Infighting between the Tea Party and the GOP establishment came to a head Sunday over the National Security Agency as Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) slammed Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) who, according to King, “doesn’t deserve to be a member of the United States Senate.”
King, a ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, appeared on Fox News on Sunday to discuss the National Security Agency and Paul’s lawsuit against the Obama administration and the spying agency. The New York Republican, who staunchly defends the NSA while Paul is a leading critic of it, tore into the 2016 hopeful, saying if his policies surrounding the NSA were enacted, millions of Americans would be dead.
“Rand Paul does not know what he is talking about. And Rand Paul is really spreading fear among the American people,” King said. “…To me, either he’s totally uninformed or he’s part of that ‘hate America’ crowd that I thought left us in the 1960s. In any event, he doesn’t deserve to be in the United States Senate for spreading that type of misperception and absolute lies to be honest with you.”
Paul announced Friday he would be filing a class action lawsuit against the Obama administration and the NSA for their surveillance programs.
King, on the other hand, stoutly defended the NSA’s actions, which were made public by whistleblower Edward Snowden, saying Americans’ privacy was not being violated despite arguments to the contrary. He claimed the agency was doing “exactly what it’s supposed to be doing.”
“It’s monitored by the courts, it’s monitored by the Justice Department and it’s monitored by the Congress,” he said.
The New York Republican, who’s hinted at a possible 2016 run for the White House, also addressed a letter sent to NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Sanders inquired as to whether or not the spy agency was conducting surveillance on members of Congress. In response, the NSA neither denied nor confirmed if they were, saying instead that elected officials enjoy the same privacy protections as all Americans.
King, though, said he believed the NSA should be collecting data from lawmakers just as they do from millions of Americans.
“I think members of Congress should be treated the same as everyone else,” he said. “If a member of Congress is talking to an Al Qaeda leader in Iraq or Afghanistan, why should that member of Congress be any different from any person on the street?”
Check out King’s comments below.
