Sen. Paul on Political Violence, Free Speech and Control of the Senate

BUCK: We have Senator Rand Paul with us now from Kentucky. Senator Paul, always appreciate you calling in, making the time for us.

SEN. PAUL: Hi, guys. Thanks for having me.

BUCK: So, Senator Paul, you know, given the coverage over the weekend of this assault on Paul Pelosi, which you immediately condemned, Clay and I can’t help but notice that the media was going into overdrive to make this somehow an indictment of the entire Republican Party demanding condemnations everywhere.

You were assaulted by your neighbor in your yard because of who you are and what your politics are. You’re a Republican. You also were at that field where Hodgkinson was shooting at, and shot numerous members of Congress, including hitting Steve Scalise. Is the treatment of this just so disparate in the media that, you know, what do you make of it?

SEN. PAUL: You know, I think by them immediately wanting to politicize this tragedy, they really lose track of the side that, you know, he was severely beaten. He was hit with a hammer in the head. Can you imagine your 80-year-old parents, that happening to them, and what it must feel like to have someone in your family attacked? It was the same when I was attacked. And still to this day, nobody sees me as a person or the suffering that I went through. You know, I went through months and months, wracked in pain.

I could barely breathe. My lungs filled up with fluid. I had pneumonia multiple times. I finally had surgery to remove part of my lung. And yet online today, even my political opponent still makes, he creates ads mocking and celebrating the attacks that happened to me. People who work in his campaign actually say that the person who attacked me is their hero. These are the same left-wing people who then say, “Oh, this is about MAGA or about Trump or something.”

I don’t know who it’s about, but I think, at the very least, we should have sympathy for Paul Pelosi and say, “My goodness, this is horrible what happened to him and wish him a speedy recovery” instead of, you know, everybody immediately thinking over at the left wants to politicize this. The right makes fun of it and it’s like, give the guy a break. He got hit in the head with a hammer. How awful. And we should be thankful he’s alive.

CLAY: Senator Paul, I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to see this yet, but there is a story out there saying that and I know it’s not going to surprise you, but that our government was actively meeting with all of these Big Tech companies and defining what was and was not considered to be misinformation, disinformation in an effort to censor the truth as part of the 2020 election.

And since the Biden administration has taken over that interaction has grown even more. Does it surprise you? How much do Republicans, if we take back the House and the Senate, need to be examining this unholy connection that basically flies directly in the face of the First Amendment because the government can’t censor itself. But if it deputizes Big Tech to do it, that’s kind of a monster loophole that they’ve created.

SEN. PAUL: Yeah, I’m horrified by this, and I’m actively doing legislation, putting together legislation to stop this. There are First Amendment concerns with trying to restrict what Big Tech can do, but we certainly can restrict what government can do. My legislation will make it illegal for the government to collude or cooperate or to work to censor any information.

I’m going to make it absolutely illegal. The government will not be allowed to do this. So, it doesn’t necessarily regulate Big Tech, but it regulates government’s interaction with them. We also want to regulate government’s ability to buy information on its citizens. The problem is that government has prisons. Government has agents that are armed that can come arrest you. And they can basically take away your freedom.

So, they should not have information like, you know, The Minority Report when the Precogs could determine information in advance. There’s so much information out there about us and some of it sold for you know, you look at a pair of shoes online, you’re going to get advertising for shoes. That’s the way the Internet works. And it’s very hard to regulate that. But we can regulate the government.

And I think we should have draconian regulation of the government about buying our personal information and about colluding to censor our speech or to determine what the truth is or have any sort of ministry of truth. So, yes, we will fight this. But there’s been, I think, some debate back and forth how best to do it. And some conservatives, I think, have succumbed to the idea of the government having a board to determine what kind of speech is okay. And I don’t want the government within ten miles of any kind of board that would determine speech.

BUCK: Senator Rand Paul, Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has certainly upset a lot of people on the left, a lot of Democrats who clearly like the power to censor ideas that they don’t like. There are some who are — I would put myself in this category — who are hoping we’ll get greater transparency, not just about Twitter’s censorship practices, in partisan censorship practices, but that also we’ll find out more about whether there are any people from the government who were involved in pushing that.

What is the redress for that? I mean, what actually… what do you think happens? Essentially, was the 2020 election, if we find out that there were FBI agents and other people involved, whether it’s Facebook or Twitter, was that election unduly influenced by government actors through social media companies?

SEN. PAUL: You know, Republicans first have to win the election and win the House and/or the Senate. When that happens and when we have the chairmanship of the committees, then we can investigate this. But, yes, we need to know what happened, what kind of information is being bought and sold, and what kind of manipulation of the truth is happening.

But there are some worrisome things out there, and here’s what their response will be. We’ve been doing this since 911, and after 911, we let our guard down. The Patriot Act was passed. Many conservatives supported it and said, “Well, we got to do this to be safe,” and my father warned at the time, he said, “Ultimately, the Patriot Act will be used on its own citizens.”

“It’s not our worry about being used against terrorism, but it will be used against its own citizens,” and then they used it on Donald Trump in 2016. So, what they will tell you is that disinformation boards and they told us that when we had this debate recently, the disinformation board’s been there since 9/11. They do this all the time. Now, that doesn’t make it right, but that’s their justification.

So, I think we have to change the law. We have to get the government out of this information business of determining what truth is and having the government be the arbiter of truth. But it’s going to have to be made illegal. And I think we have every right to do that. It is once again harder to regulate Big Tech and be consistent with the First Amendment. But I think there are no limits to the regulations we can put on government.

So, I think we need to shift the focus and start putting forth rules to say the government can’t collude to limit speech. They can’t collude. I mean, look at what they did with the whole Hunter Biden story to completely say that this was misinformation. They changed sort of the discussion in the debate that would have been big during the last election.

And in all possibilities, they may well have influenced the election by what they did over what information is allowed out there. So, we’ve got to get the government out of this business, but I think we have to define how we’re going to do it. And to my mind, it hasn’t been put forward yet. So, my office is working on the legislation that will regulate government and keep government out of this business.

CLAY: We’re talking to Senator Rand Paul. I believe I’m correct. Senator, you’re up for reelection in eight days. We’d certainly encourage everyone listening to us in Kentucky to go vote for you. You mentioned earlier the House and/or the Senate. House looks very good based on all the numbers I’m seeing, I’m guessing that you’re getting fairly up-to-date refreshers on how the races are looking nationwide in the Senate. What do you see in the Senate and who would you tell our audience right now, “Hey, you guys really need to go out and support these guys or these girls.” How does it look?

SEN. PAUL: You know, the wind is behind us. The Democrats can’t escape inflation. It’s everywhere. Price of gas, price of eggs, price of meat, grocery store, this and that. The economy, the loss of your savings. And then all the senior citizens who are, you know, having trouble purchasing their daily goods and their loss of purchasing power. So, I think the wind is behind us.

There are several close races, but they’ve narrowed, if not shown, Republicans going ahead. Republicans typically do a few points better than the polls because the polls either are purposely skewed or they just, you know, can’t find the truth. In Wisconsin, when Ron Johnson won the last time, he was never better than minus three, is my recollection. This time he’s plus three, to plus six.

So, I think Ron Johnson’s in a better place. We need him because he’s a fighter. We’ve got Arizona with Blake Masters dead even. We’ve got Adam Laxalt a little bit ahead in Nevada, Herschel Walker maybe a little bit ahead in Georgia, Pennsylvania, I think dead even. So, you know, we’ve got to keep them honest in how they count the votes.

We’ve got to watch them like a hawk the whole time and we have to turn our people out. But I’m very, very positive, you know, as far as what I think is going to happen in the election. And, you know, we’ll know more next Tuesday. Hopefully, we know Tuesday and we don’t wait two weeks to keep counting votes.

CLAY: No kidding. What did you think, by the way, of the John Fetterman and Dr. Oz debate? I don’t know if you got a chance to watch it.

SEN. PAUL: You know, I can’t imagine that somebody that impaired could serve in the Senate, really. We’ve had people who were serving in office who had massive strokes and continued to serve until there was another election. And that’s one thing. But to run for and begin an election and begin serving in the Senate with that much impairment.

Look, and it’s not his fault. It’s sad that he had a stroke. But, you know, you combine the impairment with how left-leaning is that. This is a guy who really is part of the defund the police movement. This is a guy who’s been, you know, principal and active in releasing violent felons from jail. So, no, I can’t imagine that Pennsylvania will elect him. But we’ll see. We’re going to find out, you know, in a week.

CLAY: Senator Rand Paul cannot wait to see what’s going to happen in eight days. We hope you’re going to have the power of subpoena in the Senate for sure. Thanks for taking the time with us.

SEN. PAUL: Thanks, guys.