Sen. Rand Paul: Trump’s Secretary of State Must Understand ‘Iraq War Was a Mistake’

Rand Paul with U.S. flag backdrop

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) talked with SiriusXM host Matt Boyle on Tuesday’s Breitbart News Daily about his hopes for President-elect Donald Trump’s foreign policy, as expressed through his choice for secretary of state.

Paul said he has “looked at the Secretary of State position as probably one of the most important picks that will come up” and hoped Trump would choose “somebody who understands that the Iraq War was a mistake.”

As one of ten Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Paul’s vote could be decisive, should all nine Democrats on the committee stand together against Trump’s nominee.

“Regime change hasn’t made us safer, that in order to build … here at home, to rebuild it, we can’t build and spend billions of dollars overseas building other people’s infrastructure,” Paul contended. “Some of the people he’s appointed, I think, have understood this. General Flynn has said that the historical lesson of the Iraq War was that it was a strategic failure, so I think Flynn gets it, and I’m hoping he’ll give him that advice as his national security adviser.”

“I’m really hopeful that they’ll end up picking a secretary of state who really understands the Iraq War was a mistake, a strategic failure, and it actually made Iran stronger. The crazy thing about the neocons up here – people like Bolton and Giuliani – is they never got the message, or the understanding of the Iraq War,” he said, referring to former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, two potential secretary of state candidates.

“They think, ‘Oh, Iran is a real problem,’ but they don’t realize that the Iraq War made Iran more of a problem. Until they understand that, I think we should try to keep the neocons out of our government,” Paul declared.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.

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