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A Senate GOP holdout who has yet to endorse former President Donald Trump explained why his “enthusiasm” kept him from being more than just “supportive.”
(Video Credit: CNBC)
The presidential election may have boiled down to what many consider the clearest choice between Marxism and freedom ever presented to the American people, but that didn’t mean that disagreements from the past had suddenly been forgotten. To that end, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) joined CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday and explained what he hoped the president would “promise” for his backing.
After weighing in on Big Tech, censorship, and anti-trust issues, the medical doctor who’d stood at the forefront of investigations into Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institutes of Health regarding COVID, raised his concerns about what had taken place during Trump’s final year in office.
“As far as my enthusiasm, you know, I’m a deficit hawk. The Trump administration added $8 trillion. The Biden administration is gonna add $8 trillion. This year we’re gonna add another $2 trillion. As Trump left office, he was advocating for $2,500 checks again passed out to everybody,” reminded Paul who, where the GOP leader was concerned, addressed the considerable spending that had happened in response to COVID. “I’m not for that.”
“I was against the lockdowns and I want to hear stronger language in that sense. I also want to get to the bottom of the funding of the research in Wuhan,” he told CNBC’s Rebecca Quick.
“The NIH is still resisting giving me that information, my investigation hangs in the lurch, and I want a promise, frankly, from Donald Trump that he will continue — allow me to do that investigation and that he will sign legislation that I’ve written that will regulate gain-of-function research such that we are not having government money used to like, take Ebola, which has a 50% mortality, and see if we can aerosolize it,” the lawmaker contended.
While he had said his piece, Paul also made clear, “I’m supportive of Donald Trump. I think there’s no question that Donald Trump is better than [Vice President] Kamala Harris on this.”
Providing an example, he called out the Democratic Party nominee’s plan to tax unrealized capital gains as “not only moronic,” but “so destructive that…she should be disqualified from any thoughtful person considering her.”
That acknowledged reality hadn’t stopped entrepreneur Mark Cuban, who himself had contended “If you tax unrealized gains, you’re going to kill the stock market,” from maintaining his support for Harris to the hosts of “Squawk Box.”
Notably, Paul, who had been among the figures who’d run alongside Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, had only taken one firm position in the 2024 primary, voicing his adamant opposition to former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
Joining the “Never Nikki” movement prior to the Iowa caucus, the senator had said in part, “I don’t think any informed or knowledgable Libertarian or conservative should support Nikki Haley. I’ve seen her attitude towards our interventions overseas, I’ve seen her involvement with the military-industrial complex — $8 million being paid to become part of a team. But I’ve also seen her indicate that she thinks she should be registered to use the Internet…”
Unlike the non-endorsement support from Paul, a mere six Republican senators were against Trump including the usual suspects Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah along with Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Jerry Moran of Kansa and Todd Young of Indiana.
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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