Cardinal News reported on reactions from Virginia Republicans– including Congressman Cline– to the results of last week’s Democratic sweep in the midterm Congressional elections.

Virginia was not immune to the casualties.

The commonwealth’s Republican congressional delegation will shrink from five members to three in the coming year after Democrats Shannon Taylor and former Congresswoman Elaine Luria ousted incumbent Reps. Rob Wittman and Jen Kiggans in the 1st and 2nd districts, respectively.

Rep. John McGuire in the 5th District saw his margin of victory shrink from 15 percentage points in 2024 to 2 points in 2026, as he narrowly wrested his second term in office from the hands of his Democratic challenger, former Congressman Tom Perriello.

Incumbent Republican Rep. Ben Cline in the 6th District saw his margin shrink from 28 percentage points in 2024 to just under 11 points in 2026 as he faced a challenge from Democratic candidate Beth Macy. And in the 9th District, Virginia’s most conservative, incumbent Rep. Morgan Griffith saw his comfortable margin of 45 percentage points in 2024 decrease to just under 32 points as he faced a challenge from Democratic candidate Joy Powers.

…..

Cline, of Botetourt County, agreed that there is a lot of frustration among voters regarding the price of gas and goods.

“The fact that we are going through rough economic times right now means we have to focus like a laser beam on making America competitive,” he said in a phone interview Monday.

That effort would mean bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. and making the country more energy independent by increasing the country’s refining capacity.

Cline said he could only speak for the 6th District when asked if he thought Trump’s actions influenced Republican losses across the country.

“[Voters] are very concerned about the price of things, whether it’s at the pump or on the shelves, and they want their member of Congress to focus on those issues for them, and so that’s what I’m doing,” he said.

Notice that Cline dodged the question about the influence of Trump’s actions on the elections. And after Beth Macy won nearly 45 percent of the vote, he should not pretend to speak for the whole Sixth District about this or anything else.

Rather than “focus on those issues” during the past two years, Cline has dutifully gone along with Donald Trump as he recklessly imposed sweeping tariffs and started a war that drove up “the price of things.”

If the election results were a wakeup call for some Republicans, Cline seems to be sleeping through it.

Congressman Cline posted on Facebook:

Cline and Jordan go way back.

In 2023, when Jordan was a candidate for Speaker of the House, Cline endorsed him.

As I observed at the time:

Why wouldn’t Congressman Cline support the uncompromisingly hard-right, subpoena-dodging, election-denying, credibly-accused, Trump-defending Jim Jordan for House Speaker?

When Cline’s fellow Republicans declined to select Jordan as Speaker, he melted down on Facebook, accusing them of being part of the Swamp. (He later deleted the post.):

As a member of the House Judiciary Committee, Cline was a loyal accomplice of then-chairman Jordan in his unsuccessful attempts to find Biden family criminality and political “weaponization” of Biden’s Department of Justice. (There’s plenty of evidence of Donald Trump’s weaponization of the DoJ if they want to look for it.)

And Cline was proud to receive an endorsement from Jordan in the recent election.

Even when Republicans were the majority in Congress, they did a lot more standing up for Donald Trump than they did for hard-working Americans. So now that they are a much smaller minority, it’s hard to see what they can do. As for the “radical Left policies” that Cline promises to push back against, it would be interesting to know exactly what those policies are.

Perhaps when he holds his planned 22 town halls, he’ll be willing to explain.

Here is a statement Congressman Cline issued after his reelection on Tuesday:

“Democrats may have tried to silence the voices of rural Virginia through their failed, illegal gerrymander, but tonight the people made it clear that their voices cannot be ignored. I will never stop fighting for our conservative values, particularly at a time in this nation’s history when radical leftists have made it clear that they will never stop trying to destroy what has made this country strong for two and a half centuries. We are at a point where we must decide if we are a free and capitalist country, or if we will slide rapidly toward communism. The 6th District of Virginia is a bastion of freedom tonight, and I could not be more proud of their continued fight for the values that make the Roanoke Valley, Shenandoah Valley and Alleghany Highlands a great place to call home.”

No acknowledgement that his opponent Beth Macy cut his margins in the 2022 and 2024 elections (29 percent and 28 percent) by more than half and won almost 45 percent of the vote– a sign that nearly half of his constituents (at least) do not like the way he is representing them.

No recognition that every location in the Sixth Congressional District shifted toward Democrats since 2024.

No admission that in dozens of other districts across the country, Democratic candidates for Congress swept out Trump-loyal Republicans like himself.

Just more scaremongering about “radical leftists” and communism.

And with the appointment of the execrable Stephen Miller as his new chief of staff, Donald Trump is also acting as if what happened on Tuesday doesn’t really matter.

Miller is the architect of the Administration’s brutal mass deportation agenda, which has caused so much anguish and hardship for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are no threat to anyone. Cline regularly indulges in the worst sort of anti-immigrant fearmongering, so he may approve of this appointment.

But other Republicans, who just watched massive numbers of Hispanic voters swing from supporting Republicans to supporting Democrats, probably see things differently. Aside from everything else, what Trump just did is politically stupid.

The next two years will be a test of how loyal Cline will continue to be to a President who seems to have lost any sense of reality.

Despite Congressman Cline’s reelection by about 11 percent of the vote on Tuesday, it’s worth noting that it wasn’t a triumphant victory.

Cline’s opponent Beth Macy cut his margins in the 2022 and 2024 elections (29 percent and 28 percent) by more than half.

And compared to the 2024 Presidential election, every location in the Sixth Congressional District shifted toward Democrats.

Cline didn’t acknowledge any of this in his “victory” speech.

But even more significant: The overwhelming Democratic sweep of the House and Senate has rendered Ben Cline essentially powerless and irrelevant. All he can do for the next two years is rant against the Democratic majority while standing with a corrupt, delusional, (and now) humiliated and rejected President.

I wouldn’t want to be him.

And Cline Watch isn’t going anywhere.

Congressman Cline was proud to feature this endorsement from Texas Congressman Brandon Gill on his campaign Facebook page:

In March, Gill posted this disgusting appeal to bigotry on Facebook:

This is redolent of the anti-immigrant hysteria of earlier eras, when the targets included Irish, Italians, Jews and Chinese.

Cline and Gill are both members of something called the “Sharia-Free Caucus” in Congress, which is supposedly resisting the infiltration of Sharia law in the US. In fact there are no communities in the US where Sharia law is enforced and no serious efforts to impose Sharia law anywhere in the US. But Cline and Gill and other Republicans apparently see political advantage in this anti-Muslim scaremongering.

Ayman Abdelrahman Taha was a Muslim immigrant who was born in Sudan and died in Iraq. Fortunately he was able to return to the country he served.

It’s now been five months since Congressman Cline told 29News that he is “planning to hold another town hall in all 22 localities” in the Sixth District.

Since then, he has not held even one event open to all his constituents– which is the definition of a town hall.

(When Cline advertised an event with former governor Youngkin with no restrictions on who could attend, and some non-supporters registered and showed up, they weren’t allowed in.)

Are these town halls still in the planning stage?

Ever wonder who is actually benefiting from the war in Iran that Congressman Cline continues to support?

NBC News reports:

It’s a good time to be an oil company.

The two largest U.S. oil companies, ExxonMobil and Chevron, on Friday reported blowout profits that easily beat expectations as oil prices remain sharply elevated because of the U.S. war with Iran.

ExxonMobil reported a profit that doubled from the same period last year, while Chevron’s earnings surged more than 180% from a year earlier.

As part of the bumper returns, Exxon said it was increasing the dividend it pays to investors.

The returns at both companies came as the price of oil surged beyond $100 per barrel and has remained there for months. On Friday, prices accelerated again, with Brent oil trading just under $118 per barrel.

Here are four reasons why Cline is unlikely to raise any questions about what appears to fit the definition of profiteering.

Besides, the man he called “our great President” seems to think this sort of thing is just fine.

Who is this “we” of whom he speaks?

How many of Ben Cline’s constituents does it include?

An apparently worried Congressman Cline just posted this BS on his campaign Facebook page:

So once again, for those who missed my post last June, here’s the real story. (The only change since then is that Cline has received even more campaign cash from Big Hollywood.)

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.

From an interview with Congressman Cline by Caleb Peek of WHSV:

Peek: Fuel prices, specifically diesel, right, still hovering around that all-time record high. It has come down a little bit, but it’s still very elevated obviously. The president recently announced a deal to import several million tons of Russian diesel for both domestic and global markets. Economists are wary. They say the amount of diesel coming in, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to how much diesel the US actually needs. Your colleague Chuck Schumer has called it a deal with the devil. You also have several Republicans joining Democrats to push back on that agreement. And now the most recent news, the president is waiving sanctions and tariffs on certain nations that still purchase Russian energy. That was included in a bill he just signed into law last month. Where do you stand on all of this? Does the Russian economy deserve a lifeline from the US?

Cline: I voted for those Russian sanctions.

Peek: Mm.

Cline: Russia is an adversary and, uh, is the antagonist in the war in Ukraine. Uh, we need to, uh, help Ukraine. We need to stand up against Russian aggression. Uh, so maintaining those sanctions is important. But we left, uh, uh, a little bit of leeway in the law to give the president discretion when, uh, necessary to be able to waive those sanctions. He’s determined that now is a short-term time to waive those to ensure that, uh, Americans, uh, aren’t hurting when it comes to diesel prices. Um, I trust the administration’s judgment for the, uh, waiving of those sanctions, but I do believe those sanctions are necessary, that we have to stand strong against Russia, and I’ll continue to push, uh, to support our friends, uh, against Russian aggression.

So Cline says “we need to, uh, help Ukraine” but he’s fine with Trump waiving sanctions designed to help Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression.

And Cline trusts Trump’s judgment for waiving the sanctions? The same Trump who clearly likes and favors Russia’s President Putin and detests Ukraine’s President Zelensky?

Why?

Despite Cline’s claim to support Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, Cline Watch has documented his voting record in Congress– which tells a very different story.

Shortly after the election of Donald Trump in 2024, his sycophant Congressman Cline proudly posted this on his congressional Facebook page:

DOGE, of course, turned out to be a destructive farce.

Now comes news of Vivek Ramaswamy’s vile attack ad against his opponent Dr. Amy Acton in the race for governor of Ohio and a Wall Street Journal report that Elon Musk enabled murderous Russian aggression against Ukraine,

Are you still proud to be associated with these despicable characters, Congressman?