Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar, the self-described “proud Catholic” who boasted about boycotting Pope Francis’s historic address to Congress last week, is now fundraising off his political stunt.

The Washington Post got a copy of Gosar’s email appeal for campaign cash to “help me fend off the liberal sharks who are out for my blood,” sent to supporters on Wednesday ahead of the third quarter fundraising deadline. Citing the backlash to his decision to be the lone member of Congress to boycott the historic papal visit, the Arizona Republican somehow contorted his fundraising pitch into an attack on the “Obama political machine”:

If I can show that I raised $25,000 more by the end of September… I will show the liberals, the left-wing media and the Obama political machine that I am a force to be reckoned with and will continue to take principled stands. However, should I fail to do so… the liberal sharks will smell blood in the water and try to use my principled boycott against me. Please do not allow that to happen.

Gosar blamed the “liberal media” for “reinforcing an almost rockstar-like status never before seen for the leader of the Catholic Church,” during Francis’s tour of the East Coast last week and chastised the Pope for ignoring abortion in favor of “left-wing pseudo-science of ‘global warming.'”

I believe when a Pope chooses to act and talk like a leftist politician, then he can expect to be treated like one. I need conservatives like you in my corner as I come under unprecedented attacks for taking this principled stand