On Fox News this morning, Rand Paul publicly discussed the attack that occurred last night in Lexington, KY before the Senate debate, when a number of his supporters dragged a MoveOn protester to the ground, and one stomped on her head. During his appearance, he called for civility, and described the incident as something that should not have happened. But he did not explicitly condemn the attack itself.
“We want everybody to be civil and want the issue, the campaign to be about issues,” Paul said.
He added:
When we arrived there was enormous passion on both sides and it was something where you walked into a daze of lights flashing, people yelling and screaming, bumping up. There was a bit of a crowd control problem. I don’t want anybody, though, to be involved in things that are not civil. I think it should always be about issues. It’s an unusual situation to have so many people, so passionate on both sides, jockeying back and forth and it wasn’t something I liked or anybody liked about that situation. So I hope in the future it’s going to be better
MoveOn has called on Paul to condemn the attack, but neither this, nor his official statement goes that far.
Watch the video below:
Brian Beutler
Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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