Freedom Caucus member Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), who boasted of receiving awards from a designated anti-LGBTQ hate group and a Sacha Baron Cohen-invented fake pro-Israel group and claimed the Puerto Rico crisis was invented by the media, is locked in a very close re-election race. In his latest campaign ad, the conspiracy theorist who backed multiple government shutdowns depicts House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Democrats as children throwing food in a cafeteria and attempts to spin himself as a grownup in the room.

“Thanks to Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, this is what Washington looks like: a childish food-fight, simply to obstruct President Trump’s agenda,” the ad’s narrator claims. Then, Perry appears, saying, “I fight to win, not obstruct, by fighting for President Trump’s agenda.”

Perry’s hypocrisy here is staggering. In 2015, he decried President Barack Obama for “‘my-way-or-the-highway’ government,” where those who “don’t support every facet of the president’s agenda” are “accused of wanting to shut down the government — or worse.” He explained he was joining the hard-line Freedom Caucus because: “This is what change looks like, and it can be messy at times.” Now that a Republican is in the White House, he is running on his support for every facet of the president’s agenda.


Moreover, Perry and the Freedom Caucus have repeatedly shut down the government or threatened to do so if they don’t get their way. He pushed for a 17-day shutdown in 2013, attempting to defund Obamacare and voting against the bipartisan deal that re-opened it. In 2015, he vowed to oppose a bill to avoid a partial government shutdown if it didn’t defund Planned Parenthood. The caucus even vowed to shut down the government under President Donald Trump if the Congress did not appropriate taxpayer dollars to pay for the border wall — which the president repeatedly said Mexico would fully fund.

In other words, over his three terms in the House, he’s been the one throwing food in Congress.