Rand Paul Has Become Trump's Most Loyal Stooge
By Jonathan Chait
February 22, 2017
9:11 a.m.
The Republican Party has largely decided to cover for Donald Trump’s massive corruption, grotesque lies, and manifest unfitness for office. But few of them have gone quite so far, or quite so cravenly, as Rand Paul. The junior senator from Kentucky, and onetime hope of the extremely short-lived “libertarian moment” in American politics, has not only attached himself to Trump, but is actively snuffing out whatever faint stirrings of opposition his colleagues can muster.
While the GOP Congress has ignored the president’s self-enrichment, refusal to disclose his tax returns, and clear violations of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, some have expressed willingness to investigate his opaque ties to Russia. Paul is not one of them. And not only does he see no need for investigation on Russia, Paul has staked out a stance against any investigations, period, on the brutally frank grounds that it would impair the party’s legislative agenda. “I just don’t think it’s useful to be doing investigation after investigation, particularly of your own party,” he told “Kilmeade and Friends.” “We’ll never even get started with doing the things we need to do, like repealing Obamacare, if we’re spending our whole time having Republicans investigate Republicans.”
Many Republicans have made piecemeal excuses not to exercise the oversight function. Only Paul has elevated the practice of looking away from the crimes of the Executive branch to an actual principle of governance.
John McCain has staked out the most independent position, most recently likening Trump’s description of the media as “enemies of the people” to the words of a dictator. Paul is having none of it. Last weekend, Paul appeared on CNN to deliver a defense of Trump so fulsome that Breitbart has published it in its entirety. After repeatedly swatting away concerns about the president, Paul explained that McCain’s criticism of Trump’s authoritarian ravings were nothing but a cover for his ideological vendetta:
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He disagrees with Sessions on almost everything pertaining to civil liberties re incarceration and drug policy, yet he blamed Democrats for making him confirm Sessions. 
