Fox News "Hannity" - Transcript: Rand Paul says Rubio should resign or give back his pay

Interview

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STEYN: Welcome back to "Hannity." 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul has been busy on the campaign trail and in the United States Senate, where he's been pushing for immigration restrictions in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks. And recently, Senator Paul has been slamming his Republican rival and congressional colleague Marco Rubio for missing key votes in the Senate.

Joining me now to explain is the man himself, Republican candidate for president and Kentucky senator Rand Paul. Good to see you, Senator.

Traditionally -- you're on the libertarian end of the Republican Party, and traditionally, libertarians tend to be more relaxed about immigration than perhaps conservatives do. What's the rationale for immigration restriction from your philosophical perspective, as it were?

SEN. RAND PAUL, R-KY., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You know, I think there's a mixture of feelings on immigration within libertarian and conservative circles, and I don't find that there's a real consensus.
But I do think that if we're going to defend our country, it starts with our borders. And ever since 9/11, I've been frustrated. The 20 hijackers who came here all came here through the legal immigration system.  And I've asked repeatedly, Was anyone ever fired for doing a bad job? Did we ever change the rules? Are we vetting and screening people better than we used to? And I don't think we necessarily are.

In 2013, two Iraqi refugees came to my home town, Bowling Green, Kentucky, and they proceeded to try to buy Stinger missiles even though one of them's fingerprints were already in the database from being on a bomb fragment.

So I don't think we're doing an adequate job, and I've been advocating for much more scrutiny, and this has put me in opposition to Marco Rubio because he has stopped me at every point from trying to get more border security.

STEYN: Yes, back in 9/11, basically, those young Saudi men filled in joke applications, that the form said address in the United States, and they wrote Holiday Inn, America. And in response to that, the government created this huge new bureaucracy specifically designed to prevent that happening again, but you get the sense from Tashfeen Malik's immigration application that, in fact, the same thing is just going on. It just costs more money to let all these people in than it did before.

PAUL: And one of the interesting things is when you go back to 9/11, the 20th hijacker, the one we caught, Moussaoui…

STEYN: Yes.

PAUL: ... he was a French citizen, and he came in here under the visa waiver program. All of the attackers in the Paris tragedy recently, they were also French citizens. So I do think the visa waiver nations are a danger. And what I've been advocating is that -- it's not that I want to stop travel, I just think people should go through global entry.

This is a program that already exists, and what you would do is a background check, the same way we do it for the frequent flyer program. I think that's the very least we can do. But if we continue doing the visa waiver program like we're doing it, we are going to be attacked again, and we're going to be sorry that no one listened to me as I tried to have better security for the country.

STEYN: So you're concerned, basically, about Muslims who happen to hold French passports, British passports, German passports, Australian passports and can basically come and go as they please.

PAUL: Yes, but it's not Muslims. I'm concerned about terrorists.  And they happen to be radical Islamic terrorists, yes, but what I'm really concerned is, is that we look and screen those who would come and attack us.

If you're a French businessman or woman, Christian or Muslim, you're known to us and you travel back and forth for business all the time, by all means, let's continue that. But we have to have scrutiny. If you're a 25- year-old guy who just came from Algeria last year and you have a French passport, we're going to have to have some more scrutiny. We can't just let you come on a plane and come visit.

STEYN: So that gets very close to some of the reforms they're trying to make now, where they're saying if you're in the visa waiver countries but you happen to have visited Syria, Sudan, countries like that in the last five years, you don't qualify for visa waiver. Is that good enough for you?

PAUL: Well, here's the problem. We've listed four countries, but Saudi Arabia's not on the list and 16 of the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. So frankly, I am concerned about people originating out of Saudi Arabia and whether they're friend or foe.

So I would apply it to everyone. I would apply global entry to everyone. I think if you're a known traveler and you're a businessman or woman, apply and get in global entry, and then you can come and visit. If you won't apply, you won't do the background visit -- we're not going to take random visitors. I think that's what we have to do.

And I know that's going to be a hassle for some people, but once it gets started and it's done, we'll at least have some scrutiny. It bugs me to death that legal immigration is how they're attacking us.

STEYN: Right.

PAUL: Most of the attacks over the past 15 years have been legal immigrants to our country. But we're not screening who comes to our country.

STEYN: Right. You've been critical of Marco Rubio. Let's take a look at this campaign ad you've made of the -- his rare appearances and multiple non-appearances in the body you're both a member of. Let's take a look at it.

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STEYN: Now, all the senators running for president managed to vote on this hideous budget bill. You, Bernie Sanders, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, but no Marco Rubio. Is there a reason for that as far as you can see?

PAUL: It may have been the most important vote of the year, but certainly the largest spending bill of the year. And, yes, I think if you are being paid by the taxpayer you should show up and vote.

And so I think this is a big issue. And I think for him to say he's only going to show up when he thinks it's a close vote, I don't think that passes muster. And I think really that he ought to just resign or probably give us payback, because he's not really earning his pay at this point.

But, yes, this spending bill was something that was horrendous. It was a $1.1 trillion spending bill. It busts the budget caps. And really it also shows, though, that the complicity on deficit spending, both parties deserve some blame here. That's what I've been saying all along.  The right wants military spending, the left wants welfare spending. But in order to get what they want, the right has to give the left welfare spending, and then everybody gets what they want except for the taxpayer who gets stuck with the bill.

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