As the midterm elections approach, and with no meaningful achievements to boast about, President Trump and Congressional Republicans are latching onto the Democratic primary victories of a handful of self-described democratic socialists to try and scare voters about what they variously describe as “socialism,” “communism” and “Marxism.”

It took Congressman Cline awhile to join in, but here’s what he posted today on Facebook:

Of course there’s nothing “new” about any of this. Republicans have engaged in the same sort of scaremongering for nearly a century.

Speaking of Republicans in 1952, President Harry S Truman observed:

Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security.

Socialism is what they called farm price supports.

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

As far back as the 1930s Republicans were calling President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal “socialist” and “communistic.”

What Republicans called “socialism” proved so popular that they had to pass a Constitutional amendment to prevent anyone else from being elected president four times, as FDR was.

I actually believed that once I documented that it is Ben Cline– and not his Democratic opponent Beth Macy– who receives tens of thousands of dollars in campaign cash from Big Hollywood, he wouldn’t again have the nerve to accuse Macy of being the candidate of an “out of touch Hollywood elite.”

How foolish I was. And how frightened and desperate he must be.

(Hat tip: Augusta Free Press.)

Apologies to Cline: I will never again underestimate his willingness to brazenly distort and lie in the face of overwhelming evidence.

Remember when Congressman Cline posted this on Facebook?

You don’t have to think back very far. It was only last week.

Desperate for some tangible achievement as the midterm elections approach, Cline and most other House Republicans joined all Democrats to vote for the ROAD to Housing Act, designed to make housing more affordable for Americans.

The Senate also overwhelmingly approved the measure, and it went to President Trump’s desk Wednesday for a signing ceremony– which Trump abruptly canceled. He demanded that Congress first approve the voter suppression bill known as the Save America Act. Republicans don’t have the votes to pass it in the Senate.

But that’s not all. Trump went on the humiliate Cline and other Republican supporters of the measure by calling it an “Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren centric housing bill,” writing that it is “of minor importance compared to lower interest rates, and even FISA, pales in comparison to passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.”

Warren, one of the main backers of the bill in the Senate, responded: “Huge bipartisan majorities in Congress passed a bill to lower housing costs. But at the 11th hour, Donald Trump is refusing to sign it into law. His policies have made your costs go up — and he doesn’t care.”

And Trump reportedly told House speaker Mike Johnson that “no one gives a [bleep] about housing.”

What do you have to say, Congressman?

NPR reports:

It’s a problem the labor movement has decried for years: After a successful union election, it takes far too long — an average of 465 days, according to Bloomberg Law — for workers and their employers to reach a first contract.

In some cases, it takes even longer. Neither the Buffalo, N.Y., Starbucks baristas who unionized in late 2021 nor the Staten Island Amazon warehouse workers who unionized in the spring of 2022 have a contract.

Now, by a vote of 230 to 193, the House has approved a bill that would force employers to the table, allow federal mediators to get involved if a deal is not reached within 90 days, and — if needed — settle the matter through arbitration shortly thereafter.

Twenty Republicans joined Democrats in voting on Tuesday evening to pass the measure, called the Faster Labor Contracts Act.

Congressman Cline, of course, joined most Republicans to vote NO.

I say “of course” because Cline’s hostility to workers who organize unions and seek to bargain collectively with their employers is longstanding and well-documented .

The fact that Cline once said something favorable about unions at a Labor Day event in Covington doesn’t change that. It’s more telling that every time he addresses a crowd at Labor Day in Buena Vista, he endorses anti-union “right to work” laws.

 He emphasizes that the only right he supports for workers is the right not to join a union.

Never mind that as of last August, 68 percent of Americans approved of labor unions. Never mind that up to 70 percent of non-union hourly workers would join a union if given a chance.

And never mind that in 2016 Virginia voters– including a majority in Cline’s Sixth District– rejected a Republican effort led by then-delegate Ben Cline to enshrine Virginia’s “right to work” law in the Commonwealth’s Constitution.

It seems most of the people Cline represents in Congress don’t hate unions as much as he and other Republican politicians think they should.

This is a good thing, but it would be much better if more than 3.5 million Americans (including thousands of Congressman Cline’s own constituents) were not losing SNAP food assistance as a result of the “Big Beautiful Bill” which he enthusiastically supported.

The New York Times reports:

The House voted on Thursday to approve new aid for Ukraine and impose a fresh round of sanctions targeting the industries fueling Russia’s war economy, after 18 Republicans defied their leaders to join Democrats in support of a bill that runs counter to President Trump’s agenda.

The legislation, which passed 226 to 195, would provide $8 billion in loans to Ukraine and $1.8 billion in aid for military and security assistance. In addition to putting new sanctions on Russian-affiliated businesses and officials, it would also punish foreign companies, organizations and individuals that attempt to evade sanctions in an effort to support Moscow.

It now heads to the Senate, where Mr. Trump’s opposition has stopped similar attempts at new penalties on Russia and its allies. And even if it were to clear both chambers, it would likely be vetoed by the president, who has repeatedly balked at legislation that seeks to constrain his ability to negotiate on foreign policy matters.

Cline was not among the 18 Republicans who voted to support Ukraine against the brutal and murderous Russian aggression. Instead he submitted to Trump and the GOP leadership by voting NO.

Shortly after the invasion began in 2022, Cline tried to raise campaign funds based on the fact that Russia had sanctioned him– along with 397 other members of the House, ranging from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Marjorie Talyor Greene.

Since then, Cline’s voting record in Congress has aligned a lot closer Putin’s interests than with Ukraine’s.

It’s become a standard trope of Republicans. They accuse their Democratic opponents of depending on support from a leftwing “Hollywood elite” which is out of touch with regular folks.

So it was with Congressman Cline in a recent interview with 29News, discussing his Democratic challenger in the November election: journalist and author Beth Macy.

“She has Hollywood support on her side,” Cline said. “She’s been able to raise more money than I have. And that’s okay. She can have Hollywood. I’ll take the voters of the Sixth District on my side.”

Now the facts:

Macy served as an executive producer and co-writer for the Hulu series Dopesick, based on her 2018 bestselling nonfiction book, about the role of big pharmaceutical companies in creating the opioid crisis that has ravaged Appalachia. Macy made sure Appalachian communities were portrayed honestly and without stereotypes.

After Macy announced her candidacy for Congress last year, she was endorsed by actor Michael Keaton, who had a leading role in Dopesick. In the endorsement, Keaton, who lost a nephew to addiction, refers to the massive defunding of Medicaid, which Cline supported.

As for Hollywood: The Dopesick series was not filmed there, but largely in Clifton Forge and Covington,Virginia and surrounding Alleghany County. They are part of the Sixth Congressional District currently represented by Cline. The location filming provided more of an economic boost to those communities than anything Cline has done since he entered Congress in 2019. As a producer, Macy lobbied hard for the filming to be done in Virginia.

But here’s the irony: It is Cline, not Macy, who has benefited from the largesse of “Hollywood.”

If we define “Hollywood” as the entertainment industry, Hollywood’s political action committees have donated at least $21,000 to Cline’s campaigns since 2018.

Here’s the evidence from the Cline campaign’s filings with the Federal Election Commission:

Sony

Motion Picture Association

Paramount Global

Universal Music Group

Disney

(Disney is the parent company of Hulu, which carried Dopesick.)

Beth Macy’s Congressional campaign has received thousands of donations, most of them small, but none from the entertainment industry PACs—or any other corporate PACs, for that matter. Unlike Cline, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from corporate PACs, Macy refuses to accept them.

For many years Cline took campaign donations from Abbott Laboratories, which sent representatives into small towns like Clifton Forge and Covington to sell the lie that Oxycontin wasn’t addictive.

So which candidate is the favorite of big money—including big Hollywood money? Hint: It’s not Beth Macy.

After holding only one brief and limited in-person town hall during all of 2025, and none so far in 2026, Congressman Cline told 29News that he is “planning to hold another town hall in all 22 localities” in the Sixth District.

Will these promised town halls occur this year? Will they be open to all constituents? If there is a registration process, will it be less confusing than the one in Lexington last September? I hope the local media will follow up.

Meanwhile, when and if the town halls are actually scheduled, Cline Watch will provide all the details that are publicly available.

The first thing that comes to mind is: How much did Congressman Cline pay a consultant to come up with that weak campaign slogan? However much it was, it wasn’t worth it.

Let me suggest to Cline a more truthful campaign slogan. And I won’t charge him a cent.

In recent days Congressman Cline has displayed a strange obsession with Fairfax County, Virginia.

I say “strange” because Fairfax County is not part of the Sixth Congressional District, which Cline purports to represent. On his Facebook page, he has had a lot more to say about Fairfax County (all negative) than about any location in the Sixth.

At a Congressional hearing last week, Cline demanded the resignation of Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano and engaged in his longstanding practice of demonizing “illegal immigrants.”

Cline focused on the tragic case of Stephanie Minter, who was murdered in February by an undocumented immigrant from Sierra Leone. (See here, here and here.) While there are legitimate concerns about the circumstances that led to the murder, Cline used the case as an excuse for hysterical fearmongering.

Cline’s statement is a lie. As James Walkinshaw, who represents Fairfax in Congress, posted in response:

(For more on Cline and COPS, see here.)

If that wasn’t bad enough, Cline posted on his campaign Facebook page:

In fact, the Migration Policy Institute estimates the number unauthorized people in Fairfax at less than half that. But never mind.

Cline is referring to the April 21 redistricting referendum, which voters approved before the Virginia Supreme Court struck it down. As he well knows, it is illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal and state elections and Democrats are not trying to change that.

But this is the kind of scaremongering that Cline indulges in as he tries to hang on to his Congressional seat for another term.