Rand Paul crosses line on Senate floor; accusation creates massive backlash

Even by Rand Paul standards, this was extreme.

During Senate debate Sunday over the future of the Patriot Act, the Kentucky senator and Republican presidential contender accused his opponents of secretly hoping for the deaths of fellow Americans just to make him look bad.

“People here in town think I’m making a huge mistake,” Paul said on the Senate floor. “Some of them, I think, secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me.”

On Fox News on Monday, Paul tried to back away from his statement, calling it “hperbole” — a statement made “in the heat of battle”

Watch the speech. It doesn’t look like a “heat of battle” comment.

It looks and sounds like Paul actually thinks his political opponents – Republican and Democrat — are looking forward to televised images of smoking buildings, screaming women and emergency vehicles charging through the streets, just so they can say “Hah! Rand Paul was wrong!”

And how does he come up with this? The media told him.

“One of the people in the media the other day came up to me and said, ‘Oh, when there’s a great attack, aren’t you going to feel guilty that you caused this great attack?’”

First of all, Paul isn’t known for having relationships with the media, so the chances of a conversation like that coming up over a cup of coffee are pretty low. Second, actually assuming the question was asked at all, it was probably just to get a good quote for a story or a video clip.

In other words, Paul accused his political opponents of secretly wishing for another heinous act of terror to occur on American soil, for innocent men, women and children to die horribly painful deaths, just to make Rand Paul look bad.

And he did it because a reporter looking to fill 10 seconds of air time decided to feed him a line.

A guy who’s a doctor, a United States senator and who thinks he’s presidential material, ought to be more careful — especially in the heat of battle.

Social media responses were many — and they weren’t kind.

He doesn’t have to.

He has the media to tell him.

H/T: Daily Caller

NOTE: This post has been modified to include Paul’s comment from Fox Monday morning.

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