers Morgan confronted him (via New York Magazine), Santos said he thought he would get away with it, forgetting that no 21st-century politician is safe in the world of smartphones and the 30-second Google search.