Rand Paul Blasts ‘Knucklehead’ Stephen Miller
Late Wednesday afternoon, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), who has been the leading GOP opponent to what President Donald Trump has branded as the “Big, Beautiful Bill,” was informed by the administration that he and his family would be barred from attending today’s annual White House picnic.
“The level of immaturity is beyond words,” Paul told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. “I don’t know if this came from the president on down, let’s hope not; but if not, it’s coming from these petty staffers who have been running sort of a paid influencer campaign against me for two weeks on Twitter….It really makes me lose a lot of respect I once had for Donald Trump….They have shown over the last week they don’t care about my vote at all.…Instead they’ve decided to try to attack my character….The same people that are directing this campaign are the same people that casually would throw out parts of the Constitution and suspend habeas corpus.”
That last part was a reference to White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has been spearheading the administration’s attempts to increase immigration arrests tenfold while arguing in the process that “the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended.” Miller has been singling out libertarian-leaning Republicans like Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) for their obstructionism, telling Charlie Kirk last week, “You will never live a day in your life where a libertarian cares as much about immigration and sovereignty as they do about the Congressional Budget Office.” (Massie, too, had his White House picnic-tix withheld.)
Minutes before learning of his disinvitation (which Trump magnanimously overturned Thursday morning), Paul came on The Fifth Column podcast that I co-host, talking about his opposition to the spending bill, his attitude toward Saturday’s big military parade in Washington, D.C. (“missiles and tanks in the streets just isn’t a great symbol”), and “that knucklehead” in the White House who wants to suspend habeas corpus.
“Zealous supporters of the president, they’re all over me,” Paul told us. “If you read my Twitter feed, it’s like…Haters Anonymous….I think a lot of them, frankly, are paid, but a lot of them are morons, you know, and it’s hard to tell the difference.”
Mocked by MAGA meme-slingers as a riot-loving “China shill” with “creepy weird noodle hair,” Paul was eager to clarify both his departures from and support of Trump’s deportation policies.
“It is true that I
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