RAND PAUL RIPS DEMS, ANTI-TRUMP CONSERVATIVES FOR ‘DESTROYING’ DIPLOMATIC ENGAGEMENT WITH RUSSIA

President Donald Trump’s domestic opponents on the left and right are exploiting the Russia issue for political gain at the expense of diplomatic engagement with Moscow on issues of mutual concern, Sen. Rand Paul said Tuesday.

The Kentucky Republican warned that bipartisan hostility to dialogue with the Kremlin risks making Trump’s outreach to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin politically impossible, even on matters as critical as nuclear arms control.

“I think it’s important we have dialogue between the countries that contain and control 90 percent of the nuclear weapons in the word,” Paul told reporters on a conference call from Russia, where he was meeting with lawmakers.

“I think the political anger by Democrats against Trump is completely destroying any opportunity to talk about issues like arms control,” he added.

Paul traveled to Moscow on Aug. 6, two days before the Trump administration announced it would sanction certain Russian goods as punishment for Moscow’s alleged involvement in the March poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent living in Britain.

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SEN. RAND PAUL GOES AFTER JOHN BRENNAN AFTER HE CALLS TRUMP ‘TREASONOUS’

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul went after former CIA director John Brennan following his comments calling President Trump “treasonous” Wednesday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

“The former director of the CIA, you think of that as a sober minded person, responsible person, kind of a James Bond with maybe an advanced degree. Here you have a naked partisan nut cake describing a press conference as treason,” said Carlson. “How should that make us feel as American citizens?”

“It makes me wonder whether he should be getting a government pension if he’s going to be disrespecting the commander-in-chief, calling the president treasonous. That’s about as overtop as you can imagine,” responded Paul.

Tucker then brought up that “treason is a death penalty offense” and yet that is how Brennan “is describing views.”

“You have to realize John Brennan started his illustrious career by voting for the Communist Party, you know that’s who he wanted to win the presidency, back in the 70s,” Paul said. “When he came to be head of the CIA, I filibustered him because I thought he was bad news from the very beginning.”

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RAND PAUL GOES AFTER RESPONSE TO TRUMP, PUTIN MEETING, SAYS IT’S ‘TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME’

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said critics of President Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladmir Putin in Helsinki, Finland have “Trump derangement syndrome” Monday on CNN.

“Let me get right to the questioning. Do you believe that President Trump’s meeting with Putin made America safer?” asked CNN host Wolf Blitzer.

“You know, I think engagement with our adversaries, conversation with our adversaries is a good idea. Even in the height of the cold War, maybe at the lowest ebb when we were in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, I think it was a good thing that Kennedy had a direct line to Khrushchev. I think it was a good thing that we continued to have ambassadors to Russia even when we really objected greatly to what was going on, even during Stalin’s regime. So I think that it is a good idea to have engagement,” Paul said.

“And I think that what is lost in this is that I think there’s a bit of Trump derangement syndrome. I think there are people that hate the president so much that this could have easily been President Obama early in the first administration setting the reset button and trying to have better relations with Russia and I think it’s lost on people that they are a nuclear power,” Paul continued.

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RAND PAUL: RUSSIA IS ALWAYS GOING TO MEDDLE IN OUR ELECTIONS, JUST LIKE WE’RE GOING TO MEDDLE IN THEIRS

Russia meddled in the 2016 election in part as a retaliation against the U.S. influencing elections in eastern Europe, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday.

“I think really we mistake our response if we think it’s about accountability from the Russians,” Paul told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union. “They are going to spy on us, do spy on us. They are going to interfere in our elections, we also do the same,” Paul said.

The comments, which come just a day before President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, show a realism that neither staunch Republicans or Democrats discuss, which is that Russia attempted various hacking and disinformation campaigns surrounding the 2016 election to discredit former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“I would say it’s not morally equivalent,” Paul said of Russia’s election meddling relating to America’s campaigns to influence foreign elections. “But I think in [Russia’s] mind it is. It’s important to know in your adversary’s mind the way they perceive thing. They react to our interference in their elections and one of the reasons they didn’t like Hillary Clinton, they found her responsible for some of the activity by the U.S. in their elections under the [Former President Barack] Obama administration,” Paul said.

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Paul: ‘The Real Question We Need To Ask’ Involves Susan Rice AND Obama

Sen. Rand Paul told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade Wednesday morning that revelations about Susan Rice unmasking private citizens mentioned in intelligence reports raises a more serious question.

Did President Obama “eavesdrop” on Americans for political purposes?

“I don’t think she answered the question, ‘did she unmask people in the Trump administration?'” the Kentucky Republican first posed. “She said, ‘maybe I did, but I didn’t do it for political reasons.'”

“I think it’s incumbent on her to show to the American people why it wouldn’t have been a political reason.”

“If someone were investigating the Trump administration, it ought to be the F.B.I. not someone in the White house,” he continued. “She’s a political appointee that reports directly to the president.”

“The real question we need to ask is did the president eavesdrop and sift through all of the mountains of intelligence we have?”

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Sen. Rand Paul on Paul Ryan’s Obamacare Lite: Speaker ‘Trying to Pull the Wool Over the Eyes of the President’

In the interview, Paul accused Ryan of misleading President Donald Trump on the process and the level of support in the House for the bill that House GOP leadership—at Ryan’s direction—put forward this week.

The House Freedom Caucus was publicly against this strategy before Ryan even rolled it out. The group of more than 40 House conservatives remains steadfastly opposed to Ryan’s plan on this front, showing no signs of breaking as they signaled before it was introduced, and now many Republican offices outside the House Freedom Caucus privately tell Breitbart News that as many as 70 or more House Republicans are opposed to Ryan’s plan.

Leadership knows this too, they say, as all the “hard no” votes have told the Speaker’s office or the whip teams they cannot vote for this bill. But Ryan is plowing forward, stating at a number of press conferences this week he is confident he will receive the 218 votes he needs to pass the bill—even though he clearly does not have them right now.

When asked what Ryan’s strategy is here, Paul told Breitbart News it makes no sense—and that he believes that the Speaker is deliberately misleading President Trump into thinking he has more support for this bill than he has, and that its fate is not in crisis.

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Rand After Debate: I ‘Separated Myself From The Field’

Rand Paul thinks his debate performance set him completely apart from the rest of the Republican field Tuesday night.

Speaking to reporters in the “Spin Room” after the Fox Business debate, the Kentucky senator said his call to scale back the American military makes him the only fiscal conservative in the race.

“I thought it was a good debate. I thought I got more time,” Paul said. “I got to express my opinion, and I have a few opinions that I want to express.”

“And I think also separated myself from the field, in that, I’m the only fiscal conservative on the stage. I’m the only one who says, you know what, you can’t be for a trillion dollars in new military spending and call yourself a conservative.”

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Rand Paul: Police Militarization Makes Americans, Esp. Blacks, Feel 'Gov't Is Targeting Them'

After another night of violent confrontations between police and demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) argued Thursday that big government has gone too far in militarizing local police forces.

Ahead of a potential 2016 presidential run, it was another chance for Paul's liberty-centered philosophy to appeal to libertarians and black voters.

After police shot and killed an unarmed black teenager over the weekend, Ferguson residents rioted, looted, and protested this week. The police response has escalated each day, with police on Wednesday firing pepper spray and tear gas and arresting two D.C. journalists.

"Americans must never sacrifice their liberty for an illusive and dangerous, or false, security," he wrote in a Thursday op-ed for Time. "The outrage in Ferguson is understandable—though there is never an excuse for rioting or looting. There is a legitimate role for the police to keep the peace, but there should be a difference between a police response and a military response. The images and scenes we continue to see in Ferguson resemble war more than traditional police action."

Paul noted that he has championed the cause of more liberty for years and said that "not surprisingly, big government has been at the heart of the problem" because "Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies—where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement."

"When you couple this militarization of law enforcement with an erosion of civil liberties and due process that allows the police to become judge and jury—national security letters, no-knock searches, broad general warrants, pre-conviction forfeiture—we begin to have a very serious problem on our hands," he wrote. "The militarization of our law enforcement is due to an unprecedented expansion of government power in this realm. It is one thing for federal officials to work in conjunction with local authorities to reduce or solve crime. It is quite another for them to subsidize it."

Paul said that "it is almost impossible for many Americans not to feel like their government is targeting them," and "given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them."

"Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention," he argued. "Our prisons are full of black and brown men and women who are serving inappropriately long and harsh sentences for non-violent mistakes in their youth."

Paul, who has spoken at historically black colleges and universities and has supported sentencing reforms with Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), said much of the militarization has been "done in the name of fighting the war on drugs or terrorism." He cited the Heritage Foundation’s Evan Bernick, who wrote that “the Department of Homeland Security has handed out anti-terrorism grants to cities and towns across the country, enabling them to buy armored vehicles, guns, armor, aircraft, and other equipment." That has, according to Bernick, enabled "federal agencies of all stripes, as well as local police departments in towns with populations less than 14,000, [to] come equipped with SWAT teams and heavy artillery.”

Paul said that had he "been told to get out of the street as a teenager, there would have been a distinct possibility that I might have smarted off. But, I wouldn’t have expected to be shot."

"Let us continue to pray for Michael Brown’s family, the people of Ferguson, police, and citizens alike," he concluded.

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Southern Avenger no more: Rand Paul aide Jack Hunter leaves staff, returns to punditry

The man who for years called himself the “Southern Avenger” says he now seeks to avenge his own honor.

Jack Hunter, the aide to Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul who has been under fire for comments critical of Abraham Lincoln and sympathetic to the Confederacy, has left the senator’s office to resume his career as a political pundit.

Hunter told The Daily Caller News Foundation that he wanted to avoid being a distraction for Paul and to clear his own name, which he argues is now unfairly associated with racism.

A senior Paul aide confirmed Hunter’s departure.

“I’ve long been a conservative, and years ago, a much more politically incorrect (and campy) one,” Hunter said in an email. “But there’s a significant difference between being politically incorrect and racist. I’ve also become far more libertarian over the years, a philosophy that encourages a more tolerant worldview, through the lens of which I now look back on some of my older comments with embarrassment.”

Hunter, who has contributed opinion pieces to The Daily Caller, is a personal friend of the author.

The Washington Free Beacon originally reported that Hunter toasted the birthday of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, lamented the United States’ shrinking white majority and compared honoring the Founding Fathers while admiring Lincoln to “praising Jesus and worshiping Satan simultaneously.”

The story set off a firestorm of controversy across the political spectrum. Hunter was most recently criticized by his former editor at the Charleston City Paper for asking him to remove posts and for being the “most common kind of racist, the one that doesn’t realize that he is one.”

Chris Haire, the Charleston alt-weekly’s managing editor, also described Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Pat Buchanan as racists. Asked why he published Hunter — a paid columnist — if he believed him to be a racist, Haire tweeted in response, “To reveal the mindset of the SCGOP and the Neoconfederate fringe.”

Paul described Hunter’s comments as “absolutely stupid” but defended his “incredibly talented” social media director in an interview with The Huffington Post.

“People are calling him a white supremacist,” Paul said. “If I thought he was a white supremacist, he would be fired immediately.”

Others have defended Hunter as well, saying that while he may have been attracted to peculiarly Southern forms of conservatism and occasionally naive about racial issues, he is not the figure some critics have portrayed.

“In all my dealings with Jack Hunter, I have found him to be most impressive, most professional and a committed conservative,” South Carolina Republican Rep. Mark Sanford told TheDCNF. “I think a lot of this has less to do with Jack Hunter than Rand Paul and 2016.”

Former Charleston City Paper music editor Ballard Leseman knew Hunter back when he was still wearing a pro-wrestling-style mask emblazoned with the Confederate flag. He told TheDCNF that Hunter was already assuming a less kitschy and provocative persona back then.

“By the time Jack started working with local AM news/talk station 1250 WTMA, he’d already ditched the mask and the schtick side of the Southern Avenger character, and he began to develop a more serious, thoughtful, in-depth approach and delivery,” Leseman said.

While the two of them “bonded more over conversations about Iron Maiden, Rush, and the Who than about political candidates and partisan politics,” Leseman was familiar with Hunter’s political work.

“As a left-leaning independent who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, 2004 and 2008, you can imagine how my own political views could clash with those of Jack Hunter’s,” he said. “But in all of our conversations, interviews, and late-night tavern chats, we never fought or argued.”

Marcus Amaker edited Hunter’s entertainment writings for the Charleston Post and Courier. He described Hunter as “a good guy” and “professional freelancer.”

“I never had any issues with Jack,” Amaker told TheDCNF. “Honestly, I haven’t paid much attention to the controversy. Anything that seeks to divide people isn’t on my radar and doesn’t get my energy.”

Prior to working for Rand Paul, Hunter was the official campaign blogger for Ron Paul during the 2012 GOP primaries. In that capacity, he frequently worked to marginalize extremists within the movement, ridiculing conspiracy theorists and defending the idea of working within the mainstream Republican Party.

Now the controversy over Hunter’s past writings and radio broadcasts is widely seen as a drag on libertarian-leaning Republicans’ mainstream political ambitions and a reminder of the elder Paul’s newsletters.

While the former Texas congressman denied writing or even reading the racist content in the newsletters that appeared under his name, questions persisted about their authorship.

Hunter isn’t denying writing the columns in question, but he does say the coverage doesn’t represent the full body of his writing.

“The stories made me angry, as well as many who’ve followed my work, because the cherry-picked distortions weren’t even remotely the real me,” he said. “It was enraging to watch neoconservatives, liberals and even some actual racists speculate about what I believe, based on what they were eager to portray me as believing. Not surprisingly, their speculations almost always suited their own political purposes.”

“Still, the moment I became a distraction for Sen. Paul, I knew it was time to leave. My purpose has always been to help, not hinder,” Hunter added. Now as he once ditched the mask, he will also discard the Southern Avenger name.

“I also wanted the ability to defend myself in my own voice, not as a member of anyone’s staff or even as the ‘Southern Avenger’ character, which has now been so mischaracterized that I will permanently retire that moniker,” Hunter said.

In addition to any fallout for Rand Paul’s political future, the controversy raises philosophical questions for conservatives and libertarians.

  

“Nothing in American history has done more harm to the limited government cause than the association of state sovereignty arguments with defenses of slavery,” wrote Philip Klein in the Washington Examiner. “Confederates who employed limited government arguments to argue for preserving a brutal and inhumane practice shouldn’t be deemed friends of limited government.”

Hunter maintains he is now freer to join these debates.

“I look forward to returning to just being a pundit and fighting these battles on my own,” he said. “The neoconservatives, who first ran and promoted this story, would much rather argue about the Civil War than the Iraq War.”

“From their standpoint, and given current trends within the Republican Party,” Hunter concluded, “I can’t say I blame them.”

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Rand Paul Asked Bill Kristol About The Mossad

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul -- son of the presidential candidate -- engaged Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol this morning in Des Moines with a question about Israel's spy agency, according to an Italian reporter who was sitting with Kristol during the conversation.

Il Sole's Christian Rocca writes that he was interviewing Kristol over breakfast at the Des Moines Embassy Suites when Paul -- who shares his father's doubts about American support for Israel -- sat down beside Kristol, who also sits on the board of the hard-line Emergency Committee for Israel.

Paul's first words were to ask Kristol whether the head of the Mossad is a member of the Israeli cabinet, Rocca reports.

Kristol replied, according to Rocca's account, that wasn't sure.

Paul explained that he'd heard somewhere that the head of Mossad didn't consider a nuclear-armed Iran an existential threat to Israel.

Paul was right: Mossad chief Tamir Pardo reportedly said this week that a nuclear Iran isn't necessarily an existential threat.

Kristol declined to discuss the conversation with his own publication, but the Standard seems to have confirmed the account by linking Rocca's story approvingly.

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