Kentucky senator on vaccine hesitancy and enforcing deportations
(CBS, KYMA/KECY) - Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) spoke to Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about vaccine hesitancy.
Brennan asked Paul if picking Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Service (HHS) and Dave Weldon to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), both of whom, according to Brennan, have been "publicly critical of some particular vaccines," will erode trust in vaccinations, to which Paul said:
"I think all of us can agree that there's an increase of vaccine hesitancy. I think it comes from people not believing what the government is telling them. The fact that the CDC committee for vaccines and the FDA committee for vaccines said for COVID boosters that you should take a booster if you're over 65 and yet the Biden administration, Rochelle Walensky, actually politicized that, didn't follow the signs and said you should boost your six-month-old. And the American public is rejecting this. Only about 20% of the American public of all ages is taking the COVID booster because the government hasn't been honest with us. That dishonesty has led to vaccine hesitancy."
During the interview, Brennan and Paul talked about the Trump administration's immigration policies, with Brennan saying that President-Elect Trump plans to use the military and have them act as "immigration agents." When asked if he believes if that's lawful, Paul said:
"I'm 100% supportive of going after the 15,000 murderers, the 13,000 sexual assault perpetrators, rapists, all these people. Let's send them on their way to prison or back home to another prison. So I would say All-points bulletin, all in but you don't do it with the Army because it's illegal. We've had a distrust of putting the army into our streets, because the police have a difficult job, but the police understand the Fourth Amendment. They have to go to Judges. They have to get warrants. It has to be specific. And so, I'm for removing these people, but I would do it through the normal process of domestic policing. Now, I would say that the mayor of Denver, if he's going to resist federal law, which there's a longstanding history of the supremacy of federal law, he's going to resist that it will go all the way to the Supreme Court. And I would suspect that he would be removed from office. I don't know whether or not there'd be a criminal prosecution for someone resisting federal law, but he will lose. And people need to realize that what he is- what he is offering, is a form of insurrection, where the states resist the federal government. Most people objected to that and rejected that long ago. So I think the mayor of Denver is on the wrong side of history, and really, I think will face legal ramifications if he doesn't obey the federal law."
To watch more of Brennan's interview with Paul, click here.
