Live from Virginia Monday morning on The John Fredericks Show – weekdays on WNTW AM 820/ FM 92.7 – Richmond, WJFN FM 100.5 – Central Virginia, WMPH AM 1010 / FM 100.1 / FM 96.9 (7-9 PM) Hampton Roads, WBRG AM 1050 / FM 105.1 – Lynchburg/Roanoke and Weekdays 6-10 am and 24/7 Stream –  host Fredericks welcomed (R) Congressman Ben Cline of Virginia’s sixth district to the show.
During the show, Cline discussed the enthusiasm for Donald Trump and how the Republicans need to regain the House and save it from the Democrat’s lust for the expansion of government.
Fredericks: Joining us now, Congressman of the Sixth District Republican Virginian Ben Cline. Congressman thanks for the wait. Thanks for your patience. And thanks for being with us.
Cline: Good to be with you. It sounds like Connor’s got some interesting data there to share. I’m always interested in keeping up with the numbers and the percentages on absentees. We know that early voting without any excuse for absentee balloting in Virginia is very popular. And a lot of people are out there taking advantage of it.
So we want people to get out there and vote whenever it’s convenient for them and just to make sure that we deliver Virginia for Donald Trump. I’m excited he’s coming to Newport News because that’s where we need to light a fire under the eastern part of the state. That’s similar to the fire that’s been lit for four years for him for out here in the western part of the state.
Fredericks: Oh I’d say, Congressman Cline, you’re absolutely right. That’s why he’s coming to Newport News. That’s why you know he’s looking at the same numbers we are. This is what I’ve been saying for weeks that Virginia is in play. And right now our surveys have us about three and a half behind. We got a great ground game.
But I tell you, we’ve got the fake news congressman that we both battle every day. And sometimes you know it’s there and you kind of glaze over it. But now it becomes again it just hits you in the face. Politico does a piece when Trump comes to Virginia and the headline of their piece is well he’s not really coming to Newport News for Virginia he’s coming to reach North Carolina.
If you know anything, I live in Southeast Virginia. Newport News is no more North Carolina media market than Wyoming is. I mean it’s three hours from Raleigh, Durham. And it’s three and a half two and a half hours from Greenville. I mean you can’t get to a major city.
There’s nobody there in that part of North Carolina. There are no people there. So if you’re going to go if you want to reach North Carolina you go to North Carolina. Why would you go to Newport News, Virginia which is not a North Carolina medium market and it’s two tunnels, three bodies of water, a bridge, and two hours away?
And the Post picks it up! I gotta push back on it. Thank God for Laura Vazela who covers this who at least gave my side of the story. But that’s the fake news and then everybody amplifies it. So they all pick the Politico story up and everybody then runs it as if it’s true.
And the thing that is so frustrating is that they have an unnamed source of the Trump campaign. Who the hell is that? I don’t know. Unnamed? Yet the person who’s in the Trump campaign says he’s coming to Virginia because he thinks he can win Virginia. I mean what is that? This is what we fight every single day and it’s a tough battle man. It’s tough.
Cline: The Trump campaign is fighting in every battleground state. Virginia is a battleground state. As much as the Left wants to convince Virginians especially conservative Virginians to give up and to leave it in the hands of the Democrats. We see what happens when we leave Virginia in the hands of the Democrats.
We see all of these horrible policies coming out of Richmond to reduce the penalties for assaulting a police officer. To get rid of truth and sentencing put in place by George Allen that has led Virginia to be to have the lowest recidivism rate of any state in the country. We are doing it right when it comes to criminal justice.
And the Democrats are trying to unravel it all. We’ve got to continue to fight in Virginia. And I think we’re going to see a great youth turn in the direction of Virginia come next year when we elect a Republican governor and restore Republican dominance in the legislature. But for now, Virginia is in play. They’re angry. Especially about their Second Amendment rights out west. And we’re going to work hard to deliver Virginia for Donald trump here in November.
Fredericks: Congressman Ben Cline, when you were in the House and you ran the conservative caucus you had that political action committee for a long time got a lot of conservatives elected in there, did you ever see think you’d see a special session that goes on for I don’t know two months on the internet on Zoom?
And the House is passing all of these crazy bills. I thought the object of a special session was it was supposed to be special. They just decided to convey and now they can’t stop. It’s like they got a tiger by the tail and they just come in every day and pass crazy stuff.
Cline: Yeah. They’re playing the Virginia people for rubes. You know Speaker of the House Eileen Filler-Corn thinks that they can continue to keep this special session which is supposed to be about balancing the budget of the coronavirus pandemic and to make sure that the economy when it hiccuped there during the coronavirus and we had massive unemployment and when we had massive businesses going out of business that the budget can still be balanced.
Now the economy’s taking off again. The revenues didn’t fall as much as they thought they did they would. And with the Cares Act money they got about $3 billion from the federal government to help address coronavirus issues. So the budget should be balanced by now. They should be back in their districts.
But they can’t help themselves. These liberals love government and they love to expand government. So now they’re in there trying to find ways to expand government in Virginia more and more. That’s what is at risk here in November.
If Joe Biden wins and Nancy Pelosi stays in the House we know what the agenda is going to be if Mitch McConnell loses the Senate. It’s going to be Nancy Pelosi’s agenda. It’s going to be the Squad’s agenda that’s moving through the House and moving to the Senate and then getting signed into law by President Kamala Harris and Vice President Joe Biden. And I said that on purpose.
Fredericks: Well yeah because I mean they even Biden says it’s the Harris administration. So I mean when Biden says that you know that’s what it is. The House passed legislation yesterday to avert another government shutdown. This is going to go through December 11 by sending the bill to the Senate with eight days to go before the current funding federal funding expires. It passed from 359 to 57. Ben Cline, are we ever going to get a budget like in June or July? Like Rob Whitman has been asking for this since he’s been there. Or do these continuing resolutions just go on in perpetuity?
Cline: Kicking the can down the road is harmful to our national defense because they can’t continue to modernize and develop new programs. They have to just progress in fits and starts. And this bill actually continued not only deficit spending but also expanded existing programs and created additional responsibilities for the federal government.
So they didn’t just kick the can down the road they kicked the can and dropped a new can and kicked it too because they’re expanding the scope of the federal government. So all three Virginians who Virginia Republicans were there voted no.
We look forward to restoring a responsible fiscal order to the House of Representatives when Republicans take back the house in November. We’ve got several great candidates. Nick Freitas. Scott Taylor. Bob Good. Everybody’s running to win these seats and retire Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.
Fredericks: You know what’s amazing is? It’s the story on adverting the government shutdown in the newspaper The Hill which of course we’re all familiar with. So they kind of detail it out and they give the vote which is 359-57 And the only Congressperson out of 435 that they mention of how the person voted is Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez. A one-term freshman congresswoman from the Bronx. They don’t say how any other Republican voted. They don’t say of any of the 57 people that voted no. The only person they cite is AOC and how she voted.
Listen to the full show here:
