Rand Paul told a reporter to be “professional” and to call his office to set up an interview after the reporter began asking him questions while he was walking through the halls of Congress Friday morning.
Jeevan Vittal of New York 1 approached the Republican Kentucky senator and peppered him with questions about his decision to force a debate on the 9/11 compensation bill over funding concerns for the proposal, which could cost more than $10 billion in the first decade. He argued that the bill “should be off-set by cutting spending that’s less valuable.”
Vittal can be seen asking Paul multiple questions that the senator ignored. Finally, Paul relented and said, “If you watch Fox News we just did an interview on Fox News and there’s a lot of good information on there. If you’ll tell your viewers to tune into Fox News we have some great stuff on there.”
“With all due respect sir, I’m not Fox News.” Vittal countered and asked if he could “paraphrase” what he said to Fox News.
“If you were a professional outlet, you could call and get an interview like they did,” Paul said. “Yeah, I don’t know who you are. Who are you with?”
Vittal followed up, “I’m with New York 1. Sir, what is your objection to the bill?”
“Here is my suggestion. If you would like to be sort of a professional reporter…” Paul added before being cut off.
The reporter countered, “With all due respect sir, what is your objection to the 9/11 first responders bill?”
“If you’ll call and get an interview, that’d be a great idea,” the senator answered. “If you watch Fox News you’ll see that we explained exactly what the lies were.”
