The Lexington News-Gazette reports on Congressman Cline’s town hall meeting in Lexington on Tuesday:
Congressman Ben Cline began by chronicling his efforts to “reach across the aisle” in Washington, but many residents called into question his sincerity, citing divisive rhetoric on past occasions.
When he speaks to largely Democratic audiences, as he did in Lexington, Cline likes to talk about his supposed unhappiness with the partisan divisiveness in Washington and his alleged efforts to achieve bipartisanship in Congress. But Lexingtonians and others in the Sixth District have good reason to question his earnestness.
He proved it once again when he spoke to a reporter after the town hall.
The majority of the audience shared concerns about how much power President Trump has.
The reporter asked: “Is that a question you get asked often of how much power is the president allotted?”
He replied: “No, I think that question was born of frustration at what Democrats see as a lack of balance between the branches of government. This president is winning and it is frustrating for some people on the other side.”
So Cline dismissed the genuine alarm of many people– not just Democrats– about Trump’s increasingly authoritarian style of governing: his willingness to defy and bypass Congress and ignore the courts whenever it suits him, his absurd assertion that Article 2 of the Constitution gives him the right to do whatever he wants as president, his politically- and personally-motivated use of his powers of pardon and clemency, his proclamation that he is the law of the land.
Instead, Cline said, the only reason Democrats and others are upset is that Trump is winning and they are losing.
Congressman Cline: If you believe that, your willingness to shrug off Trump’s appalling abuse of power makes you and your fellow sycophants as dangerous to our Republic as he is.
Cline Watch 