WASHINGTON, D.C. — Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) told reporters this morning on his way into work that he was “absolutely okay” with President Donald Trump ordering an airstrike against Syria, just a day after a horrific gas attack was perpetrated in the same country. Paul said that “over the course of the last eight years” he might have been more a “stickler for presidents following the Constitution,” but now that a Republican is president, not so much.
“All of a sudden,” Paul said, “it’s like all that principled standing I was doing to insist the last guy notify Congress before committing acts of war just…poof! Vanished into thin air, really.”
Sen. Paul said that the more he thinks about the airstrike, the more okay with it he is. He said that even though it would “have been nice” for Trump to address Congress and ask for permission, he feels that it’s “close enough” that Trump warned Russian President Vladimir Putin, essentially getting his permission to conduct the airstrike. Paul said that it’s “less important for the American people” to be kept informed as to what their government is doing in their name than it is to “keep the guy that got you there happy.”
“I mean, we don’t bite the hand that feeds us,” Paul said, “so why wouldn’t he warn Vladimir first? Makes total and complete sense to me. Sure, he could have, like, followed the Constitution and gotten Congress to approve an act of war, and believe me at any other time in the last eight years I’d be climbing up the walls if the president acted unilaterally and only warned one of our chief adversaries instead of talking to Congress first. But you know, Republican, or whatever. You get my point.”
Mr. Paul said that during the 2016 presidential campaign he “pulled so many PR stunts with the Constitution” that he feels pretty confident about what is constitutional and what isn’t.
“Oh, the airstrike was definitely not, in the strictest sense of the word constitutional,” Paul said, “but when the fuck have I ever cared about things being constitutional? What? What’s that you say? My father and I have amassed a cult following of young, white, male libertarians precisely because we’ve built a reputation for caring first, foremost, and only about the Constitution and convincing them we want it followed exactly? What’s that over there?!”
Senator Paul pointed his finger off to the horizon. By the time reporters had turned back around, he was gone. Several eyewitnesses say they did see what looked like a squirrel or raccoon, or perhaps a tiny man with a small, woodland creature like a squirrel or raccoon on his head, scurrying up the steps of the Rotunda into the capitol building.
Senator Paul declined further comment.
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