The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, and politicians who are defining the 21st century in terms of individual freedom and autonomy.

Today's guest is Sen. Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky. He talks about why he cosponsored legislation to release all of the Jeffrey Epstein files, how President Donald Trump's tariffs and bombing of Venezuelan boats are bad policy and unconstitutional, and why fellow Republicans like Vice President J.D. Vance are Luddites and nostalgia merchants who want to regulate free markets to death.

Paul, the subject of a 2014 New York Times Magazine article titled "Has the 'Libertarian Moment' Finally Arrived?", also talks with Gillespie about his plans for a 2028 presidential run, the enduring anti-war legacy of his father Ron Paul, and why he believes that he and Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) are the only members of Congress who have stayed true to the Tea Party's commitment to lower spending and smaller government.

0:00—Releasing the Epstein files

2:32—Tariffs and protectionist propaganda

6:29—The economic policies of the GOP

11:32—Military strikes on Venezuela

13:27—Foreign intervention

15:16—Military aid and arms deals

19:38—Congressional spending and the debt

22:04—Federal hemp ban

23:30—What's happened to the Tea Party?

26:00—Will Paul run for president again?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated, AI-edited transcript. Check all quotes against the audio for accuracy.

Nick Gillespie: This is The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie. My guest today is the libertarian-leaning senator from Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul. Sen. Paul, thanks for talking to Reason.

Rand Paul: Glad to be with you, Nick. Thanks for having me.

You are an outspoken advocate for releasing all of the material on Jeffrey Epstein and everything that comes out of that. You co-sponsored the Epstein Files Transparency Act in the Senate. After a very public delay, President Donald Trump has fully endorsed the idea of getting all the Epstein stuff out there. What is in the Epstein files that we don't know yet that you think will be important for the public to know about?

I think it's important to know, first of all, that Donald Trump was for it before he was against it, before he was now for it. I have no idea what's in the files. It really has not been a big pressing issue for me. It's not something I've spent a lot of time either thinking about or researching. But as people talked about it endlessly, and as Donald Trump and his acolytes talked about it endlessly, it became a symbol for the idea of: does your government treat people differently whether they're wealthy or not? So, if someone is super wealthy, do they get a different form of government than someone who is not?

And so the idea that we wouldn't reveal these people because they were rich—I guess I come down on the side of transparency, because I think that it's important. And if government's going to mete out justice, that the justice, you know, be impartial. Based on the color of your skin, impartial based on who you are individually, but also impartial based on your financial circumstances.

But other than that, I have no idea if anything's gonna come out. I also think there are some complexities. For example, you know, I'm a public figure. If you accuse me of a heinous crime and it turns out I didn't do it, and they investigate me, is it really fair for you to now publicize that a grand jury investigated me for something terrible—that obviously people would not like—and I would be, you know, run out of town on a rail? Is it fair, really, to release that?

So there are real questions here, whether or not accusations should be laundered in public that could be very, very damaging to people. But all that being said, I come down on the side of, you know, we need to have a justice system where it doesn't have an appearance of partiality toward people who have money.

So let's talk about tariffs. Donald Trump has gone out of his way to unilaterally levy tariffs on basically every country on the planet. You have spoken out very harshly against the imposition of tariffs by government or executive order, essentially. Or claiming a national emergency. Leaving aside the unconstitutionality of all of this— which I suspect the Supreme Court will side with you on that issue. Can you explain to people who are struggling with the economic problems with tariffs—why are tariffs a bad idea?

Well, there are two arguments that the protectionists make. They say we've been ripped off. That China's ripping us off. And we're somehow getting poorer and the middle class is being hollowed out. These are both fallacies and pretty easily proven wrong.

So the first argument is that we're being ripped off. So you have to look at things, first of all, as an individual trade, not in aggregate. So if you go to Walmart and you buy a TV and you give Walmart $600, it is by definition a good trade because it's voluntary. No one forced you to buy it. You wouldn't have given your $600 unless you wanted the TV more than your $600. And Walmart wouldn't have given you the TV unless they wanted your $600 more than the TV.

So what happens is then a million people go to Walmart, and then all the TVs came from China. And we now have this enormous trade deficit with China, and you all bought TVs from China and China didn't buy anything from you." I'm simplifying this, but this is sort of what happens. But how can a million individual purchasers all be happy? And you ask them at the end of the year, "Are you still happy?" "Yeah, I love my TV. I'm glad I gave my 600 bucks. I didn't feel ripped off. I wasn't ripped off."

But then how can someone—a politician—draw a circle around a million Americans and say, "Oh, there it is. We've been ripped off. China's been ripping us off"? It comes from a measurement we call the trade deficit. And I think it's important that people, as they try to understand this…

How is it…Sorry go ahead.

I was just gonna say that a trade deficit is not just misinformation—it completely is a fallacy and means absolutely nothing. But we bought into this.

And then they buy into it also for nationalistic reasons: that my circumstances may not be perfect, I'm not happy with my income, inflation's outpacing me. You know, the Chinese must be at fault. Foreigners are at fault. It's an easy sort of false nationalism or patriotism. But it's a fallacy, because we've gotten rich and the Chinese have gotten rich.

Sometimes it's more apparent how rich they got because they started out so poor. So if they were making 30 cents a day in 1975 and now they make $4 an hour, you can see their richness more than you can see the increase in ours. 

We've all gotten richer.

One interesting thing is: before China got in the World Trade Organization, before we began trading with them in 1975…actually our manufacturing output from 1950 to 1975 was actually exceeded by our manufacturing output from 1975 to 2000. There's a great book by Don Boudreaux and Phil Gramm on this recently—The Sevens Myth of Capitalism — it goes through a lot of the statistics on this.

But anyway, it's a fallacy that we're being ripped off, and it's also a fallacy that the middle class is being hollowed out. If you look at the 70-year statistics on household income, you'll find that the middle class, while it's slightly smaller than it was 70 years ago, it's because they went to the upper class. The migration is from the lower class to the middle class and from the middle class upward. It's all migration upwards. HumanProgress.org does a wonderful job of bringing together these statistics and how well we're doing over the last century.

Yeah. So can I ask you, you know, you've taken issue with President Trump talking about this. People like J.D. Vance, you know the Vice President, senator from Ohio, which borders Kentucky. Is this the beginning of the end of this stage of the Republican Party? Because you're talking about economic policy that all Republicans signed on to a decade ago, and now many in the Trump camp are saying, "Oh, that's crazy thinking." Where do you go with this, in terms of what Republicans are following you on basic economic reality?

Well, you know, the Luddite philosophy started 150, 200 years ago, and I think that will be continued, and J.D. Vance will be the standard-bearer for that. For protectionism, for anti-trade— actually for the belief that mergers are bad, that capitalism is bad.

But I actually think that there's a positive silver lining to this. That while the free market wing or the libertarian wing of the Republican Party has shrunk, there's a possibility now that perhaps the wing of the party that I come from may actually be able to be joined with the wing of the party that has been corporate America.

So I think that corporate America understands, still, that trade is good. And they generally haven't been libertarian because they think, "Oh they're too hardcore on fiscal policy and balanced budgets. We don't care that much about that." But they are seeing now that I'm the only voice for trade, and I lean libertarian and am very hardcore on the debt.

I think you actually can bring two groups together. I've often felt that the libertarian vote isn't big enough to win a presidential nomination on the Republican side. But what if you were ever to join the libertarian-leaning Republicans with those from corporate America and from the business world who understand that tariffs are harmful to the economy? Maybe there is a bigger group here.

The J.D. Vance wing also hates mergers. They think the government should be involved with blocking mergers. Most people in big business realize that mergers and vertical integration are good for the economy, good for the consumer. So I think there's a lot of coalition-building that could happen.

The other side of the coin is, right now it's only me. I am the only voice left on the Republican side in this planet talking about trade and willing to vote that way. So, you know, there is that. And so we may have faced an extinction event.

Can you pick up people from the Democratic Party? Because, you know, it used to be Democrats—because they were in bed with the unions—they were against free trade. They think that, wrongly, they think free trade undercut wages, particularly for union members in America. Are there any Democrats that are coming around to the free trade philosophy, do you think?

So we've had several votes on the issue of whether or not the president can declare emergencies and then declare tariffs or import taxes by fiat. And it's been almost all the Democrats—I think all the Democrats—and three or four Republicans, myself being one of those.

And I think it is important to talk about this issue because there's the economical argument, but the constitutional argument is incredibly important as well. Because, you know, we fought the Revolution over taxation without representation. We gave the taxing power specifically to the House of Representatives, and it actually says literally in the Constitution: levies, duties, taxes are to be issued by the House.

Now for 100 years, a lot of these powers the Congress sort of delegated to the president. And for most of that 100 years, the president was actually negotiating lower tariffs. And so everybody kind of tolerated it. This is the first time that power is now being usurped in the opposite direction.

But I think it is important. The other reason it's important is because we found out during the pandemic emergency—when all these governors declared emergencies—they shut our schools down, they shut our restaurants down, they shut our churches down. It became authoritarian rule.

And so emergencies and limiting emergencies may well be the most important control of the abuse of executive power in our lifetime. And so in our state, we made it such that emergencies expire after 30 days unless affirmatively approved by the legislature. I've been trying to do that in Congress.

When Biden was president, we had probably two dozen Republicans that were interested in my bill to limit emergencies. Now that Trump is president, they're gone. They've all disappeared. And it really shocks me that people who were for emergency reform are voting to continue emergencies.

Trump's declared emergencies with 130 countries. I mean, these are literally like the things you would do if you were at war. You're in the middle of the Vietnam War and you say, "We're not going to trade with Vietnam." Well, you can kind of understand that. But that's what we've allowed that to happen. Not me, but virtually every other Republican is looking the other way right now.

Well, the other thing that you're outspoken on is Trump's actions on Venezuela. I mean, he's waging open war against Venezuela. And this is another thing that an autocrat or a tyrant would do. What is wrong with the Department of War under Donald Trump just blowing up Venezuelan boats that it says are carrying drugs or other bad things to America?

Well, I have my own personal refusal to call it the Department of War, so I'm going to keep calling it the Department of Defense, but just the name change is probably obnoxious and…

It's $2 billion in new signage, so it's an absolute waste of money for rhetorical purposes.

The most important statistic that should give people pause about blowing these boats up is that when the Coast Guard boards vessels off of Miami or off of San Diego, one in four vessels they board does not have drugs on board. So their error rate's about 25 percent. It's hard to imagine that a civilized people would tolerate blowing up people—incinerating them, blowing them to smithereens—if the error rate would be about one in four.

Some people are like, "Oh, they're drug dealers. It's self-defense. They're coming to America." Most of that we don't know. We don't know their names. We're presented with no evidence. Nobody's even bothering to pick up the drugs out of the water and tell us they were drugs floating around the boat. Nobody's bothering to say if they were armed. When we capture people alive, we're not even prosecuting them. We understand that there's no way we could prosecute them. We're just sending them back.

So these boats probably don't have the ability to go more than about 100 miles without refueling. They're 2,000 miles away from us, and they are outboard boats. In all likelihood, they would probably have to refuel 10 or 15 times before they got to the United States—if they were coming here in the first place. Who knows where they're going.

Yeah, you know, one of the great wins of libertarian policy or sensibilities over the past 20 years—and it's unfortunately rooted in really terrible foreign policy. Americans seem less interested in regime change overseas. Is it a hard sell to your fellow Republicans, because Donald Trump is a Republican, that like we really shouldn't have a president who is acting as if wars are going on all around us?

My favorite among my colleagues is when they say, "Well, I'm for this intervention, but I'm not for policing the world." And I think my dad actually deserves a lot of credit for making it unpopular to say you were policing the world. But they still do believe in policing the world.

I would say that most people in Washington are—on the Republican side, a good solid majority—still are of the neoconservative variety and do believe in intervention. But they've masked that, and they've been clever. So Lindsey Graham has not changed his positions, but he's clever, and he's become very close to the president— influences the president. Same with Marco Rubio.

So the pending invasion or regime change war in Venezuela is hatched by those people. I actually think Trump is the one who is least likely to want to do these things, but he is surrounded by people who believe in regime change and are goading him on.

I do think, though, that if he invades Venezuela, or if he approves significant arms sales—which are really gifts—to Ukraine, or more welfare to Ukraine, if he does either of those, the rift with Marjorie Greene will pale in comparison to what happens to his movement. If he invades Venezuela or gives more money to Ukraine, his movement will dissolve.

You are not a pacifist or an isolationist, let's say. How do you figure out what countries deserve military support or arms deals and things like that. And which ones do we steer clear of?

You know, there are various levels of sort of what you have to go through. War would be the most extreme, and the Constitution is pretty clear with that. You have to go through the constitutional process. And so I've struggled against presidents of both parties to limit their power to go to war without approval.

With regard to arms sales, it's sort of a lower bar. But at the same time, I think—one— I think people should buy our arms with their money, not with our money. So I have opposed giving people money to buy our arms. And that's sort of this game we play with several countries where we say, "Oh, this is good for America. We give this country $3 billion a year, but they buy 70, 80 percent of it from us. It's so good for our arms manufacturers." And it's like, "Well, I'm not really for subsidizing any industry, particularly the arms industry."

But I've opposed arms sales to people who have significant human rights records that are horrendous. I've opposed selling arms to Saudi Arabia after the killing of Khashoggi. I've opposed selling to several of the Sunni sheikhdoms who have human rights abuses against Shia minorities within their country. That often have arrested teenagers for sending a text message to, "meet me at a rally." That's enough to be arrested and to be held in many of these countries—you know, indeterminate. You know, being held without a definite release date and without a trial.

So I have opposed on many occasions, that. I've always opposed the foreign aid. I said, "Come to me when we have a surplus. I'll probably still be against foreign aid then. But until we have a surplus, don't even bother because I'm not voting for it." I've introduced more amendments and had more amendments about foreign aid than anybody else in the history of the Senate ever. I think I've had at least 35 votes to try to kill foreign aid.

How does Israel fit into that? Because you are a person who is—you have a certain kind of mindset and things like that. But you also resist calling what Israel is doing in Gaza genocide and things like that. How does that fit into your philosophy right now?

I think it's not always my responsibility to have an opinion for every event in the world, and I think it's also sometimes complicated, and sometimes I can see both sides of it. So, for example, I have three kids. They go to music concerts. I could see them October 7th being in a concert out in the desert of America or somewhere, you know, Burning Man, or whatever. And a group of people armed in Jeeps comes and kills 1,500 people and takes 100 people hostage. I have no sympathy for those people at all. That is Hamas. So I don't get these kids on our campus. Look, you can argue for freedom. You can argue for the right to vote. You can argue that the Israeli government is not letting the Arabs vote, they've taken their land. All those are arguments that you can have and justify. But there's no argument for Hamas.

So I have to, if I'm to condemn Israel, I have to say, "Well, gosh, what would I do if those were my kids? When would I quit fighting?" But then also, on the other side of that, I see as tens of thousands of civilians are killed, that what we call collateral damage in a war is still killing of civilians, and it will have ramifications.

And I've said this, my father said this before me, that the collateral deaths in Afghanistan—when you blow up a wedding, you intend to kill terrorists, and then a wedding party of 150 people are killed—whoops, it's an accident. But you don't realize that you create thousands of new terrorists with every accident and that there is a downside to the continuation of it.

And actually, Donald Trump does deserve credit for that, for in some ways, standing up to Israel and saying, "Enough's enough, it's time to stop." And I think without him—I think without his presence—the war probably would still be going on.

A lot of what you're talking about stems from the fact that Congress is not willing to do what it's supposed to be doing, either in restraining the president or in passing legislation. You know, my boss, Katherine Mangu-Ward, the editor in chief at Reason, when I said I was talking to you, she said, "Ask him: Is Congress ever going to do anything?" Can you answer that question, particularly in terms of budget issues? Because this is another thing that you alone in the Senate, it seems, have been talking about—the debt and spending and deficit since you came into office. Is there any interest among your colleagues—Republican or Democrat or the couple of independents—to actually change the spending habits of D.C. at this point?

One of my favorite comments by Madison is when he was talking about the separation of powers, how there'd be these checks and balances. He said,"We would pit ambition against ambition and that the ambition to grab power by the president would be checked by the ambition of the legislature not to give up their power."

But my response is: Who would have ever imagined—what Founding Father would ever have imagined—a Congress with no ambition? Completely without ambition. Feckless. Completely without principles. And afraid of their own shadow. Afraid of their own president. And unable to even squeak.

I mean, it is pitiful. But it's both parties. I mean, when the Democrats are in power, the Democrats, you know, are feckless. When the Republicans are in power, they are feckless.

It's going to take maybe an emergency. Even with the tariffs, you know, the farm state senators will all privately tell you, "We are free trade, and this is killing our farmers." But they will not stand up and they will not vote with me to end the emergencies.

There is the process of having a significant recession in the farming sector. There are going to be, and are as we speak, bankruptcies occurring. And the farm state senators sit on their hands, afraid to challenge Trump on this.

The Supreme Court might help, or if it gets worse. Now the president said he'll just give them money. And he's gonna give you money too, Nick. He says he heard your groceries are going up. He's going to give you some money. He's going to give you the tariff money. He's gonna give the tariff money to the farmers. But nobody's sort of brave enough to just say, "Mr. President, your tariffs are destroying the economy. Don't give us back tariff money. Take away the tariffs. Take away the punishment."

You've also talked about how recent orders and laws and things like that are hurting Kentucky hemp farmers. What has gone on? You know, there was a time where it seemed like the economy broadly—but especially when it related to hemp and marijuana and things like that—seemed to be liberalizing. That seems to be reversing. Why is that happening?

Some of this is dirty politics, like people are aware of but haven't discussed as much. Many in the cannabis industry and many in the alcohol industry decided to kill the hemp industry. So it's using government to beat up on your competition.

But in my state, we had taken the time to look at the hemp issue. We had decided to regulate it like alcohol. Our state legislature—you could buy a hemp drink with five milligrams of THC, and that was legal and is legal in our state until just recently. When they opened government, they passed legislation that's going to completely ban all hemp products in the United States. So it is a big problem, and we're going to continue to fight it, but we lost a big battle.

And I forced a vote on it. I told them, "You don't get to finish. I'm not going to let you finish quickly without a vote." So we put everybody on record. But amazingly, many people who actually are in adult-use cannabis states voted to kill hemp.

You came to power—or you came to the Senate as part of the Tea Party movement, which really crested about over a decade ago. The Tea Party movement came out of just exasperation with spending levels and with an out-of-touch government. At this point—you've mentioned—you're kind of at odds with people like Marco Rubio, another Tea Party senator. You're at odds with people like Ted Cruz, another Tea Party member. You and the congressman from Kentucky, Tom Massie, seem to be about the last Tea Party people who came into office who are doing what you were doing then. Is the Tea Party over, or was it wrong? I mean, why did the Tea Party energy slide away from us all?

I think you're right that myself and Thomas Massie are the two members that are the most libertarian in the Congress. And second place is a distant second place at this point in time.

If we want to suffer—if you are a libertarian Republican or at least like that idea—we're going to suffer an extinct— a virtual extinction event, if Massie loses. I'm going to be campaigning for him. I already have, and I suggest that anybody listening that cares at all about this needs to support Massie. If they get Massie, they'll come after me. If they get Massie and myself, there's no libertarian wing left of the party.

On the spending—it's extraordinary. The spending bills that they just passed to open government are the Biden spending levels they all ran against and they all voted against last December. They're not a little changed—they're identical. They all voted for the Biden spending levels without a peep, without anybody pushing back. And it's a disgrace.

But the levels of spending that the Republicans have all voted for will equate to a $2.1 trillion deficit. That's what they voted for. When they voted for the Big Beautiful Bill, they voted to add $5 trillion to the debt ceiling. Now, this is a decimation, and I worry that even if you describe it as fiscal conservatism, that fiscal conservatism is being rooted out of the party.

And yeah, the Tea Party really isn't discussed as much anymore, but they represented those things—fiscal conservatism, the Constitution. And there are some in our caucus who still say that, but they're voting for $5 trillion in debt. They have lost their way, and it's so… I can't describe how disappointing it is to me.

Two quick questions to wrap things up. A decade ago, you were a front-runner in early GOP presidential polling and surveys. There was a period where either you or your father, Representative Ron Paul, won all the straw polls at CPAC with one or two exceptions for, you know, something like five or seven years. The New York Times a decade ago ran a cover story, New York Times Magazine, a cover story saying: "Has the libertarian moment finally arrived?"

My two quick questions: Is the libertarian moment arriving now? Is it just that The Times, you know, got the story right, but the timeline was wrong? And the second is: Are you running for president in 2028?

On the final question—running for president—don't know yet. But I do know that if I am not loud, if I'm not out there, that there won't be any voice for trade. There won't be any for fiscal conservatism. And there needs to be.

I fear the populism and the protectionism of continuation of what we're doing now. And I think J.D. Vance will be that. It's worse than that, in the sense that they're very anti–any large business now. They want to break up business. The people who have been appointed to antitrust positions in the Trump administration are against mergers. They're against anything big and against trade.

So I think there needs to be another voice—whether that's me or somebody else, you know, we'll find out on time. But I do want to be a part of that, and worry that if myself or Massie are not around to be those voices, there won't be many other voices as well.

All right, we're going to leave it there. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, thank you very much for talking to Reason.

Thank you.

• Producer: Paul Alexander
• Audio Mixer: Cody Huff

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