Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.)David Becker/ZumaPress.com
Last week my colleague Tasneem Raja and I published a map highlighting Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain’s long, loud history of proposing American military interventions in foreign countries. (His 2000 “rogue-state rollback” strategy, for instance, called for American-backed regime change in North Korea, Iraq, and Libya.) Apparently, it struck a nerve with McCain’s colleagues. On Friday, in an interview with Buzzfeed‘s McKay Coppins, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, one of the party’s loudest anti-war voices, highlighted our guide while taking a dig at McCain’s push for military intervention in Syria:
“There was a funny article the other day in Mother Jones—did you see it? About one of my colleagues?” he asked.
He was trying to do the polite, senatorial thing by not mentioning his “colleague” by name. But when his vague prompt was met with a blank look during an interview with BuzzFeed, he scrapped the pretense of diplomacy and charged forward.
“It ranked the different countries on how eager Sen. [John] McCain wanted to be involved [militarily],” he explained, not even attempting to contain his amusement. “So, like, for getting involved in Syria, there’s five Angry McCains. For getting involved in the Sudan, there’s two Angry McCains. And there’s a little picture of him. You know, he was for getting involved to support [former Libyan president Muammar] Gaddafi before he was for overthrowing Gaddafi. He was for supporting [former Egyptian president Hosni] Mubarak before he was for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood before he was for supporting the generals.”
You can read Coppins’ full piece here.
