June 7, 2015

As we've discussed here over and over again, Rep. Peter King really doesn't like Sen. Rand Paul, so I guess it should come as no big surprise that he laid into him for his latest stunt on the Senate floor where he forced the expiration of the Patriot Act.

Heaven forbid a politician is grandstanding on the floor of the House or Senate and using it to raise money. When have we ever seen that happen?

Here's King in full attack mode on this week's Fox News Sunday.

WALLACE: Congressman King, of course, this all comes the same week that Congress voted to reform, not to end, but to reform and to some degree restrict the government's bulk data collection of our phone records.

And after that vote in the Senate, you put out this tweet, which I’d like to put on the screen. You wrote, "Today's Senate NSA vote is a victory for America, for freedom over ignorance and defeat for ISIS, Edward Snowden and Rand Paul."

Now, I don't have to tell you, you've gotten a lot of blowback for, some degree, linking ISIS and Rand Paul. Do you want to take this back?

KING: Absolutely not. What Rand Paul did was absolutely disgraceful. Listen, Adam and I, we have difference over the NSA. Those reforms, those changes, they were debated, they were worked on. And the fact is that 99 percent of the Senate wanted the debates to go forward. Rand Paul actually wanted to shut down the NSA for several days, serving no purpose other than for him to use to raise money for his presidential campaign.

That went beyond the limits of intelligent debate, of rational debate, and to me, it violated his position as a senator. We can have differences. We can debate them. We can work them out. You can vote against NSA if you want to.

But to use your one person power to unilaterally shut it down, knowing it’s going to be reopened in several days. So, all he was doing was hurting American security, and at the same time asking people to send him contributions, that was shameful and disgraceful.

I'm sure King would rather have his fellow Republicans stick to making money from fearmongering that the terrorist are coming to kill us all and military contractors sending them contributions while they threaten to go invade a few more countries, instead of making a big fuss about the spying and invasion of everyone's privacy.

[ad]

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon