On this date in both 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, as well as 2022, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” published our original profile of the sitting U.S. House Representative from Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District, Scott Perry, who was first elected to office back in 2014 after serving six years in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. While there wasn’t really anything that Congressman Perry did to turn up on FRED’s radar in his freshman term in Washington, D.C., in his second term in office, he has been decidedly more idiotic in the public eye.
In a town hall in March of 2017, where when he tried arguing against EPA standards trying to stop pollution because “God pollutes, too”. No, we’re serious:
”When I was in the state house, we had a thing called the Chesapeake Bay strategy, which everybody in this room if you live in this district has to abide by. There was no law. There was no statute. This came out of the EPA, forced on the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and left some violators out. And by the way, some violators, if you believe in, if you are spiritual and you believe in God, one of the violators was God because the forests were providing a certain amount of nitrates and phosphates to the Chesapeake Bay.”
Pollution is part of God’s design, you see, so we shouldn’t do anything about it. By this logic, we also shouldn’t treat preventable diseases, but hey, let’s not give ol’ Scott anything else to use to argue against the Affordable Care Act.
Heh. No, actually, Perry’s arguments on healthcare are even dumber, and more selfish than that. In May of 2017, while the debate over the GOP’s attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with a far inferior healthcare plan, the AHCA were underway, Scott Perry argued why maternity care should not be included in health insurance coverage. His reason? He was too old to have kids, and therefore, he sure as hell wasn’t paying for it:
“I don’t want maternity care. I have two children, and we’re not having anymore. I don’t want to pay for maternity care.”
An Indivisible activist pointed out that people who don’t have children or whose children are older still have to pay property taxes, which fund schools, adding that there’s a “social contract” in American society for public goods.
“Without a doubt,” Perry replied. “But there’s also personal responsibility. Some people never want to start a family. ... Some people don’t want to own a Cadillac. But should we want to make everybody pay for a Cadillac?”
Babies aren’t Cadillacs, you simpleton, and comparing the two is nonsense.
Anyway, over the years, Scott Perry has begun spiraling into flat-out conspiracy theory nonsense, instead of just your typical conservative ideologue like most members of the House Freedom Caucus. In October 2017, in the wake of Hurricane Maria devastating Puerto Rico, he went on CNN to yell at anchor Chris Cuomo and call the reports of a massive death toll and citizens struggling to recover “fake news”. (It’s wasn't fake, almost 5,000 people died as a result of the storm, and almost a year later, the power grid was not fully repaired.)
By January of 2018, Rep. Perry was making guest appearances with Tucker Carlson on Fox News to try to re-write history… the Las Vegas shooter, Stephen Paddock wasn’t a mentally ill white guy with a gun fetish gone out of control… the entire Las Vegas shooting, per Perry, was a terror attack orchestrated by ISIS. There is zero evidence outside of Scott Perry’s mouth-hole to indicate that such a statement is true, and he should have been removed from his position on the Homeland Security Committee for spreading such a paranoid conspiracy theory, in our humble opinion.
At a town hall in 2020, Scott Perry chillingly admitted there is no line Donald Trump would cross that would lead him to condemn him… in the same meeting where he said he doesn’t like seeing presidents embrace dictators and complaining about former President Obama but neglecting to mention Donald Trump’s relationships with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un.
In the 2022 elections, Perry managed to win re-election with a modest 54% of the vote. If you weren’t getting the feeling that he’s terrible yet, let’s take a look at his voting record:
- October 23rd, 2019: Perry is one of 41 Republicans who, while staring down the possibility of Donald Trump being impeached, stage a ridiculous publicity stunt in response by crashing a classified impeachment inquiry hearing for a “protest”.
- December 3rd, 2019: Rep. Perry is one of 71 Republicans who votes against a resolution to disallow Russia from re-entering the G7 and makes it the G8 until it leaves Ukraine.
- December 18th, 2019: Perry ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.
- October 2nd, 2020: Scott Perry votes against a resolution is presented in the House to condemn the Qanon conspiracy theory after its followers started to make death threats against Democratic Congressman Tom Malinowski.
- December 10th, 2020: Perry signs his name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that he won re-election in.
- January 6th, 2021: Scott Perry votes for the objection to the electoral college’s votes in the 2020 election, a failure to send any sort of message that he wasn’t intimidated or sympathetic to those who attacked the Capitol to attempt a violent coup.
- January 13th, 2021: Rep. Perry votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of police officers.
- February 25th, 2021: Perry votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
- March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Perry votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
- March 3rd, 2021: Scott Perry votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
- March 17th, 2021: Rep. Perry votes against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
- April 14th, 2021: During a hearing on Central American migration in Congress, Rep. Perry begins espousing white nationalist “replacement theory” on the floor of the House, saying, “For many Americans, what seems to be happening or what they believe right now is happening is, what appears to them is we’re replacing national-born American, native-born Americans to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation.”
- May 19th, 2021: Scott Perry votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
- May 20th, 2021: Perry is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.
- June 15th, 2021: Rep. Perry is one of twenty-one Republicans who pick a side to have rooted for in the failed coup attempt on 1/6/21 and votes against awarding Congressional gold medals to members of the Capitol Police who bravely defended members of Congress during the attack.
- July 22nd, 2021: Perry is one of 16 Republicans who vote against HR 3895, the Allies Act, which was passed without his support to raise the amount of visas offered and to expedite their issue to Afghan translators and their families to honor our promise to protect them against the Taliban after U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, thus feeling we should go back on our word and leave them to die.
- November 5th, 2021: Scott Perry votes against HR 3684, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
- May 18th, 2022: Scott Perry is one of 192 Republicans who vote against HR 7790, to create supplemental funding for infant formula (while claiming to be pro- life).
- May 18th, 2022: Rep. Perry votes against HR 350, the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, because these days, a plank of the Republican Party is ostensibly domestic terror.
- May 19th, 2022: Perry votes against HR 7688, a bill which would help prevent gas companies from gouging customers on prices.
- July 13th, 2022: Rep. Perry votes against the Honoring Our PACT Act, to provide healthcare to veterans affected by toxic burn pits while serving in the War on Terror that leave them more susceptible to forms of cancer.
- July 15th, 2022: Scott Perry votes against House Amendment 262, which would require the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Secretary of Defense to publish a report on the infiltration of American law enforcement by Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, offer measures to be taken to remove them from their ranks, and prevent further infiltration by others.
- July 21st, 2022: Perry is one of 195 Republicans who vote against the Right to Contraception Act, which codified the right of Americans to have access to birth control.
- September 29th, 2022: Scott Perry is one of 49 Republicans who vote against HR 8888, the Food Security for All Veterans Act.
- December 1st, 2022: Rep. Perry votes against HR 6878, meaning he is perfectly fine with pregnant women in prison being placed in solitary confinement while claiming to be “pro-life”.
- December 6th, 2022: Perry, embracing the GOP’s white nationalist, anti-immigrant sentiment votes against HR 7946, which was meant to honor the promise to grant citizenship to immigrants who served in the United States Armed Forces.
- December 21st, 2022: Scott Perry votes against the Respect for Child Survivors Act, a bill created to aid the survivors of child abuse, which shows you how much the GOP truly care about stopping “groomers”.
- March 8th, 2023: Rep. Perry is one of 26 Republicans who vote against a resolution condemning white supremacy and the “Great Replacement Theory” white nationalists promote.
- July 13th, 2023: Rep. Perry is one of 70 Republicans who vote for an amendment that would cut all U.S. funding to support our ally, Ukraine, to repel a Russian invasion.
We opined this time in 2021 how it was pretty clear how far gone Scott Perry is that he would cite “replacement theory” as if he was sitting in for Tucker Carlson on the floor of the House…. that Perry was clinging to Donald Trump like a life preserver keeping him afloat when in reality Trump is a loadstone tied around his neck.We had no idea how true that was… because since we last checked in, things have heated up around Rep. Perry that there became the serious possibility of seeing him brought up on charges of seditious conspiracy. There are many avenues that Donald Trump explored to subvert American democracy, and what level of coup he was willing to attempt. While the attack on the Capitol itself was the most glaring one… there was also spreading lies about election fraud, and frivolous lawsuits to overturn the results to consider.
But one of the more devious and sinister plans was thought up by Scott Perry, and that was to install an absolute sycophantic toady named Jeffrey Clark as the new head of the Dept. of Justice, and Clark would investigate all the “voter fraud” that people as relatively scrupulous as Bill Barr (low bar to clear, pardon the pun), thought were “bulls***”, because they WERE.
But Perry surmised that if Trump seized control of the Dept. of Justice, he could get its backing to help reject American democracy and work towards installing him as an authoritarian dictator for life. The last vestiges of honor and service over at the DOJ threatened a mass walkout that would blow up in Trump’s face, and Clark was humiliated to his face by other high-ranking DoJ officials and Trump lawyers at the White House.
For his part in coming up with the plan to install an unqualified catspaw within our government’s top law enforcement organization, Perry ended up getting a subpoena from the Jan. 6th committee, the FBI seized his cellphone in August of 2022, and it is now known that he made hundreds of phone calls to people within the executive branch of the government regarding the attempts to reinstall Donald Trump as dictator in late 2020, including Trump himself, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and the worst lawyer to ever weigh in on White House business, Jeffrey Clark.
Whether or not he can win re-election again in 2024 when there will be, in theory, even higher Democratic turnout might be irrelevant. Scott Perry could end up in a prison jumper if Special Counsel Jack Smith drops indictments for Jan. 6th on Donald Trump and everyone, including Perry, before he has the chance.
One Year Ago, July 28th, 2022: Scott Perry (PA)… 2022 Update
Two Years Ago, July 28th, 2021: Scott Perry (PA)… 2021 Update
Three Years Ago, July 28th, 2020: Scott Perry (PA)… 2020 Update
Four Years Ago, July 28th, 2019: Scott Perry (PA)… 2019 Update
Five Years Ago, July 28th, 2018: Scott Perry (PA)… Original Profile
Six Years Ago, July 28th, 2017: Jon Keyser (CO)
Seven Years Ago, July 28th, 2016: David Jolly (FL)
Eight Years Ago, July 28th , 2015: Todd Courser (MI)
Nine Years Ago, July 28th , 2014: Herman Cain (GA)