Unlike many other town halls that went viral over the summer for hostile crowds, those who attended Cline’s town hall on Thursday evening at the Rockbridge County Courthouse were respectful but held him accountable over issues such as freedom of speech, economic and financial challenges facing farmers, and hateful rhetoric.
Cline spent the first half hour touting what he believed were parts of the One Big Beautiful Bill passed this summer by Congress that he said will significantly help constituents of the 6th district.
Cline highlighted tax cuts in the bill, boasted about the billions allocated to border control, and argued that the bill protects the SNAP program by requiring work requirements, and that Medicaid funding would not be cut.
BEN CLINE: Dispelling the myth. The One Big Beautiful Bill does not cut Medicaid. You can see all of the spending on Medicaid going up. What the bill does is allow Medicaid to increase at a slower rate, returning it to pre-Biden projections.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the bill is projected to cut federal Medicaid spending by over $900 billion and cause millions of people to lose coverage, increasing the uninsured by 9.8 million.
Fielding tough questions, Cline was asked if he supported freedom of speech, especially for journalists and comedians. Cline strongly agreed that he supported free speech but then shifted his focus to what he believed was the real issue – censorship on social media platforms during the Biden administration.
When asked what he disagreed with the president about, Cline said he believed Russia should face sanctions for its involvement in Ukraine and that President Trump should have banned TikTok, following the law passed by Congress last year to ban the app if it was not sold to an American company.
But the last question asked by a constituent, who described herself as an independent, elicited the biggest cheers when she asked Cline to “bring down his rhetoric” against Democrats, because he promised to serve everyone in the 6th District.
COMMENTER: We follow you on Facebook, and you’re calling Democrats radical. That inflames people. And you’re hearing it here tonight. You need to stop. And you need to ask President Trump to stop, because he just keeps doing it.
