Rand Paul said on Fox News today that his lawyers would be all over GQ magazine if it wasn’t for that pesky First Amendment. But he didn’t completely deny yesterday’s crazy tale of his college years published by the magazine, which included allegations of a “prank” in which Paul and a buddy picked up a female member of the swim team, blindfolded her, and forced her to kneel in a creek and pray to the god “Aqua Buddha.”
“Well I’m not gonna really try and go back 27 years and remember everything I did in college,” Paul told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto when asked about the Aqua Buddha thing. “But the thing is, I don’t think that, really, politicians should be asked to answer anonymous accusers from 27 years ago — but I will categorically deny that I ever kidnapped anyone or forced anyone to use drugs.”
Paul said that the idea that he kidnapped anyone — which was widely reported across the media yesterday — came from headline writers, not the GQ story itself. He pointed out that the woman who made the anonymous allegation to the magazine said that Paul and his friend “never hurt me,” and “never did anything wrong.”
Then he offered his plan to limit freedom of speech and took the predictable stab at the media.
“I think they deserve a lawsuit,” he said of GQ. “The problem is that in our country, they make it almost impossible for politicians to win anything.”
Paul suggested that it’s at times like these that he wishes America were still under the boot of Her Majesty.
“In England it’s easier to win a libel suit,” he complained. Despite the limitations placed on libel law by America’s written Constitution, Paul said his campaign hasn’t “ruled out the possibility” of taking GQ to court.
Paul said the idea that he would kidnap anyone is “ridiculous” and he “absolutely” denied that he ever did. He took a few potshots at the anonymous accuser — who GQ said didn’t want to be named “because of her current job as a clinical psychologist” — but Paul saved his harshest words for the media which he said made a mountain out of a molehill with the story.
“We used to have journalistic ethics in our country that you wouldn’t report something from one anonymous source, particularly accusing someone of something like that,” Paul said. “It’s so ridiculous that i don’t know where to start.”
