Ben Cline got an invite to be in a bill-signing photo with Donald Trump, finally getting value from his vote on Jan. 6, 2021, to decertify the 2020 election, in the hours after a Trump-led mob tried to overthrow the government.
Cline, a MAGA who represents the Sixth District in the U.S. House, did his duty, captioning the photo, highlighting Trump signing the Rescission Relief Act, with a sentence that, not once, but twice, used the word “woke.”
“For too long, the tax dollars of hard-working Americans have been wasted on woke foreign aid projects abroad and woke publicly-funded broadcasting at home. That ends now. Republicans are restoring fiscal sanity and putting American taxpayers first,” Cline wrote in the post – or, more likely, somebody in his office wrote in his name, and voice.
First, to the “woke” foreign aid projects: wonder if he’s meaning by that the $32,000 that he seems to think we gave to Australia to spend on breakdancing last year.
Remember that story?
ICYMI
“Yes – America gave Australia $32,000 for breakdancing. And this was the outcome,” Cline posted on social media back on May 29, linking to a video of the Australian Olympic breakdancer Rachel Gunn.
“This is what Washington wastes your money on,” Cline wrote.
It took me about five minutes to figure out that, no, America didn’t give Australia $32,000 for breakdancing, but I can see why a person like Ben Cline would try to make a big deal about this kind of thing.
NARRATOR: He’s not that bright.
The “woke” public broadcasting line is straight from the MAGA playbook.
Congress had approved $1.1 billion for public broadcasting over the next two years.
This is a bit apples-to-oranges, but put that $1.1 billion over two years up against the $1.7 billion a year that the 69 million people with cable TV subscriptions pay in carriage fees to subsidize Fox News.
Fox News averages 1.6 million viewers in any given hour, but the rest of us – the other 67.4 million – pay those carriage fees whether we’re watching or not.
Might just be me here, but it’s not hard to see that as coming across as public funding.
How about we propose legislation in the next Congress to let the 97.7 percent of us who don’t watch Fox News and don’t want our dollars going to supporting their reporting opt out of having to pay those carriage fees?
Let Fox News sink or swim on its own merits, like every other business.
Whaddya say, Bennie?
Only seems fair.
NARRATOR: None of what Ben Cline and the MAGAs are doing here is about being fair.
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Chris Graham
