Nobody puts Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) in a corner.
The defiant Kentucky Republican told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that he will host a “tele-town hall” on Thursday night after failing to make the cut for the main stage at Fox Business Network’s Republican presidential debate. Paul was bumped to the undercard debate but refused to participate, telling reporters that he isn’t running a “minor campaign.”
Paul argued that the polls used to determine the cutoff for entry to the main Fox Business debate were flawed.
“The most recent polls out of Iowa have me definitely in contention and above and ahead of a couple people they did include on the debate stage,” he said on MSNBC. “We think the decision-making was arbitrary and capricious.”
Paul said his campaign is reaching out to “our two million” fans on social media, urging them to join him for his tele-town hall on Facebook. It will coincide with the main GOP debate, which will be held at 9 p.m. ET at the North Charleston Coliseum in South Carolina.
During a Thursday interview on ABC News Radio, he flipped the bird to express host Aaron Katersky how he felt towards the media being demoted from the primetime event.
.@RandPaul has a message for the media today after his #debate demotion pic.twitter.com/jTa3uKhHdB
— Aaron Katersky (@AaronKatersky) January 14, 2016
The Kentucky senator often turns to social media to promote his campaign, with a couple hiccups along the way. He seemed to show some distaste for live video appearances in October, when his campaign spent 24 hours filming his activities on the 2016 trail.
During the livestream, a staffer reading through voters’ questions about the Paul campaign noted that the most popular question on Google was whether Paul was still running for President.
“Wouldn’t be doing this dumbass livestreaming if I weren’t,” Paul answered. “Get over it.”
