GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw hits out at the Freedom Caucus, calling its members 'grifters' and 'performance artists'
- Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw hit out at some members of the House Freedom Caucus over the weekend.
- Crenshaw labeled some lawmakers "grifters" and "performance artists" who "know how to say slogans real well."
GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw hit out at members of the House Freedom Caucus this past weekend, calling its members "grifters" and "performance artists."
"There are two types of members of Congress — there's performance artists, and there's legislators," Crenshaw said in a video clip from a campaign event for local grassroots organization Texas Liberty Alliance PAC.
"Performance artists are the ones who get all of the attention, the ones you think are more conservative because they know how to say slogans real well. They know how to recite the lines that they know our voters want to hear," Crenshaw added.
Crenshaw went on to back Rep. Adam Kinzinger, an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump now viewed as a GOP pariah, by comparing the Illinois lawmaker's voting record to other House GOP members.
"It's probably going to make you cringe a little bit," Crenshaw said. "But Adam Kinzinger! Voted with Trump almost 99% of the time."
"Who was at the bottom? Everyone in the Freedom Caucus. All of them," he said.
"What you hear so often is not true. It's not true. We have grifters in our midst, in the conservative movement," Crenshaw added. "Lie after lie after lie, because they know something psychologically about the conservative heart. We're worried about what people are going to do to us, what they're going to infringe upon us."
Crenshaw did not specifically call out any lawmaker by name. However, the Freedom Caucus counts controversial congresspeople in its number, like Reps. Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Mo Brooks, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Paul Gosar.
Data from 538, which tracks how often each House member voted with or against Trump, shows that while Kinzinger voted with Trump 99% of the time during the 115th Congress (2017-2019), his overall voting record across the 115 and 116th Congress shows he voted with Trump 90.2% of the time.
Boebert and Greene both have overall voting records that reflect 100% support of Trump's position. Meanwhile, Brooks supported Trump policies 88.6% of the time, and Gosar voted in line with Trump 86.1% of the time. Gaetz voted with Trump 85% of the time.
Crenshaw, according to 538, voted in line with Trump 90.8% of the time.
In November 2020, Crenshaw and Greene crossed swords when the Georgia congresswoman accused him of having a "loser mindset" for admitting that Americans should accept that Trump lost the election.
Crenshaw has stood firm on his point of view that the election was not stolen from Trump, despite the former president's baseless claims of voter fraud.