Aug. 10, 2025 Editor, The News-Gazette: Ben Cline’s August newsletter is a textbook on lies of omission. He begins by bragging about “meeting with folks in Winchester and Roanoke,” claiming such “conversations are a vital part of my work to ensure I stay connected with the needs and priorities of those I represent,” but Cline omits the fact that he has not held a single town hall meeting in the 6th District in all of 2025.
Cline claims that he supports “policies in Washington that work to make life more affordable for every hardworking American,” but he omits the fact that inflation has risen due to Trump tariffs which he loudly supports. Cline brags about “encouraging news with strong second quarter economic expectations,” but he omits the abysmal jobs report that so upset President Trump that he fired the director of labor statistics. Cline calls the recent 3% GDP “a significant improvement from where we were just months ago under the Biden administration,” and yet even the chart he includes shows the GDP under Biden at 3% and 3.2% last year, with a high of 4.4% the year before that.
Cline celebrates DOGE cuts as a “type of oversight,” while omitting that oversight of the executive branch is the responsibility of Congress, including the subcommittees he serves on, which are conducting no oversight at all. Cline ends his newsletter by celebrating the Coast Guard’s 235th birthday, while omitting that Trump fired its commandant in January and that DHS Secretary Noem cut 35% of its flag officer positions in May and 90% of its shore infrastructure budget in June. Cline apparently considers that “cutting the waste,” even as he thanks “the Coast Guard for their steadfast dedication to our country” as “a vital defense force.”
We deserve a representative who faces all of the facts, not just the ones he cherry picks to mislead his own constituents. CHRIS GAVALER Lexington
