Congressman Cline has had a lot of low points in his Congressional career (see: Cline Watch), but on Thursday he struck new depths.

First Cline posted a video on his Congressional Facebook page complaining (once again) about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s supposed refusal to agree to a COVID-19 relief package– while in fact Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is rejecting a bipartisan proposal. Then (as if it was somehow related) Cline went on to complain (once again) about modest restrictions ordered by Governor Northam to combat rising numbers of COVID-19 infections in Virginia as an attack on “the liberties of Virginia citizens.”

At his press conference announcing the restrictions, Northam showed this video (which, astonishingly, some viewers are calling “liberal propaganda”).

I posted a link to the video in the comments on Cline’s Facebook page on the remote chance that he might watch it and take it seriously.

But that wasn’t an end to Cline’s Congressional malpractice on Thursday. He joined more than 100 other Congressional Republicans to sign an amicus brief in support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 Presidential election.

Even some of President Trump’s strongest Republican supporters in Congress are baffled and refused to join this frivolous lawsuit.

I’d like to believe Cline can’t sink any lower in his refusal to take seriously the safety of his constituents and in his sycophancy to Trump. But I know that’s not true.

Update: Your side lost in your effort to overturn the will of the American people, Congressman. Will you now accept that Joe Biden will become President of the United States on January 20, 2021?

Last week on his campaign Facebook page, Congressman Cline continued to defend Donald Trump’s delusional and dangerous efforts to overturn the clear result of the November 3 Presidential election.

He linked to an article in the rightwing Washington Examiner about a court hearing in Nevada at which lawyers for Trump were supposed to present evidence of massive fraud and illegalities in the state, which President-elect Joe Biden carried. Note the hopeful headline:

The hearing occurred Thursday. On Friday the judge issued his ruling. The “huge court win” turned into a huge court loss for Trump and Cline.

In a detailed, 35-page decision, Judge James T. Russell of the Nevada District Court in Carson City vetted each claim of fraud and wrongdoing made by the Trump campaign in the state and found that none was supported by convincing proof. The judge dismissed the challenge with prejudice, ruling that the campaign failed to offer any basis for annulling more than 1.3 million votes cast in the state’s presidential race.

The campaign “did not prove under any standard of proof that illegal votes were cast and counted, or legal votes were not counted at all, due to voter fraud, nor in an amount equal to or greater than” Biden’s margin of victory, which was about 33,600 votes, Russell wrote.

Among its allegations, the campaign claimed that more than 61,000 people voted twice or from out-of-state.

In his ruling, Russell concurred with election officials and academic experts that there is no evidence for this, and specifically dismissed witness declarations that had been touted by the campaign, calling them “self-serving statements of little or no evidentiary value.”

Time to move on, Congressman.

Donald Trump’s former attorney Sidney Powell– Congressman Cline’s “friend” whom he is “proud to support”— has retweeted a call for Trump to suspend the December Electoral College vote and the January inauguration, and to set up “military tribunals” to investigate the recent election.

You do disagree with your “friend,” Congressman. Don’t you?

Shamelessly doing his part to erode American democracy, Congressman Cline has proclaimed his support for conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Sidney Powell, an attorney for Donald Trump, in her delusional effort to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election.

According to an AP News Fact Check:

Trump attorney Sidney Powell spun fictional tales of election systems flipping votes, German servers storing U.S. voting information and election software created in Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chavez” — the late Venezuelan president who died in 2013. She also said Trump beat Democrat Joe Biden “by a landslide,” which he decidedly didn’t — Biden was the clear winner.

Powell’s claims are so absurd that even reliable Trump supporters like Fox News’s Tucker Carlson are calling her out.

Carlson said he repeatedly reached out to Powell for evidence of her claim and invited her on the show. He said her claim “could amount to the single greatest crime in American history” if it were true.

“When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson said. “When we checked with others around the Trump campaign, people in positions of authority, they told us Powell has never given any evidence either. Nor did she provide any today.”

But Powell insists: “The entire election, frankly, in all the swing states should be overturned and the legislatures should make sure that the electors are selected for Trump”

Cline’s willingness to follow Powell down this particular rabbit hole tells you all you need to know about his dead-end loyalty to Donald Trump– who, for his information, will no longer be President as of 12:01 p.m. on January 20, 2021.

Orwell was writing about leftwing defenders of Stalin in 1944, but he might just as well have been writing about Republican members of Congress who continue to stand with Trump.

Speaking at a pro-Trump rally in Staunton with other Republican dead-enders, Congressman Cline groveled to Donald Trump and tried to impugn the results of the 2020 election– a clear victory for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris– by suggesting with no evidence that there were massive numbers of “illegal votes” in the Democrats’ favor. I’d like to believe he knows better, but he makes it hard.

And he’s wrong about a lot of other stuff too.

As Congressman Cline continues to refuse to accept the fact that Joe Biden won the 2020 Presidential election, he has launched a new front in the war against reality.

The latest assault came after Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam imposed new restrictions to contain rising numbers of COVID-19 illnesses and deaths in the Commonwealth.

Cline posted this on his campaign Facebook page:

Emma North of WRIC in Richmond reports:

Under the new restrictions, public and private gatherings will be limited to 25 individuals instead of the current 250 person cap. According to the governor’s press secretary Alena Yarmosky, the cap does not apply to religious services, employment or schools. The rule will only limit things such as parties, celebrations and social events.

But Cline insists on portraying the most modest and common-sense restrictions as a tyrannical attack on personal freedom instead of what they are: a means to combat the virus and allow as soon as possible for a safe return to more normal conditions.

Cline may think the right to endanger the health of his fellow Virginians outweighs the need for temporary measures to bring the virus under control. But I doubt most of his constituents agree.

Coming off his reelection Tuesday, Congressman Cline has not offered a word publicly about the deluded and dangerous efforts of President Trump to subvert the clear democratic will of the majority.

As readers of this website know, Cline has spent his first two years in Congress toadying to Trump and refusing to call out his most egregious lies and reckless behavior.

So will Cline finally find the courage to call on Trump to accept the inevitable?

Don’t count on it.

Update: No surprise. Buying into Trump’s phony claims of widespread “irregularities,” Cline continues to grovel on his behalf.

See this excellent post by Jayne Seminare Docherty.

While I wish President and Mrs. Trump a full and speedy recovery, I want to note that Congressman Cline’s Facebook post of June 18 did not age well.

As I wrote at the time:

In fact Biden appears regularly online and will speak to the Virginia Democratic Convention on Saturday. He traveled to Houston last week to meet with George Floyd’s family. But of course Cline can’t acknowledge a simple fact: that Biden, unlike Trump, is being careful not to endanger the public during the COVID-19 emergency, and this is to his credit.

And Trump himself has repeatedly mocked Biden for wearing a face mask in public and other precautions.

So I have to disagree with Cline; Biden’s prudence during the pandemic is precisely the type of leadership America needs.

Since his Congressional office appears to be a shrine to Donald Trump, it’s no surprise that Ben Cline couldn’t bring himself to say anything directly critical about Trump’s disgusting and disruptive behavior at Tuesday’s debate with Joe Biden.

Of course the questions posted by the journalist were hardly challenging. But while mildly complaining that “the viewers lost out” because of all the yelling, Cline singled out Biden for criticism while ignoring the fact that Trump’s strategy was essentially to trash the whole proceedings.

Most disturbing, Cline has had nothing to say about Trump using the debate to tell a group of violent far-right extremists to await instructions from him. It’s essential that at least one local journalist ask him about it.