President Donald Trump publicly thanked Sen. Rand Paul on Twitter Tuesday for defending his comments made during his press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin Monday in Helsinki, Finland.
“Thank you Rand Paul, you really get it!” Trump wrote on Twitter, noting Paul’s response to the establishment hysteria over Trump’s reluctance to fully back the American intelligence community.
“The President has gone through a year and a half of totally partisan investigations – what’s he supposed [to] think?” Paul said in his defense of the president, according to Trump’s Twitter message:
Paul’s defense stood out as many of his Republican colleagues criticized the president, including Never Trump senators, such as Ben Sasse, Jeff Flake, and Bob Corker. Even occasional allies of the president, such as Lyndsey Graham, Marco Rubio, and Tom Cotton, criticized Trump’s remarks.
Paul appeared on CBS on Tuesday morning to criticize Republican neocons and Democrats for disparaging the meeting even before it took place.
He praised Trump for meeting with adversaries, citing the need to prevent World War III.
“We have to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, and if we’re only going to talk to people who have perfect constitutional republics, we’re going to have a very small audience, and we’re going to have a lot of potential conflicts with no outlet for diplomacy,” he said.
Paul also appeared on CNN on Monday afternoon to defend the president, when seemingly no one in Washington wanted the job.
He prodded the media’s solitary focus on the special counsel investigation into Russia’s attempt to influence the election.
“We’ve made this all about the sour grapes of Hillary Clinton losing the election, and it’s all about partisan politics now,” he said. “This is truly the Trump derangement syndrome that motivates all of this.”