Ron On Rand: My Son Is Not Islamophobic (VIDEO)

Ron Paul
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

After ostensibly dissing his son — and politicians like him who oppose the Cordoba House project in Manhattan — over the weekend, Ron Paul took to the airwaves to defend Rand Paul’s view on the project while also making it clear he disagrees with it.

To recap: Rand, like many politicians running in tight races this year, is opposed to building the Muslim community center, and has further called on American Muslims to donate the money that would be spent on building the community center to 9/11 victims’ families as a show of “reconcilliation.” In a blog post over the weekend, Ron Paul ripped into views like that, claiming that any opposition to the project was “all about hate and Islamaphobia.”

In a pair of CNN interviews last night and this morning, Ron stuck to his guns about the community center project — opposition is nothing but a political game being ginned up by bigots. He even went so far as to say he and Rand are on “different sides” of the issue. But he said Rand’s opposition to the project did not suggest he’s bigoted toward Muslims.

“I don’t put everybody who’s a candidate in that same category — you’ll have to ask him for his reasons,” Ron Paul said on Anderson Cooper 360 last night. “But, no, everybody who’s opposing [the Cordoba House] doesn’t even understand foreign policy or why we’re in Afghanistan and Iraq. They don’t have the understanding and they don’t make the connection. My goal is to make the connection for people to understand why Al Qaeda has become so militant and hateful towards us and why painting Islam with a broad brush makes our problems worse because we’re not zeroing down on the real cause and those who perpetuated 9/11.”

On CNN’s American Morning today, Ron Paul again said his son is no bigot. Asked if the divide over the Cordoba House has caused “any friction in the Paul family,” Ron said son and father were still getting along fine.

“No, no. I really haven’t spoken to him about it,” Ron told CNN this morning. “I think he’s in the category of most of the people who are running for office who get pushed, rightfully so, by their opposition, or by the media, who say, “What is your position, do you want it or not?” He’s taken a different position.”

Ron said politicians like Rand are falling into a trap set for them by bigoted conservatives in the blogosphere who have turned what Ron says is a simple debate about property rights into a fomenting anti-Muslim sentiment on the right.

Ron said his concern is “the people who started on the website and the people who picked it up and the politician who’s trying to gain a lot of points. And be activists in promoting this, mostly because they believe in intervention foreign policy. And they want to make sure that Islam is blamed rather than of Al-Qaeda.”

On AC360, Paul chastised guest host Sanjay Gupta for asking about the divide over Cordoba between father and son.

“You’re doing sort of what they’ve been doing on this whole debate,” Ron said. “Trying to stir up trouble.”

Watch:

Latest DC
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: