Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., appeared on ABC News’ “This Week” Sunday to defend the Trump administration from the post-Mueller report, yet the apparently still perpetual Russia investigation. He criticized Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who had appeared on the program before him. Paul basically said Schiff was a partisan hack who had no problem supporting former President Barack Obama invoking executive privilege, but attacks President Trump for doing the same.
“He’s a hypocrite,” Paul said, approving of a clip host George Stephanopoulos played showing Schiff doing exactly what the senator accused him of.
“You know, the clips go both ways,” Stephanopoulos said to Paul. “Back when President Obama was asserting executive power, you attacked him for acting like a king. Let’s show that.”
The clip showed Paul saying:
“So why isn’t that hypocritical?,” Stephanopoulos asked.
If making a list of the most laughable “gotcha” moments in political history, from a purely factual standpoint, this might top the list.
Paul responded to Stephanopoulos, “For your viewers, you will also need to remind them that I opposed the president when he unconstitutionally — Obama tried to make [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] or immigration law without Congress.”
“I also opposed President Trump when he tried to spend money that wasn’t appropriated. So I think I’m entirely consistent in saying no president should be king. That includes my president,” Paul said.
Paul has been the most vocal critic of executive overreach in Congress under both Democratic and Republican presidents. I can show you many Republican and Democratic members who complain about such overreach and abuse when the other party’s president does it. But there is only a minute handful who do it consistently and in a bipartisan fashion.
“With regard to executive privilege, I never said one word about President Obama on whether or not he should have to divulge all the material within the administration,” Paul followed up. “I said that he couldn’t create immigration law without Congress first creating the law. I said the same to President Trump.”
Democrats and left-leaning journalists are still so hyper-focused on their Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, they can’t make the distinction between presidents using executive privilege to avoid scrutiny, which can be concerning and no doubt born of corruption, and consistently bypassing Congress to make law via executive decree.
The former is problematic. No question there. But the latter methodically erodes America’s rule of law, aka the Constitution.
Automatically equating the two out of partisan fervor is intellectually dishonest. Similarly, we would, and should, look skeptically at a politician who pleads the Fifth. What is he or she hiding?
But we should honestly consider ousting anyone who declared that there was no Fifth Amendment, or any other amendment, or Constitution altogether — that presidents can just make whatever laws they want, regardless of Congress.
Apples and oranges.
Paul has fought against presidents ignoring the Constitution his entire Senate career. He was also calling the whole Russia fiasco a farce long before his interview with Stephanopoulos, so it’s no surprise his focus isn’t on Trump’s executive privilege invocations about an investigation he has believed is groundless since day one.
The distinction is important, and recognizing it isn’t so complicated once one removes their partisan blinders.
But Paul’s explanation wasn’t enough for the Washington Post’s Opinions Editor James Downie. Downie argued in a column sarcastically titled “Rand Paul’s ‘Principles’” that while Obama might have used executive privilege, Trump is doing it more. Therefore, Trump is worse and Paul is a hypocrite in saying he’s opposed to executive abuse of power.
Downie cited Paul’s comments on “This Week,” in which the senator admitted he never focused on Obama’s executive privilege regarding probes into his own administration, similar to Trump’s pushback, but certainly spoke out against Obama making immigration law or any other unilaterally with a “pen and phone.”
“It’s true — he didn’t say anything about executive privilege at the time,” Downie wrote. “But he’s saying plenty now. You’d think a declared constitutional originalist such as Paul would abhor executive privilege.”
Downie continued:
“So — with possible apologies to Groucho Marx — yes, Rand Paul has principles,” Downie finished. “And when GOP voters don’t like them, he has others.”
This is 100 percent, grade-A crap.
It was only two months ago, that Paul vocally opposed and voted against President Trump’s national emergency declaration regarding the border precisely because it was an executive overreach in violation of the separation of powers outlined in the Constitution. Congress holds the power of the purse, and the president was appropriating money out of his legal jurisdiction.
This put Paul directly on the opposite side of the overwhelming majority of GOP voters. I don’t know how long Downie’s memory is, but most conservatives during that time considered Paul persona non grata, and that’s putting it mildly. He was called a traitor. He was called a “phony constitutionalist.” He was called the “new John McCain” — simply for being the strict constitutionalist he’s always been under any president.
This is what’s actually called “principle.”
Paul opposed Trump’s executive order on bombing Syria in 2017. For years, Paul has helped lead the fight to oppose Trump’s support of the U.S.-Saudi Arabia war in Yemen, including in March when the Senate attempted to reclaim its war powers from the president. All of Washington, including the Republican Party, was irate at Paul in 2018 for holding up the budget on fiscal and constitutional grounds, which the senator still ended up voting against.
Not to mention, no Republican senator votes more against Trump than Paul.
It is understandable, in a sense, that a Left so invested in the notion that President Trump colluded with Russia to skew the 2016 election would scramble to hold on to any shred of that delusion after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report proved them all wrong.
But it is a complete farce for anyone to suggest that Rand Paul is a hypocrite when it comes to opposing executive abuse of power based on him not falling in line with their desperate grasps on this front.
There’s not a current sitting member of the Senate of either party who has consistently opposed executive power under any president more than Rand Paul.
If there is, I would love for ABC News, the Washington Post, or any other outlet of any ideological stripe to prove me wrong. I’ll wait.
Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.
