Crenshaw labels Trump defectors as ‘performance artists’

A Texas legislator is taking aim at the conservative House Freedom Caucus, dubbing the organization as a group of “grifters” and “performance artists.”

U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Houston) made his comments during a Texas Liberty Alliance PAC event, according to USA Today. 

“In the first two years of Trump's presidency, when Republicans were in control, when every single time we were voting on Donald Trump's agenda, who do you think was at the top of that list voting with Trump and who do you think was at the bottom?” he said in the post. “You know who was at the bottom? Everybody in the Freedom Caucus. All of them."

According to USA Today, the Freedom Caucus includes some of the most conservative members of Congress. Despite this, Crenshaw, a former Navy Seal, didn’t hold back as he targeted members he believed went against former President Donald Trump during his term. 

"I've been in Congress for almost three years now. There's two types of members of Congress: There's performance artists, there's legislators," Crenshaw said in the post. "Now, the performance artists are the ones that get all the attention. They're 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 that our voters want to hear."

Crenshaw, first elected during the 2018 midterm elections, voted with Trump nearly 91% of the time, the publication noted, citing a FiveThirtyEight report. Since making his comments, he’s offered some clarification, with the Texas Tribune reporting that he wasn’t talking about the Caucus specifically.

“When I said grifters and liars, I wasn’t talking about the Freedom Caucus," Crenshaw told the GOP podcast "Ruthless," according to the report. "I was talking about a general group of people that exists on our side."

However, some Trump supporters who sided with the former president more frequently than Crenshaw have since broke ranks with Trump. According to the USA Today report, Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, voted with Trump 99% of the time from 2017 to 2019, but he voted to impeach the former president in January, in the wake of the attack on the Capital on Jan. 6. 

The report noted that Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), who was elected chairman of the caucus in November, sided with the former president’s policies 85% of the time, according to Fivethirtyeight data.