Rand Paul Is Back After Assault – Here’s What He Says Is ‘Weird’ About Neighbor’s Attack

November 29, 2017

WRITER

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is back after allegedly being jumped by a neighbor who broke several of his ribs while the lawmaker was working on his lawn at his Kentucky home.

In his first TV interview since the incident, Paul didn’t detail a motive for the attack, simply saying that he couldn’t hear anything because he was protecting his ears while mowing and he never saw the neighbor coming. He said the real question was whether or not you can attack someone, not if the assault was politically motivated.

Why Don’t We Know a Motive for the Attack on Sen. Rand Paul?

“The weird thing is I haven’t talked to him in 10 years,” Paul said. “If someone mugs you, is it really justified for any reason?”

Pat and Stu debated the motivation behind Paul’s TV statement on today’s show, with Stu wondering if the senator is holding back because of an ongoing investigation into the incident.

This article provided courtesy of TheBlaze.

PAT: So, wow, that snowball continues to roll down the hill and gathers steam. Who knows where that will end? But also a sort of mysterious incident that's been kind of on the back burner for about a month now. The Rand Paul attack. The guy -- his next-door neighbor attacked him while he was getting off his riding lawn mower. He had earmuffs on to protect his hearing from the noise.

And the neighbor came racing across his lawn. And apparently slammed him into the tractor or the ground, hard enough to break six of his ribs.

STU: Jeez.

PAT: Now, here's Rand Paul's description of the attack from yesterday.

RAND: I was working in my yard with my earmuffs on, you know, to protect my hearing from the mower, and I had gotten off the mower, facing downhill. And the attacker came running. I never saw him. Never had a conversation. In fact, the weird thing is, I haven't talked to him in ten years.

PAT: That's just amazing.

STU: He has his headphones on. He's facing the other way. And there's a hill in front of him. And this guy runs and levels him at full speed without him even knowing it's coming, and he hasn't talked to the guy in ten years.

PAT: So bizarre. So bizarre.

He also talked about the motive behind the attack, sort of. Listen to this.

VOICE: Do you have any idea what was in his head?

RAND: Well, I didn't before the attack because we had no conversation.

After my ribs were broken, then he said things to me to try to indicate he was unhappy. But I think the -- I guess, to me, the bottom line is, it isn't so important -- if someone mugs you, is it really justified for any reason?

And so I think the more people belabored, oh, well, was it about yard clipping, was it because he hates Donald Trump, he hates you because you oppose Obamacare? You don't really know what's in someone's mind.

And so it may have some relevance. But for the most part, the real question should be, are you allowed to attack someone from behind in their yard when they're out mowing their grass?

PAT: That isn't the question. Because everyone knows the answer to it. No, of course not. That's not what we're saying.

On the one hand, he says, you can't know what's in someone's mind. Well, yeah, you do. Because he told you. And he said he told you. After he attacks -- why not tell us?

STU: Why not tell us?

PAT: Something really strange about that. I don't understand. Why?

STU: Yeah. I don't understand it either. Is it potentially that he's going to enter into legal action against this guy and doesn't want to talk about it publicly?

PAT: It could be.

STU: It certainly seems like he should. It seems like a worthwhile lawsuit. The idea that this guy would just come attack you for no reason in the middle of the yard though because he keeps -- he keeps -- he won't just say it.

PAT: Right.

STU: Just tell us what it is.

PAT: What did he say to you? Because he did explain it to him obviously. Because he said, he tried to explain to me why he was unhappy.

Well, why was he unhappy? What could be the reason for not telling, other than the lawsuit? But then maybe it's something embarrassing to Rand. I don't know.

STU: Fundamentally, of course, he's right, you can't just -- no matter what your complaint is, you can't just come and attack somebody in their yard when they're not looking. That's true. We all know that's true. That's not the fundamental question. Because it's too obvious. There's no intrigue to that question. We all get it.

Yes, his explanation here, whether it's politics, whether it is, you know, lawn clippings, whether it's something else, isn't all that important, as he should probably receive the same penalty either way.

That is of course not how our legal system is designed. Because our legal system says, if it's about politics, and he's attacking a senator about politics. It may be a federal crime, which may be much larger in penalty. A normal brawl with your neighbor might get you some prison time, depending how severe it is.

But when you're attacking a senator over political purposes, that's a totally different scale.

And that's why I think it really matters for this guy, because if that was his motivation, it might wind up being a much bigger deal for him.

PAT: Maybe he's -- maybe he doesn't want to make it a much bigger deal for him. Maybe it was politically motivated and he just doesn't want to say.

STU: It's weird.

PAT: We all have a tendency to start filling in the blanks, when the blanks aren't filled in for us. Because you just want to make sense of it. And we've had two situations lately, that the blanks haven't been filled in for us. The shooting in Las Vegas. And now this Rand Paul thing. So people are filling in the blanks.

STU: I'm glad you brought up the Vegas thing. Because what the hell is going on with that?

PAT: I don't know.

STU: 500 people were shot or more.

PAT: Yeah, more.

STU: And many died, obviously.

And --

PAT: We still don't know the time line. We don't know why he stopped shooting or when. You got the hotel version, and then you have the security version, and then you have the police version.

STU: And still nothing about this guy's motivation.

PAT: No.

STU: Very little from the people around him.

PAT: Which contributes to a bunch of conspiracy theories.

STU: Yeah. Which is dumb.

PAT: It is.

STU: You're right that human beings tend to fill in the blanks that are blank. Right? That's not necessarily good instinct though. People do a lot of crazy things.

PAT: So the kooks are filling in the blanks of the Vegas shooting, that these are crisis actors. And the shooting didn't actually happen. It's so absurd. So absurd.

Because we don't have the answer with Rand Paul, was that a crisis actor on Senator Paul's lawn mower? This didn't actually happen to him. It didn't happen.

STU: My belief was, it was not -- it was not a real lawn mower.

PAT: It was not a real lawn mower. That's what Senator Paul is trying to cover up. I don't have a real riding mower.

STU: Here's the thing, he was trying to get out of the house. Act like he was working.

PAT: I've done that before.

STU: In reality, he just had like a go-cart. It's not actually cutting the lawn. He just wanted to be out of the house.

PAT: Since he didn't get it finished. He had to tell his wife something.

STU: And he can't tell his wife. About lawn clippings because there was no lawn clippings. He wasn't mowing the lawn. That's what I believe happened.

PAT: I think you need to call Infowars.

STU: Oh, yeah.

PAT: Because I think that's probably accurate. I think we just stumbled on the truth right there. He wasn't actually mowing his lawn.

STU: Because, I mean, if you could get away with just going outside, turning on the mower, letting it run, and sitting on the other side, they hear the mower inside. They assume the grass is being cut.

PAT: Right.

STU: And in reality, you're still watching Netflix on your phone.

PAT: Yeah.

STU: That's not a bad approach.

Yeah. No. It's a weird thing. That is a strange story in that both of them, how do we not have more information? I guess with Rand Paul, it's one person. It's a bad attack. And he's a sitting US senator. It's a big deal. But it's not hundreds of people being shot and murdered for seemingly no apparent reason.

PAT: I still think -- I still think the -- the problem with the security guard is that he's -- he's maybe a dreamer, you know. He's here illegally.

Because he's been here I think most all of his life. But I'll bet he's an illegal alien. And nobody wants to say it. And that's probably why he isn't registered as a security guard. And Mandela bay doesn't want to say anything about hiring illegals and skipping the process and breaking the law. Because they had to be registered.

STU: He did do one interview.

PAT: He did one interview with Ellen, which was a softball interview, and she never got to the bottom of anything we wanted to know about.

STU: And he never wants to talk again. At some point, you would assume there's going to be an investigation where he's talking to authorities. And we'll eventually probably find that out.

It's amazing how the media -- this is not a minor thing. It's the worst mass shooting in history. Worst mass -- I shouldn't say in US history. Because go look at some communist regimes and see if there have been worst mass shootings than that. There have been. A lot of them, most of them worst mass shootings in history have all been done by governments. We should point out, something the left, when they talk about how the government should be controlling weapons should maybe learn that lesson.

But, yeah. This is a really, really bad one. An incredibly horrific story, with immense amounts of video too.

You know, there's one thing to have a mass shooting. We all hear those terrible stories. It's another thing -- we all feel like we kind of experience that one. When you feel like you're standing in the crowd watching Jason Aldean sing and all of a sudden people are being slaughtered around you, and there doesn't even seem to be an update, not even on a weekly basis -- we're getting nothing out of that story. It's very strange

PAT: Right. And it's almost two months now. It happened October 1st, right? So it's November 29th now. And two days -- it's December 1st. Two months from the event. And they filled in no blanks for us.

STU: Yeah. I would encourage you, if you're feeling the same way about this, to get a baseline. The New York Times put together an amazing piece of video and time line about when things happen and where things happen with video -- some video I had never seen before, of like cabdrivers that were pulling up to the Mandalay Bay, not knowing what was going on, just hearing the noises. I mean, and showing you where it was, what happened, at exactly what they think is the right time. Which, as you point out, there are some disagreements in the time line. But at least it gives you a general sense of what was happening, where it was happening. And some and some of that has been fleshed out. But still, motivation, nothing.

PAT: Nothing.

STU: Really, giant zilch. I mean, could this person have lived his entire life with no indication that he was going to do this and just do it? I guess it's possible.

But that's almost scarier in some ways. An Islamic extremist that does something like this, we all know, there are millions of Islamic extremists around the world, many of which have answered to pollsters that they want to kill innocent Americans.

PAT: Yeah.

STU: It's one thing to be dedicated to kill innocent Americans. It's another thing to say, you know what, I'm going to tell the pollster who just called me, you know what, yes, I would like to kill them. That's quite another -- that's quite another line.

Across the world and luckily the problem isn't as bad here obviously, but, you know, there are extremists all over the place that want to kill people.

And while it's terrible and dying is dying, you at least understand, there's something understandable about that.

I think it was Adam Lanza was the -- the guy in -- with the school in Sandy Hook. I think that was Adam Lanza. Sometimes I get these things confused. But one of the most terrible things about that, despite it being one of the worst crimes committed in American history probably. These are little children. Nothing to do with any of this. Anything.

But he seemingly -- guy didn't really have a story. You know, he was kind of -- he had some mental issues. You know, he -- he -- he played -- you know, he was obsessed with these shootings kind of.

That's kind of all we know. There really wasn't -- not that there's ever a satisfying answer to something like that. But at least, when there's an ideology behind it, you understand what occurred. And this one is even -- I mean, makes that one look like we have tons of information on it.

PAT: It's even more obscure.

STU: More obscure. It doesn't seem to be anything. Just, this guy had a bunch of weapons, and meticulously planned over a long period of time.

PAT: And a guy with access to $2 million. A wealthy guy, so strange.

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VIDEO: Both Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama are radicals, but there's one HUGE difference

Biden backs yet another criminal justice policy with disastrous consequences

The number of people serving life sentences now exceeds the entire prison population in 1970, according to newly-released data from the Sentencing Project. The continued growth of life sentences is largely the result of "tough on crime" policies pushed by legislators in the 1990s, including presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Biden has since apologized for backing those types of policies, but it seems he has yet to learn his lesson. Indeed, Biden is backing yet another criminal justice policy with disastrous consequences—mandatory drug treatment for all drug offenders.

Proponents of this policy argue that forced drug treatment will reduce drug usage and recidivism and save lives. But the evidence simply isn't on their side. Mandatory treatment isn't just patently unethical, it's also ineffective—and dangerous.

Many well-meaning people view mandatory treatment as a positive alternative to incarceration. But there's a reason that mandatory treatment is also known as "compulsory confinement." As author Maya Schenwar asks in The Guardian, "If shepherding live human bodies off to prison to isolate and manipulate them without their permission isn't ethical, why is shipping those bodies off to compulsory rehab an acceptable alternative?" Compulsory treatment isn't an alternative to incarceration. It is incarceration.

Compulsory treatment is also arguably a breach of international human rights agreements and ethical standards. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have made it clear that the standards of ethical treatment also apply to the treatment of drug dependence—standards that include the right to autonomy and self-determination. Indeed, according to UNODC, "people who use or are dependent on drugs do not automatically lack the capacity to consent to treatment...consent of the patient should be obtained before any treatment intervention." Forced treatment violates a person's right to be free from non-consensual medical treatment.

It's a useless endeavor, anyway, because studies have shown that it doesn't improve outcomes in reducing drug use and criminal recidivism. A review of nine studies, published in the International Journal of Drug Policy, failed to find sufficient evidence that compulsory drug treatment approaches are effective. The results didn't suggest improved outcomes in reducing drug use among drug-dependent individuals enrolled in compulsory treatment. However, some studies did suggest potential harm.

According to one study, 33% of compulsorily-treated participants were reincarcerated, compared to a mere 5% of the non-treatment sample population. Moreover, rates of post-release illicit drug use were higher among those who received compulsory treatment. Even worse, a 2016 report from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health found that people who received involuntary treatment were more than twice as likely to die of an opioid-related overdose than those with a history of only voluntary treatment.

These findings echo studies published in medical journals like Addiction and BMJ. A study in Addiction found that involuntary drug treatment was a risk factor for a non-fatal drug overdose. Similarly, a study in BMJ found that patients who successfully completed inpatient detoxification were more likely than other patients to die within a year. The high rate of overdose deaths by people previously involuntarily treated is likely because most people who are taken involuntarily aren't ready to stop using drugs, authors of the Addiction study reported. That makes sense. People who aren't ready to get clean will likely use again when they are released. For them, the only post-treatment difference will be lower tolerance, thanks to forced detoxification and abstinence. Indeed, a loss of tolerance, combined with the lack of a desire to stop using drugs, likely puts compulsorily-treated patients at a higher risk of overdose.

The UNODC agrees. In their words, compulsory treatment is "expensive, not cost-effective, and neither benefits the individual nor the community." So, then, why would we even try?

Biden is right to look for ways to combat addiction and drug crime outside of the criminal justice system. But forced drug treatment for all drug offenders is a flawed, unethical policy, with deadly consequences. If the goal is to help people and reduce harm, then there are plenty of ways to get there. Mandatory treatment isn't one of them.

Lindsay Marie is a policy analyst for the Lone Star Policy Institute, an independent think tank that promotes freedom and prosperity for all Texans. You can follow her on Twitter @LindsayMarieLP.

BOMBSHELL: 'It wasn't just Hunter,' Rudy Giuliani says Joe Biden was target of Ukraine corruption investigation — and he has the evidence to prove it

President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani joined Glenn Beck on Tuesday's radio program discuss the Senate's ongoing investigation into former vice president Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and reveal new bombshell documents he's currently releasing.

Giuliani told Glenn he has evidence of "very, very serious crime at the highest levels of government," that the "corrupt media" is doing everything in their power to discredit.

He also dropped some major, previously unreported news: not only was Hunter Biden under investigation in 2016, when then-Vice President Biden "forced" the firing of Ukraine's prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, but so was the vice president himself.

"Shokin can prove he was investigating Biden and his son. And I now have the prosecutorial documents that show, all during that period of time, not only was Hunter Biden under investigation -- Joe Biden was under investigation," Giuliani explained. "It wasn't just Hunter."

Watch this clip to get a rundown of everything Giuliani has uncovered so far.

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Revealing Bernie’s dark side — one 1980s quote at a time

For most Americans, the 1980s was marked by big hair, epic lightsaber battles, and school-skipping Ferris Bueller dancing his way into the hearts of millions.

But for Bernie Sanders — who, by the way, was at that time the oldest-looking 40-year-old in human history — the 1980s was a period of important personal milestones.

Prior to his successful 1980 campaign to become mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders was mostly known around the Green Mountain State as a crazy, wildly idealistic socialist. (Think Karl Marx meets Don Quixote.) But everything started to change for Sanders when he became famous—or, in the eyes of many, notorious—for being "America's socialist mayor."

As mayor, Sanders' radical ideas were finally given the attention he had always craved but couldn't manage to capture. This makes this period of his career particularly interesting to study. Unlike today, the Bernie Sanders of the 1980s wasn't concerned with winning over an entire nation — just the wave of far-left New York City exiles that flooded Vermont in the 1960s and 1970s — and he was much more willing to openly align himself with local and national socialist and communist parties.

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Over the past few weeks, I have been reading news reports of Sanders recorded in the 1980s — because, you know, that's how guys like me spend their Saturday nights — and what I've found is pretty remarkable.

For starters, Sanders had (during the height of the Soviet Union) a very cozy relationship with people who openly advocated for Marxism and communism. He was an elector for the Socialist Workers Party and promoted the party's presidential candidates in 1980 and 1984.

To say the Socialist Workers Party was radical would be a tremendous understatement. It was widely known SWP was a communist organization mostly dedicated to the teachings of Marx and Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution.

Among other radical things I've discovered in interviews Sanders conducted with the SWP's newspaper — appropriately named The Militant (seriously, you can't make this stuff up) — is a statement by Sanders published in June 1981 suggesting that some police departments "are dominated by fascists and Nazis," a comment that is just now being rediscovered for the first time in decades.

In 1980, Sanders lauded the Socialist Workers Party's "continued defense of the Cuban revolution." And later in the 1980s, Sanders reportedly endorsed a collection of speeches by the socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, even though there had been widespread media reports of the Sandinistas' many human rights violations prior to Sanders' endorsement, including "restrictions on free movement; torture; denial of due process; lack of freedom of thought, conscience and religion; denial of the right of association and of free labor unions."

Sanders also traveled to Nicaragua and met with socialist President Daniel Ortega. He later called the trip a "profoundly emotional experience."

Comrade Bernie's disturbing Marxist past, which is far more extensive than what can be covered in this short article, shouldn't be treated as a mere historical footnote. It clearly illustrates that Sanders' brand of "democratic socialism" is much more than a $15 minimum wage and calls for single-payer health care. It's full of Marxist philosophy, radical revolutionary thinking, anti-police rhetoric, and even support for authoritarian governments.

Millions of Americans have been tricked into thinking Sanders isn't the radical communist the historical record — and even Sanders' own words — clearly show that he is. But the deeper I have dug into Comrade Bernie's past, the more evident it has become that his thinking is much darker and more dangerous and twisted than many of his followers ever imagined.

Tomorrow night, don't miss Glenn Beck's special exposing the radicals who are running Bernie Sanders' campaign. From top to bottom, his campaign is staffed with hard-left extremists who are eager to burn down the system. The threat to our constitution is very real from Bernie's team, and it's unlike anything we've ever seen before in a U.S. election. Join Glenn on Wednesday, at 9 PM Eastern on BlazeTV's YouTube page, and on BlazeTV.com. And just in case you miss it live, the only way to catch all of Glenn's specials on-demand is by subscribing to Blaze TV.

Justin Haskins (Jhaskins@heartland.org) is editorial director of The Heartland Institute and editor-in-chief of StoppingSocialism.com.

Candace Owens blasts leftist cancel culture: 'Godless', 'societal atom bomb'

Candace Owens, BLEXIT founder and author of the upcoming book, "Blackout," joined Glenn Beck on Friday's GlennTV for an exclusive interview. available only to BlazeTV subscribers.

Candace dropped a few truth-bombs about the progressive movement and what's happening to the Democratic Party. She said people are practically running away from the left due to their incessant push to dig up dirt on anybody who disagrees with their radical ideology. She explained how -- like China and its "social credit score" -- the left is shaping America into its own nightmarish episode of "Black Mirror."

"This game of making sure that everyone is politically correct is a societal atom bomb. There are no survivors. There's no one that is perfect," Candace said. "The idea that humanity can be perfect is Godless. If you accept that there is something greater than us, then you accept that we a flawed. To be human is to be flawed."

Enjoy this clip from the full episode below:

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BlazeTV subscribers can watch the full interview on BlazeTV.com. Use code GLENN to save $10 off one year of your subscription.