When NOTUS asked Sen. Rand Paul to describe his relationship with President Donald Trump last week, he said, “I don’t think terrible.”
Two days later in a post on Truth Social, Trump called Paul a “sick Wacko.”
Until that point, Paul had been the rare Republican who had gone against Trump this term and escaped Trump’s public criticism. The Kentucky senator believed that despite his vote against reconciliation, his feud with Vice President JD Vance over a U.S. strike on a boat off the coast of Venezuela, his legislation to “restore congressional authority over trade” and his opposition to a Republican-led short-term funding bill to end a government shutdown, that Trump harbored begrudging admiration for his consistency.
“I think he also understands where I am,” Paul said Wednesday. “I think there is a certain amount of respect for people who stick to their guns.”
His fellow Senate Republicans told NOTUS last week that they didn’t mind his “no” votes on the bill to open the government, which his critics call principled. And Trump, who is unafraid to shame his critics, had not publicly said he was bothered by them. So, Paul thought there might still be room for his kind of stubborn resistance to conform with MAGA consensus.
When NOTUS spoke with Paul Wednesday (pre-Trump invective), he described a relationship with the president that was not close but certainly not bad. Paul recounted his recent contact with the president, noting that the two men golfed over the summer. After Paul voted against the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” in July — which Paul still dubs the “Not So Beautiful Bill” — he said the two men “didn’t have words” about it.
Paul recalled one public spat with Trump this summer when he accused the president of disinviting him to a White House picnic. But Paul said he was pleased with the resolution: a Truth Social post lavishing praise on the Kentuckian.
“He also said my wife was beautiful, which, how can I turn that down?” he asked.
Trump, Rand said, “acknowledged that I was maybe the toughest vote in the history of the Senate. I take that as a compliment.”
In the end, Paul was wrong. It wasn’t a compliment at all.
“Whatever happened to ‘Senator’ Rand Paul?” Trump said in the Friday Truth Social post just over 48 hours after NOTUS spoke with Paul.
“He was never great, but he went really BAD!” Trump continued. “I got him elected, TWICE (in the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky!), but he just never votes positively for the Republican Party.”
“He’s a nasty liddle’ guy,” Trump added, “much like “Congressman” Thomas Massie, aka Rand Paul Jr., also of Kentucky (which I won three times, in massive landslides!), a sick Wacko, who refuses to vote for our great Republican Party, MAGA, or America First. It’s really weird!!!”
Somehow, in a party where criticism of Trump can be tantamount to treason to the president,and where Trump-backed primary challenges can excommunicate even the most devout conservatives, Paul thought he was the exception. But, apparently, Paul’s sense that Trump would tolerate his intransigence was foolish. Dashed in four sentences.
(Paul’s office did not respond to a request for comment following Trump’s post.)
When NBC News asked Paul about Trump’s post on Sunday, he said “I think the problem is this, is that in Washington, what I represent, some people describe as ‘unusual,’ and the president describes it as ‘weird’ that I’m for less debt and balanced budgets.”
“But, you know, when I come home to Kentucky, or when I travel around the states, people come up to me and say, ‘Stick to your guns. You’re the only voice up there, Republican or Democrat, who is still talking about the debt, still talking about balanced budgets,’” he continued.
Paul said he did not take Trump’s post “ too seriously.”
“I’ve known the president for over a decade,” he said. “I’ve played golf with him many, many times. I enjoy his company. I think he’s one of the best presidents, if not the best president of my lifetime.”
“I’m still one of his best supporters if he’s willing to have it.”
Paul has tangled with Trump before. The two men shared the 2015 presidential debate stage. And the presidential reprimand is unlikely to stop Paul’s hardline pursuit of fiscal restraint, even if it bucks Trump.
Paul told NOTUS that the only spending bill he could support would be one with “spending levels that had less debt next year than last year.”
But ironically, even if Paul is persona non grata to Trump, in the Senate — where most Republicans are loath to do or say anything that the White House could perceive as a slight — his colleagues told NOTUS they are comfortable with Paul’s ‘no’ votes and are willing to defend it on the record.
“He’s one of the cooler guys to hang out with,” Sen. Kevin Cramer told NOTUS after a Senate GOP lunch last week in which he said he sat near Paul.
“One thing about Rand, he’s not just a contrarian,” Cramer continued. “He really is a principled, libertarian-leaning conservative. He’s always so consistent. Would we love to pull him over every now and then when we need one more vote? Sure. But Rand is true to his conscience.”
Paul has long carried the banner of fiscal conservatism in the upper chamber, literally writing the book on the Tea Party’s ambitions in Washington. He is a reliable bulwark against raising the debt ceiling, extending spending levels via continuing resolutions and passing supplemental emergency funding legislation, like during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Republican senators are used to Paul, and considered his 10 votes against the GOP continuing resolution just par for the course, even as Trump blasts Democratic leaders as “weak” and attacks them with derogatory deepfakes for refusing to back the continuing resolution. Republicans need five Senate Democrats to join them to fund the government. With Paul on their side, they would need just four — notably, the same number of Senate Democrats retiring next year.
So far, the Senate Republicans haven’t directed the same degree of venom at Paul as Trump has.
“Rand has a mind of his own,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a member of Republican leadership, told NOTUS. “I think he’s exerting it.”
Sen. John Cornyn called Paul’s record “just part of what you have to deal with in the Senate.”
“Every senator is an independent actor,” Cornyn told NOTUS. “While I disagree with a lot of those votes, I certainly don’t disagree he has a right to cast those, and accountability doesn’t come from other members of Congress, it comes from your constituents.”
Paul’s constituents in Kentucky have backed him up on the ballot. Paul’s political director Doug Stafford posted on X after Trump’s Truth Social attack on Friday that he won by six points in 2010, five years before Trump’s first presidential campaign. He won again in 2016 without Trump’s support by 15 points and in 2022 with Trump’s endorsement by 24 points.
“He has supported Trump most often, and when they agree is often the biggest most vocal defender,” Stafford wrote. “But if he’s wrong - like unconstitutional wars or trillions of extra debt - Rand will stick to his own principles and the things he said he would do when elected by the people of Kentucky. He has always stood on his principles and kept his word.”
Paul, however, has never faced a Trump-backed primary challenge. That could change in 2028 when Paul is up for reelection, but maybe not — he declined to rule out another presidential run in a recent interview with Semafor.
His analog in the House, however, fellow Kentuckian and libertarian-minded Rep. Thomas Massie, will likely face one next year. Also on Friday, Trump endorsed a challenger to Massie, Ed Gallrein, who has yet to jump into the race.
Massie has caught heat by leading the charge for transparency around convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to the government. But even before the Epstein news cycle heated up, a MAGA super PAC run by former Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita aggressively targeted Massie.
Unlike Paul, he has been shunned by much of the House GOP conference and has openly quarreled with Speaker Mike Johnson. With such narrow margins in the House, Massie has helped play spoiler to Johnson’s and Trump’s agenda.
Paul has not received the same kind of intense animosity from his fellow Republicans, perhaps because the Senate GOP has a more comfortable majority of 53 seats.
“The attacks certainly aren’t going to change my votes and they know that, so I surmise the attacks on me are largely about keeping the other House conservatives from deviating from White House dictates,” Massie told NOTUS in a text message.
“Two thirds of the senators, including Senator Paul, aren’t in cycle so they don’t really have an election cudgel to wield over there,” Massie added.
Beyond Massie and Paul, attacks from Trump have worked at keeping congressional Republicans in line. Most fiscal conservatives in the House have essentially given up their pursuit to return spending to pre-pandemic levels. Not a single member of the Freedom Caucus dared to oppose the bill on the House floor in September.
In the Senate, Sen. Cynthia Lummis has sided with Paul on appropriations matters as recently as this summer, but she explained to NOTUS that she would rather vote for the Republican continuing resolution than the other option: a Democratic bill that would add over $1 trillion to extend Affordable Care Act tax subsidies.
“He’s very fiscally conservative,” said Lummis, a self-proclaimed fiscal hawk like Paul. “I’m assuming he’s voting ‘no’ because he wants us to do our job and complete our appropriations on time and reduce spending, whether it’s mandatory or discretionary.”
For Lummis, the choice before Senate Republicans is a binary one: Either keep spending levels current, or add more than $1 trillion. As is so often the case for Paul, a third option exists: none of the above.
Asked if Paul’s lonely crusade is moving the Senate in a more fiscally conservative direction without buy-in from more Republicans, she was blunt.
“I don’t think so,” she said.