Republican presidential candidates Chris Christie and Rand Paul exchanged blows on federal surveillance and bulk collection of telephone records.
Paul, who has based much of his campaign on limiting digital surveillance, said he wanted to “collect more records from terrorists, but less records from innocent Americans.” He argued the Fourth Amendment is the basis of American’s founding and it is essential that leaders stand for the Bill of Rights.
“That’s a completely ridiculous answer,” Christie immediately retorted, stating it was impossible to know the difference between a potential terrorist and an everyday American. Paul argued that’s why you need to get a warrant to do a search, a position the senator has been preaching for some time now.
“When you’re sitting in a subcommittee, blowing hot air about this, you can say things like that,” Christie responded.
“Every time you did a case you got a warrant from a judge, I’m talking about searches without warrants, indiscriminately of all Americans records and that’s what I vow to end,” Paul responded, becoming more heated. “I don’t trust President Obama with our records. I know you gave him a big hug, and if you want to give him a big hug again, go right ahead.”
Christie retorted that the hugs he remembers most were not the ones he shared with Obama, but the ones shared with the families of the victims of 9/11 and those hugs “had nothing to do with politics, unlike what you’re doing cutting speeches on the floor of the Senate and putting them on the Internet within a half an hour to raise money for your campaign and while still putting your country at risk.”
