Immediately after last night's Republican presidential debate on CNN, Rand Paul turned to Fox News host Sean Hannity to spin his performance during the national security focused debate and to call out the "outlandish" proposals of frontrunner Donald Trump, but the Kentucky senator was met with some rather forceful resistance from the loud mouth war hawk.
Paul used his opening statement at last night's debate to directly challenge his dominant and highly controversial de facto party leader. “The question is, How do we keep America safe from terrorism? Trump says we ought to close that Internet thing. The question really is, What does he mean by that? Like they do in North Korea? Like they do in China?”
Admitting that Trump's call for "closing down the Internet" may potentially be unconstitutional, Hannity pushed Paul to agree with Trump's calls for a more beefed up and tighter security state.
"I'm just not for sweeping things," Paul pushed back, reiterating that many of Trump's proposals are unconstitutional. "Donald Trump's talking about closing down the Internet. To close the Internet would violate the Constitution and would specifically violate the First Amendment."
Noting that Trump has also promised to "kill the terrorists' families," Paul argued that killing 2-year-old children actually "goes against what America stands for."
Trump's plan "goes against the the Geneva Convention," Paul stated. To which, Hannity interjected: "I'm not so sure if I agree with all the Geneva Conventions and whether or not other countries follow those rules.
"There's a separate debate," he concluded, shrugging off Trump's call for the wholesale killing of families.
"I think if we got an opportunity to take out an evil foreign leader, that we'd be wise to do so," Hannity mused, continuing to push Paul on the reasonableness of Trump's national security policies.
Watch the interview below, via Media Matters:
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