Senator Rand Paul has come under increasing scrutiny in recent days for his confirmation vote of Senator Jeff Sessions to the position of Attorney General. Paul defended his vote for sessions in an interview with Kennedy on Fox Business thusly:
"I think personal considerations; I've known him for a long time. I didn't like the way Democrats vilified and tried to create him into some sort of racist monster, which is not who he is. So the fact that they used character assassination, I didn't want to be associated with that.
But I can tell people, libertarians across the country, that there is no stronger voice in the U.S. Senate for opposing militarization of the police, opposing the drug war, opposing the surveillance state. And so if people want to apply a purity test to me they're more than welcome, but I would suggest that maybe they spend some of their time on the other 99 less libertarian senators."
Paul also recently argued against an investigation into the departure of president Donald Trump's national security advisor Michael Flynn, who was accused of lying to vice president Michael Flynn about the discussions Flynn had with a Russian ambassador about US sanctions. In an interview with Brian Kilmeade, Paul argued:
"I think that might be excessive. It looks like the President has handled the situation, and unless there's some kind of other evidence of malfeasance, this sounds like something that was internal White House politics and it looks like the President's handled it."
Very good reasoning there, but Paul took it one step further, angering many when he went on to say: "I just don't think it's useful to be doing investigation after investigation, particularly of your own party. We'll never even get started with doing the things we need to do, like repealing Obamacare, if we're spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans. I think it makes no sense."
Is Paul arguing for party over principle? All that and more on the Freedom Report podcast!
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