“You’re Forgetting Who You Are As A Journalist”: Rand Paul Slams Stephanopoulos In Sunday Spat Over Election Integrity

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) took to ABC on Sunday morning with George Stephanopoulos to discuss election integrity of the 2020 election, in a discussion which immediately devolved into an inquisition during which Paul was repeatedly pressed to disavow clams that the election was stolen.

Paul not only pushed back – he put Stephanopoulos in his place, accusing the host of ‘inserting yourself in the middle’ and ‘forgetting who you are as a journalist.’

Stephanopoulos began by asking Paul to admit the “election was not stolen” – to which Paul responded by saying “The debate over whether or not there was fraud should occur. We never had any presentation in court where we ever looked at the evidence…”

Paul continued: “There were several states in which the law was changed by the Secretary of State and not the state legislature. To me those are clearly unconstitutional and I think there’s still a chance those do finally work their way up to the Supreme Court.”

“No election is perfect,” Stephanopoulos shot back, telling Paul there were “86 challenges filed by President Trump, all were dismissed”. As Paul tries to argue that many cases were dismissed for lack of standing and not due to examination of evidence, Stephanopoulos responds: “Can’t you just say the words ‘this election wasn’t stolen’?“

‘75% of Republicans want to look at election integrity,’ Paul responds. Stephanopoulos responds by saying that those 75% agree with him because they were “fed a big lie” from the President. 

Paul pushed back, telling Stephanopoulos: “You immediately say everything’s a lie instead of saying there’s two sides to everything. Historically what would happen is if I said I thought there was fraud, you’d interview someone else who said there wasn’t. But now you insert yourself in the middle and say that the absolute fact is that everything I’m saying is a lie.”

“You’re saying there’s no fraud and it’s all been investigated and that’s just not true,” Paul continues, with Stephanopoulos arguing at the same time. Paul then goes into specifics, detailing irregularities in states in like Wisconsin. “I plan on spending the next two years going around, state to state, fixing these problems,” Paul continues. “Let’s have an open debate. It’s a free country!”

“There has been no thorough examination of all states to see what problems we had and see if we could fix them,” Paul says, responding to Stephanopoulos’ claims that Bill Barr pronounced there was “no widespread election fraud”. 

“There’s two sides to every story,” Paul says. “Interview someone on the other side, but don’t insert yourself into the story to say we’re all liars.”

“You’re forgetting who you are as a journalist if you think there’s only one side,” Paul says. “A journalist would hear both sides and there are two sides to this story.”

You can watch the entire 6 minute exchange here:

Pressed repeatedly by @GStephanopoulos, Sen. Rand Paul won’t say the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, calls for investigation of fraud, but doesn’t provide evidence.

GS: “There are not two sides to this story. This has been looked at in every single state.” https://t.co/kEzanF2Ysi pic.twitter.com/DDufLZvwBB

— ABC News (@ABC) January 24, 2021

Election integrity aside, Paul has been a vocal critic of the Biden administration in recent days. On Saturday, we noted  Paul’s interview with Fox host Sean Hannity, where he pummeled the Biden administration’s decision to push for a $15 minimum wage increase that could put 4 million people out of work – leading the Kentucky Republican to exclaim:

“‘Why does Joe Biden hate Black teenagers?’ … Why does Joe Biden want to destroy all of these jobs?”

Paul comments come amid ramblings from various leftist economists who insist that there’s no impact on employment from such a drastic minimum wage hike…

…common sense (and historical experience) for anyone who has ever run an actual business is that raising costs on the lowest-skilled workers in your organization will ripple all the way up, forcing either higher prices to the end-user (eradicating the ‘living wage’ improvement) and or forcing layoffs as management hold margins and reduce costs (the least-skilled first).

Historically speaking, the black unemployment rate is twice that of whites, while minimum wage increases – as we’ve shown repeatedly over the last week – correlate with spikes in job losses just about every single time.

That’s not an “alternative” fact, that’s the awkward reality of ‘unintended consequences’ from nanny-state intervention write large for the last 70 years.

Paul also blasted Biden for canceling the Keystone XL oil pipeline:

“It’s kind of a strange beginning to an administration,” Paul said.

“You’re going to put your best foot forward and the first thing you say is, ‘This is how I’m going to kill jobs’ … ‘I’m going to kill thousands of jobs of the Keystone pipeline with ending it.'”

You can watch that full interview here: