WASHINGTON — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the longtime Senator and conservative grassroots leader from Kentucky, told Breitbart News exclusively that he believes the Democrats are “adrift” as a party without an identity right now. But, he warns, Republicans could face major risks and consequences in the upcoming midterm elections if they too lose their identity.
“I think for the moment they are adrift and can’t find their focus and they’re actually trying to focus on the one thing they have no chance of winning and that is the idea of whether criminals should be deported from our country,” Paul told Breitbart News when asked about the state of the Democratic Party.
“There’s no chance of them winning that debate. They lost it in the election but it’s also one of the things that I think that people largely approve of. They see gang members being deported from the country or being captured whereas no president was willing to do that before. So I think they’re going to lose on that issue. And I think the president should emphasize not only that issue but also the border,” Paul explained. “Ninety-five to 99 percent of the traffic across the border is gone really from the sheer force of presence of Donald Trump. Now that the border has been controlled, people know not to come. They know they’re going to be deported. They see the images on TV of these gang members being captured and deported. That just is sending a chill down the spine of all the people frankly with ill intent wanting to migrate up here because it looks like free pickings when you get here. I don’t think there’s ever been such a dramatic change as we’ve seen between Biden to Trump on that. The Democrats just don’t know what to do.”
One key moment for Democrats this year was the long filibuster by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), where he set a new record for floor speech time in the chamber. While Booker did in fact beat out the late Strom Thurmond’s record filibuster, the fact that hardly anyone knows why he was speaking for that long on the floor a couple months later is particularly deflating for Democrats. Paul’s longest filibuster, on the other hand, is still remembered more than a decade after his speech in 2013 opposing the nomination of John Brennan to be CIA director during Barack Obama’s presidency. Paul’s marathon speech against Brennan kicked off a modern era of filibusters, and other earnest senators have followed his lead since then. But none, perhaps, was as memorable as Paul’s huge stand against Brennan. Asked about this, Paul remembered the speech— noting that he similarly opposed James Comey’s nomination to be FBI director — while pointing how right he was in hindsight.
“One of the things we remind people of is my filibuster in 2013 was against John Brennan,” Paul told Breitbart News. “I ended up being one of the few people, maybe the only one, to vote against John Brennan. I also voted against James Comey as well. So I think I was prescient in understanding how bad they were before others did. Really, so much has come out about Comey and the recent stuff with his little seashell thing that he apparently thought was funny, but a lot of other people thought was a direct call for physical harm if not assassination. I think that Comey’s going to get his justice deserved over time, I think the way he’s remembered. I think he was, and he’s just like so many of these prosecutors who have abused their power, he came to fame through that New York office. He came to fame by prosecuting that ‘dangerous criminal’ Martha Stewart. I would say that a lot of people look back on what he did to Martha Stewart as an abuse of power and he didn’t learn any lesson from that other than it got him to the top, it got him all the way to the top of the FBI.”
While lamenting Comey’s disastrous career, Paul points out the problems within the intelligence community are bigger than a few bad actors. “So, I think good riddance [to Comey] but we shouldn’t let anyone forget how dishonest they are — the 51 people who signed the letter on the Hunter laptop were all prominent people in our government. They were the head of the CIA, the FBI, you name it. I am looking forward, and I’ve gotten to know Kash Patel some — I am looking forward to the full exposure of the Operation Crossfire Hurricane and what went on with that. I’ve been convinced for a long time that our intelligence agencies requested help from foreign intelligence agencies to go after Trump because it’s illegal for our CIA or our FBI to go after politicians in our country. What they did, I think, in a roundabout way is asked England and other countries to spy. So when you had those random occurrences in bars with the Australian ambassador or other people with Papadopoulos and Carter Page, that I think when there were these random occurrences where people were getting into conversation with them that it wasn’t random. They were organized by our people. Whether or not they’ll actually find a paper thread, if it was at the very top and it was Comey or Brennan or these people, my guess is there may not be a paper trail because it’s essentially something you could be imprisoned for. It’s illegal for our intelligence agencies to ask other intelligence agencies to do our dirty business. I think it happens more than you would think. Very rarely do they go after an individual like Donald Trump, but I think it’s not uncommon for our people just to ask for information on Americans in general. This is the danger of some of this cooperation — they call it the Five Eyes — between our allies, but they’re also I think looking and snooping on Americans who don’t deserve it.”
While Democrats are “adrift” in his view, they are not taking the steps that Republicans who faced a similar identity crisis after Obama’s 2012 reelection had taken. They are not, Paul noted, taking on intra-party debates over issues and causes, and they are not challenging their leadership. Republicans, in that period of time that led up to the 2016 election, did in fact have those fights — like Paul’s stand against Brennan, other similar major fights, and even key primaries and intra-party battles that led to the downfalls of party leaders like then-Speaker John Boehner and then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
“I think our resurgence in that period of time was an ideological one that was longstanding but came to the surface,” Paul told Breitbart News. “The idea of limited government, constitutional government, balanced budgets — this Tea Party movement — it wasn’t sort of like, ‘Hey guys, in the after action report let’s decide what we do to get back.’ It really was a spontaneous movement. It was unhappiness in the Republican ranks with Republican leadership. It was also unhappiness with the whole system — the bailouts of the banks in 2008 and 2009, that kind of thing Democrats and Republicans came together to do it. John McCain and others came forward and they were all for the bank bailouts and the grassroots wasn’t. We also had a lot of resistance, the big radio hosts, Rush Limbaugh, Hannity and all were part of an organizing force. This thing was a movement that started with my dad and his supporters as well. But it grew into this massive movement. You’re right—they were heady times. We were winning all kinds of races. We won congressional seats. Looking back, it’s disappointing to me — it’s great that we now have Donald Trump as president but I don’t see the unifying force that we’re unified either in the Tea Party movement of believing in balanced budgets or less spending.”
Rand remains focused on the future of the movement. “What will happen in the next couple months is the Big Beautiful Bill, which I support a lot of, I don’t support the additional $5 trillion in debt and that’s going to be attached in the bill. That’s a hard place for me as I support much of what’s in the bill, tax cuts, spending cuts, plus more spending cuts if we can get them. But I can’t reconcile myself to adding $5 trillion in debt, raising the debt ceiling. Really, this year, the debt’s going to be $2.2 trillion and the Republicans have largely continued the Biden spending levels. They’re anticipating $5 trillion in two years, and that means next year’s deficit that some people are saying it’s going to grow to over $3 trillion a year again. It’s because we need to have more force of character to be against spending. The fact we’ve limited ourselves to not really looking at the entitlements just doesn’t leave that much spending we can look at. My fear is that when this bill passes that the ramifications a year out, two years out, will be, ‘My goodness, what happened to DOGE? What happened to the spending cuts? Why is the deficit so big still?’ So I am working very hard to make sure there is still at least a part of the party — and it doesn’t have to be anti-Donald Trump because I’m for him in so many ways — but it also means people still have to stand up and present their own ideas of what they’re for. If we don’t have that, I think all of a sudden if we have a massive amount of debt and Republicans are for it, who’s left to be opposed to it? Democrats certainly don’t care about the debt. Once Republicans are on record as supporting the debt, who’s left? So this still continues to be a big project for me.”
So Paul believes that the left’s incompetence in doing similar things inside the Democratic Party means Republicans, if they stay true to their principles and beliefs, can defy history heading into the 2026 midterm elections and hold their U.S. House and U.S. Senate majorities.
“I think the left is adrift and it’s going to be difficult for them to come back. The fight is in like 30 seats, there’s only like 30 seats that are viable battleground seats in the House and maybe a handful in the Senate,” Paul said. “It’s decided on those. It ends up being decided by voters that are closer to the middle, although there’s a part of it that is decided by our core. If our core sees the DOGE cuts failing to be really absorbed and counted, if it sees a rescissions package that never comes or is voted down, there can be a demoralizing effect on our side, too. So, if you lose 1 or 2 percent of the hardcore right and they don’t show up to vote, that can make a difference in the battleground situations. So I think we try to appease, sometimes, the moderate wing of our party by saying, ‘Oh no, we won’t cut any spending.’ But at the same it frustrates those of us who actually believe the spending should be cut and does it dampen that enthusiasm? I still think it’s going to be very close. The midterms, historically the ruling party and the president lose seats. So, it’ll be miraculous — I think Trump has seemingly unending energy to campaign and so if he’s out on the road campaigning I think that will help. But the districts they’re going to have trouble though are the ones he didn’t win or some he might have barely won. But I think we have to be true to who we are. That’s the best thing to win.”
But on that note, as it stands, Paul opposes the Big Beautiful Bill that contains President Donald Trump’s core agenda items — at least the version that passed the House — and he said he thinks leadership needs to redraft it to significantly cut down the length of time for which it expands the debt ceiling. Paul said he does in fact support big parts of the Big Beautiful Bill, but believes the inclusion of a two-year debt ceiling hike is a nonstarter.
“I support the tax cuts. I voted for them in 2017,” Paul said. “I support making the tax cuts permanent. I support and voted for basically allowing the tips, the no tax on tips, and in fact it passed the Senate unanimously. I am hoping they will do that in the House and take it out of the Big Beautiful Bill and do it separately by unanimous consent. If we do that, it actually makes the bill a little easier in terms of the accounting numbers if that part is taken out. I’m for the tax cuts, for making the tax cuts permanent, I’m for as many spending cuts as we can get Republicans to vote for but even if that’s not perfect I’d still vote for the tax cuts and the spending cuts. The thing I am adamantly opposed to is raising the debt ceiling by $5 trillion. I’ve proposed an alternative: Instead of $5 trillion which is estimated to be two years worth of debt, I’ve said let’s do three months worth of debt because I don’t trust the Republican leadership to enact spending cuts. We’d give them three months worth, which is about $500 billion — which is hard to believe that $500 billion is only three months of borrowing — borrow for three months and then have the debate again. I have the opposite opinion of what many others have. People say ‘we don’t want to vote on the debt ceiling, it’s embarrassing, let’s just do two years and then we only have to vote once during the entire Trump administration.’ I’d vote on it every day if I had the choice. Three months, three or four or five months, it’s more reasonable. The powers that be get conservatives to succumb and vote for something that’s not conservative by promising them ‘you know we’re going to do the right thing.’ The Speaker was in our lunch and he says, ‘Oh yeah, after the midterms you just won’t believe all the spending cuts and things I’m going to be for.’ So it’s like, ‘Oh we’re not going to do that now? We’re going to do that in two years?’ This is the promise of leadership. My other favorite metaphor they use is, ‘Oh, when an aircraft carrier is going in a direction it takes a while to turn it around.’ Who uses these excuses? Leadership — over and over again. Mike Johnson is full of these excuses. ‘It takes a while to turn the aircraft carrier around.’ This bill is not going to do it because this bill, they’re not going to get significant cuts in it. We’re going to get the tax cuts, but then we’re going to raise the debt ceiling $5 trillion which means virtually inevitably they’re going to borrow $5 trillion in the next two years. So we have to do better. If they strip out the debt ceiling, and made it a separate vote, I would vote for the bill and even with imperfect aspects of the bill I would vote for it. So I’m for most of the bill, I’m just not for raising the debt ceiling. The president has insisted the debt ceiling be put on it. This is the first time conservatives will be on record as supporting a debt ceiling. The conservatives will own the debt after this. This will be the largest increase in the debt ceiling ever — this will be historically the largest ever increase in the debt ceiling. As conservatives, for the last 20 or 30 or 40 years, we’ve been the champions of not raising the debt ceiling and not accumulating this massive debt. So, I have a real problem with this and it’s not just symbolic. To me this means if you vote for this you own the debt and you lose your moral high ground. Others seem to not care anymore and say, ‘Oh, you’re going to raise the debt ceiling anyway let’s just do it.’ But I think it’s important there are at least some voices left who have the moral high ground to say, ‘We’re for limited, constitutional government and balanced budgets.’ That’s what I fear is a real problem with this. But otherwise I would vote for the bill if the debt ceiling were made separate.”
Asked specifically if that means he would vote against the House version of the plan, he said he vote no on that. Paul’s vote might not be needed in the end by Senate GOP leadership so they may be able to get it done without him, but Paul signaled it is possible that some other Senate Republicans from the conservative wing of the conference may end up banding together with him to force changes to it. But as it’s currently structured with a two-year, $5 trillion debt ceiling increase, Paul is a no on the legislation.
“It depends,” Paul said when asked if he can get to a yes on the Big Beautiful Bill. “What I’ve been telling conservatives on the Senate side as some of them have misgivings about the spending levels, what I say is, all it takes is four conservatives not to tank the bill, but to go to leadership and say if the three of us and one more sat down with John Thune and said, ‘We’re only voting for it if the debt ceiling is six months worth of debt ceiling and we’re only voting for it if the spending level is half a trillion less than it is,’ they would have to do it. We don’t use that leverage. Instead, people make it out to be, ‘Are you for or against the president? Do you support Donald Trump or not?’ Well, I do support Donald Trump and I support most of the bill. I’m his biggest defender on foreign policy. But at the same time I want conservative government so I have to fight for what I believe in, and I could be for the bill if we could either separate out the debt ceiling or reduce it to only a few months worth of borrowing. But I can’t do that by myself. I don’t have the leverage to change the bill by myself. There are three or four others who say that they want to negotiate. But as of yet the three or four of us haven’t come together on a unified plan to be able to try to change the bill.”
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