Could Rand Paul try any harder to come off like he’s being blackmailed by Donald Trump and Russia?

| 10:25 pm EDT July 23, 2018
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Even as more people begin asking if Rand Paul is being blackmailed into doing the bidding of Donald Trump and Russia, the Republican Senator keeps finding news ways to convince us that he is indeed under their thumb. Last week, even as various GOP leaders were publicly condemning Trump over his press conference with Vladimir Putin, Rand Paul fervently defended the whole thing. Now Rand is taking things in an even more cartoonish direction.

This morning Donald Trump tried the bizarre stunt of threatening to revoke the security clearances of several former U.S. intelligence community leaders, some of whom no longer even have such clearances. This stunt is already serving to make Trump look terribly small-minded. So who’s the one GOP leader rushing to Trump’s defense on this? Naturally, it’s Rand Paul. He tweeted “Just got out of WH meeting with @realDonaldTrump. I restated to him what I have said in public: John Brennan and others partisans should have their security clearances revoked.”

Rand Paul has always pushed a weird variant of anti-government libertarianism that just happens to benefit the wealthy, which has prompted him to take some political stances that have been absurd even by GOP standards. But his stances of late simply make no sense, even by his own standards. Why is he defending Vladimir Putin, and defending Donald Trump’s love of Putin? Why is Rand making a point of trying to get the security clearance of Brennan revoked, shortly after Brennan came out strong against Putin?

Last year John McCain publicly accused Rand Paul of “working for Vladimir Putin” but he didn’t elaborate on it. Did McCain know a secret that he couldn’t tell us? Earlier this year, Donald Trump managed to get Rand Paul to switch his vote on a crucial matter, and then Trump semi-coherently seemed to brag that he’d blackmailed Rand Paul into doing it.

Russian government hackers clearly targeted several U.S. Presidential candidates in 2016, from both parties. We know what they did to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. Republican candidate Marco Rubio is on record as having said that they tried to come after him. Rand Paul was also a 2016 presidential candidate. Did the Russians hack him? Are they holding blackmail material on him? Did the Russians give it to Trump? Is this why Rand Paul is so afraid of what the Trump-Russia investigation will turn up? Something isn’t right here.