There are two Republican-held congressional districts in Pennsylvania where Trump did poorly. He lost Brian Fitzpatrick's Bucks County district with just 46.6% of the vote and he managed a skimpy 50.7% win in Scott Perry's south central 10th district (Dauphin County plus parts of York and Cumberland counties). Fitzpatrick is a mainstream conservative-called-a-moderate. Perry, on the other hand is an extremist crackpot counting on the Trumpist base to turn out for him. Last cycle he got lucky when the DCCC forced a Republican-lite Blue Dog, Eugene DePasquale, into the nomination. DePasquale was an anti-inspiring candidate for Democrats and they didn't turn out for him, giving Perry a 229,028 (55.6%) to 182,938 (44.4%) win.
The video above-- of Perry speaking to a bunch of rightists in Pennsylvania-- surfaced today when Vice reporter Cameron Joseph did a piece on Perry.
Recently, Perry spoke in front of a group of Trump extremists and his theme was that America is under attack by disloyal Democrats who are unpatriotic dangerous traitors... and Nazis.
Forgetting that the Democrats are the majority party, Perry insisted that Democrats "are not the loyal opposition. They are the opposition to everything you love and believe in. Go fight them."
Perry, a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, used the entirety of his 20-minute speech to argue that modern Democrats want to destroy America and don’t share the same fundamental principles and values of real “patriots.”
The congressman argued that differentiating between Democrats was like discerning between Germans during the Nazi reign-- that it was fair to lump all Democrats together as extremists because even those who don’t support those views don’t stand up to their members who do.
“They are not the loyal opposition. They are the opposition to everything you love and believe in.”
“We can acknowledge that maybe not every one of them is that way, but that doesn’t matter,” he said. “We’ve seen this throughout history, right? Not every not every citizen in Germany in the 1930s and ‘40s was in the Nazi Party. They weren’t. But what happened across Germany? That’s what’s important. What were the policies? What was the leadership? That’s what we have to focus on.”
...Later, Perry argued that the corporations who opposed Republicans’ attempts to crack down on voting access mirrored the creep of fascism in Germany before the Nazi Party firmly cracked down on its citizens.
“It wasn’t a government in Germany that took the people’s rights away immediately. It was fascism. Fascism took it away, because the government put the heavy hand on the companies and the companies did the “We support big business, but not if it’s anti-America, not if it’s anti-American, and we shouldn’t be afraid to say it,” Perry continued on.
Perry, a former Army brigadier general and Iraq War veteran, is one of the most vociferous and vehement members of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. And he’s not the only hardline Republican who’s been invoking Nazis while discussing the other side-- in the days leading up to his speech, fellow Freedom Caucus member and Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had repeatedly tied Democrats to Nazis and compared COVID-19 mask mandates to the holocaust.
But unlike other Freedom Caucus members, Perry actually represents a swing district: He only won his 2020 race by six points, as Donald Trump carried the district by three points. It’s unclear whether the district will become more or less competitive when its lines change in redistricting before the next election.
The Nazi comparisons weren’t the only eyebrow-raisers in Perry’s tirade, as he accused the media of lying about COVID-19 and mask-wearing, called the 2020 election a “debacle” while insinuating it was rigged, and cast the stakes of the fight against Democrats in near-apocalyptic terms.
“Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a plan,” he said ominously after accusing Democrats of trying to intentionally destroy America’s economy by causing runaway inflation and oil scarcity. “They’ll tell you they’re patriots. But the patriots like the patriots in this room must acknowledge that things are different now. They want to destroy the country that you grew up in. They want to destroy the country that the founders made. That is their plan. That is their goal. That’s why they’re doing these things.”
That’s far from the first time he’s made such a claim: After Trump lost last November’s election, Perry emerged as a leading proponent of the lie that the election was stolen from the president, speaking at a Stop the Steal rally to bolster the case that Trump had actually won Pennsylvania and telling Fox Business that his state’s election was a “horrific embarrassment.”
Perry was the person who introduced Trump to an obscure official in the Justice Department for Trump who supported his false view that the election had been stolen, and encouraged Trump to fire his acting Attorney General to install that crony. Trump almost went along with the plan, only backing down when his top officials threatened to resign en masse.
Just hours after those claims led to the January 6 Capitol riots, Perry rose in the House to object to certifying Pennsylvania’s own electoral slate for Biden.
This speech is far from the only time Perry has generated controversy.
Perry also used an April House hearing to push replacement theory-- the racist claim that the left is pro-immigration because Democrats want to erase American identity.
“For many Americans,” Perry said, “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 political landscape of this very nation.”
And this is Scott Perry-- an embarrassment to his state. if only the DCCC doesn't go for another Republican-lite conservative again like they did in the last 2 cycles-- and like they always do everywhere they can get away with it, assuming, like them, no one approves of Democratic Party values. Remember, Perry "voted against sending Pennsylvanians stimulus checks and helping their small businesses, one of only 21 extreme right Republicans in Congress who voted against honoring law enforcement officers, worked to throw out Pennsylvanians’ votes and continues to lie about the election, while all there while spewing racist white nationalist talking points. So maybe claiming Democrats are Nazis-- he's confused-- shouldn't come as too big a surprise to anyone.
JFC! This Guy Was A Brigadier General? It Seems The Military Is Full Of These Nazis!