Kentucky Senator and Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul stated, “we think if they give us the same treatment that Carly Fiorina was given last time, that you measure from debate to debate, that we actually do meet the criteria already” in response to questions over whether he would make the stage for CNN’s debate on Friday’s “O’Reilly Factor” on the Fox News Channel.
Rand said, “Well, we think if they give us the same treatment that Carly Fiorina was given last time, that you measure from debate to debate, that we actually do meet the criteria already. So, you know, we’ll have those discussions and we’ll see what comes from it. But we hope that we’re treated fairly. I have every expectation that I will be treated fairly, but we want the same and equal treatment that other candidates have gotten in the past. We have a first-tier campaign, and we don’t plan on being labeled by the mainstream media anything less.”
Earlier, Rand addressed remarks by fellow GOP candidate Donald Trump about closing up parts of the Internet and “foolish people” citing the First Amendment. He stated, “It’s the first time I’ve heard people called foolish who want to defend your right to continue to have freedom of speech. No, I think it’s one of our precious liberties, and it scares me to think of an authoritarian getting in charge of our country who would say, ‘Oh, we just need to police the Internet and don’t let people say things that we might disagree with.’ No, I think we need to defend the country, but eliminating the things that we stand for like freedom of speech is not the way to go about it.”
He added, “I think we should do good investigation. So, for example, I’m all for looking at the records of terrorists. I’ve only asked for one thing that we ought to do, which is constitutional. Ask a judge for a warrant, put an individual’s name on it, so I want to look at more records of individual terrorist suspects, but I don’t want to look at every American’s records.”
Rand also said, “I don’t think we ought to have a religious test for who comes to the country, but also, at the same time, I think Hillary Clinton saying — or not being able to say who the enemy is, not declaring the words ‘radical Islam’ is equally as bad. what i have proposed is actually a stoppage or a moratorium on immigration from about 34 countries that have radical Islamists, or terrorist movements, because we need to know who is coming here and what their intentions are.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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